Chapter 9 - The Starter Life
“Ethan,” Lauren choked out, her hands coming up to clutch at her throat. “Ethan, oh God... look at you.”
I said nothing. I stood with my hands loosely at my sides, my expression unreadable. I didn't look at her with anger. I didn't look at her with hatred.
I looked at her the way an architect looks at a demolished building whose rubble had been cleared away years ago.
“Ethan, please,” she sobbed, tears cutting clean tracks through the dust and cheap foundation on her cheeks. “I didn't know. I swear to God, Ethan, I didn't know!”
“Didn't know what, Lauren?” I asked. My voice carried clearly across the silent garden, smooth, resonant, and entirely steady.
“I didn't know what Chase was!” she wailed, taking another step forward, her hands reaching out into the empty air toward my chest. “He lied to me! He tricked me! My mother... Denise was in my head every single day, telling me I had to have more, telling me you were holding me back! She forced me to pack that suitcase! She made me leave!”
In the crowd, someone muttered in disgust.
“Chase was a monster, Ethan,” Lauren wept, her whole body shaking violently under the wrinkled silk dress. “He lost everything. The FBI took the apartment. He kicked me out on the street with nothing! I’ve been living in a tiny room in Queens... I work twelve hours a day clearing tables... my family abandoned me... I have nobody!”
She collapsed.
Her broken heel gave out entirely, and she fell hard onto her knees on the sharp gravel path, five feet in front of me.
She didn't get up.
She stayed there on her knees, her stained dress pooling around her in the dust, her forehead nearly touching the toes of my leather dress shoes. She was sobbing uncontrollably, her shoulders heaving, the picture of absolute, total humiliation.
“I made a mistake!” she screamed into the dirt. “I made the biggest mistake of my life! I threw away the only man who ever truly loved me! Please, Ethan... please remember Cape Cod! Remember our apartment! Remember the six years! You loved me! You had the ring in your pocket!”
She looked up, her face distorted by agony and desperate, pathetic pleading. She reached out and tried to grab the cuff of my trousers.
I took one measured step backward.
Her hand hit the gravel, grasping empty air.
“Don’t do this to yourself, Lauren,” I said quietly. “Get off your knees.”
“I won't leave!” she cried, clutching her own arms around herself. “Not until you tell me there’s a chance! I’ll do anything, Ethan! I don’t need the money! I don’t care about the ninety million dollars! I’ll live in a shack with you! I’ll meal-prep! I’ll never buy a designer dress again! Just take me back... please, God, just don’t leave me in the dark!”
The garden was so quiet you could hear the wind rustling the oak leaves above.
Every single person there knew what she was doing. They saw the calculation behind the tears. She hadn't come to Austin when Ethan was sleeping on a warehouse cot. She hadn't come when he was eating cold beans from a can to pay for server time. She had come when the *Business Journal* printed the valuation.
Maya stepped down from the terrace.
She didn't storm down like an insecure rival. She walked with quiet, regal poise, her emerald dress swaying gently around her ankles. She walked past the guests, past Julian, and came to stand directly beside me.
She didn't glare at Lauren. Her face held no petty triumph, no cruel satisfaction. There was only a profound, sorrowful pity in Maya’s amber eyes—the pity a whole, healthy human feels for someone who has eaten poison and is now wondering why they are dying.
Maya gently slipped her hand into mine. Her fingers twined through mine, warm, strong, and completely anchored.
Lauren saw the hand.
Her eyes drifted down to our intertwined fingers, and then up to the unheated Montana sapphire glowing on Maya’s finger.
Lauren let out a broken, animal sound—a wail of utter, irrecoverable loss that sounded like glass shattering inside a hollow chest.
I looked down at the woman weeping in the dirt.
“You called me a starter life, Lauren,” I said, my voice soft, but carrying the weight of an iron vault closing forever.
Lauren flinched as if I had struck her.
“You stood in our bedroom, while another man waited in his car outside, and you told me that I was just the practice run,” I continued, my eyes never wavering from hers. “You said I was the safe, boring choice a girl makes before she gets what she really deserves.”
“I was stupid!” she sobbed. “I was blind!”
“No,” I said gently, shaking my head. “You weren't blind. You were completely honest. You showed me exactly who you were, and for that, I will always be grateful.”
I squeezed Maya’s hand.
“You thought a foundation was a cage,” I told Lauren. “You thought because I wasn't setting money on fire to prove my worth, that I had nothing to offer. You wanted the finish line without running the race. But life doesn't work that way. Cathedrals aren't built on flash. They’re built on stones laid in the dark when no one is watching.”
I reached into my pocket, took out a clean linen handkerchief, and bent down slightly, offering it to her.
She stared at the white cloth, her chest heaving, tears streaming down her chin.
“Take the handkerchief, Lauren,” I said. “Wipe your face. Stand up on your own feet. Have some dignity.”
She didn't take it. She buried her face in her hands, her shoulders shaking with dry, hollow heaves.
I straightened up and looked over her head toward the iron gate, where Marcus was waiting quietly.
“Marcus,” I said.
The security guard stepped forward immediately. “Yes, Mr. Cross?”
“Call a car service,” I said. “Have them take Miss Davis to the Austin airport. Book her a first-class ticket back to New York, and have the driver buy her a meal at the terminal. Put it on my personal corporate card.”
Lauren’s head snapped up. “Ethan... no... don’t send me away...”
“I’m not sending you away in anger, Lauren,” I said, meeting her desperate, swollen eyes one last time. “I’m closing the account. You have no balance left here. Not a single cent of love, not a single cent of hate. You are just someone I used to know.”
Marcus placed a gentle, firm hand under Lauren’s elbow, helping her up from the gravel. Her broken shoe slipped, but he held her steady.
She didn't fight him anymore.
The fight had completely drained out of her, leaving behind only the cold, crushing realization that there was no magic door back to the past. The life she had mocked, the man she had discarded, the future she had treated like a stepping stone was standing right in front of her, infinitely out of reach, holding the hand of the woman who had helped him build it.
Marcus led her slowly down the path toward the estate gates.
May you like
She didn't look back. Her head hung low, her shoulders slumped, her limp dragging her through the shadows until the iron gates clicked shut behind her.
***
