Page 24 of So Close to You
Neither of them speaks for several seconds.
They both wait, aware that a terrible truth hangs in the air, and neither is ready to say it aloud.
“Elliot...” she begins, but she doesn’t know how to continue.
Any answer would be a lie.
And the truth would destroy everything.
He runs a hand over his face.
For the first time in a long while, he doesn’t look like the impeccable lawyer who commands boardrooms.
He’s just an exhausted man trying to understand why the woman he loves is slipping away from him inch by inch.
“If I’ve done something, I need you to tell me.”
Seraphina feels tears gathering behind her eyelids.
“You haven’t done anything.”
And that is precisely the tragedy.
Elliot nods slowly, though the answer clearly isn’t enough for him.
“Then I don’t know how to help you.”
The sincerity of that sentence finally breaks something inside her.
Because she doesn’t know how to help herself anymore, either.
As Elliot stands before her with his heart completely open and sadness written plainly across his face, Seraphina has a horrible thought:
She wishes her phone would vibrate.
She wishes it were Nerissa.
And the moment she recognizes that thought, she realizes with genuine terror that she may already have crossed a line that cannot be uncrossed.
“I’ll do better from now on. I promise,” Seraphina lies.
Because lately, that’s the only thing she knows how to do.
Chapter 8
Seraphina feels her heart pounding violently in her chest as she walks down the hotel hallway. It’s two in the morning, and every step she takes feels like yet another betrayal, but also the only way to keep from falling apart. The door to Nerissa’s room appears before her like a refuge. She knocks with her knuckles, holding her breath, and when the door opens, the world shrinks to the figure of the surgeon standing in the dim light.
“It’s two in the morning,” Nerissa says, her voice hoarse with sleep. Then she crosses her arms and blocks her path with her body. “Go home. I’m not going to be your emergency exit tonight.”
Seraphina stands still under the weight of that gaze, trembling not just from the cold. She thinks of Elliot, of the children, of the perfect life she has built with such effort and that now feels like a suffocating prison.
“I can’t,” she replies, her voice breaking into a fierce whisper. She takes a step forward, invading Nerissa’s space without asking permission. “I can’t go back to that bed, Nerissa. I can’t pretend for another minute.”
Nerissa’s eyes harden. Seraphina senses the inner struggle in her clenched jaw, in the way her fingers dig into her own arms. She knows Nerissa is fed up: fed up with the midnight calls, with being the safe haven she turns to when the weight ofher marriage becomes unbearable. And yet, there she is, broken and stripped of all her armor.
“You’re selfish,” Nerissa murmurs, lowering her voice so as not to attract anyone else’s attention. “You come here when it suits you, you fall apart in my arms, and then you go back to your perfect life as if I didn’t exist. What do you want from me, Seraphina? For me to remind you that you’re alive?”
Seraphina feels the tears burning in her eyes, but she doesn’t let them fall. Instead of answering with words, she closes the distance between them. Her cold hands cradle Nerissa’s face, and she kisses her.
