“I don’t want to talk to you, Caelum.”
I turned. Started walking. My shoes squeaked on the linoleum – sneakers, still, the same ones I’d put on in a panic hours ago, blood still faintly visible on one toe. The sound was undignified and I didn’t care.
“Marlowe, please-” His footsteps behind me, quick, persistent. “I said I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you. The receptionist said-“
“I know what the receptionist said.” I didn’t slow down. “And I know what you said. I don’t have a wife. Three words, Caelum. You erased me in three words.”
“I made a mistake-“
“You made a choice. You chose to believe the worst without checking. Without coming downstairs. Without asking a single question.”
He moved faster. Got ahead of me. Turned and blocked my path, his arms slightly spread, his chest heaving, his expression carrying the raw, unedited desperation of a man who understood he was losing ground and couldn’t figure out how to stop the slide.
“What can I do?” His voice cracked on the word do – the same crack from the night on my bedroom floor, the night with the rose. “Tell me what to do to fix this, Marlowe. Anything.”
I stopped. Looked at him. He was standing in a hospital corridor, under fluorescent lights that flattered no one, in a suit that was wrinkled from the drive, with worry carved into every line of his face. And I thought: here we are again. Him asking what to do. Me holding all the cards. The exact same dynamic as the bedroom, the balcony, the doorway – except this time, I was too tired for rage and too hurt for forgiveness, and the space between those two things was narrow and uncomfortable and the only place I had left to stand.
An idea arrived. Not rational. Not mature. Not the kind of idea that a therapist would endorse. But I was operating on no sleep, dried blood, sneakers, and approximately sixteen hours of accumulated emotional trauma, and the idea felt right in the way that jumping off a cliff feels right when you’ve been standing at the edge too long.
“Kiss me,” I said.
Caelum blinked. “What?”
“You heard me. Kiss me. Right here. Right now. In this hallway.”
He stared at me as though I’d suggested we rob a bank. “Marlowe, we’re in a hospital-“
“We’re married. Last time I checked, married people are allowed to kiss in hospitals. It’s not a restricted activity.”
“Someone could see-“
“Let them see. Unless you’re still in the business of pretending you don’t have a wife.”
The sentence landed where I’d aimed it – directly in the center of his guilt. I watched him absorb the impact: the flinch, the tightening of his jaw, the brief closing of his eyes.
“That’s not fair,” he said quietly.
“No,” I agreed. “It’s not. But neither was the lobby.”
Silence. The corridor hummed. Somewhere, a machine beeped. Somewhere else, a nurse laughed.
Caelum stepped forward. Leaned in. And pressed his lips to mine – a quick, careful, almost diplomatic peck that lasted approximately half a second and communicated roughly the same emotional content as a handshake.
I pulled back. Raised an eyebrow.
“Caelum. I said a kiss. Not a business transaction.”
“Marlowe-“
“You want my forgiveness? You want us to talk? Then kiss me like you mean it, or I walk out of this hospital and you can discuss whatever you need to discuss with my voicemail.”
He looked at me. I looked at him. The corridor stretched in both directions, empty, fluorescent, the least romantic setting in the history of human intimacy.
And then something shifted behind his eyes. The hesitation burned away. What replaced it was something older and more honest – not performance, not strategy, not the calculated charm of a man who always knew what to say. Just want. Plain, terrifying, undeniable want.
He closed the distance in one step. His hand came up to the side of my face – palm against my jaw, fingers in my hair, a touch so deliberate it felt like a sentence he’d been composing for days. And then he kissed me.
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.