Page 55 of The Hotel Room

Trusted him with her heart. With their family.

And he had broken that trust.

A cold knot tightened in her stomach. Had she been wrong to trust him then? Was she still being foolish to trust him now?

But as James held her gaze, something in his expression cracked the walls she’d been holding up.

He wasn’t looking at her with pity. He wasn’t diminishing it. There was no condescension, no forced kindness.

Only quiet support.

He had seen her work—unfinished, flawed,messy—and still thought it was beautiful.

The tension in her chest softened, just slightly.

And in that moment, she realized something else. She hadn’t been wrong to trust him with this part of herself.

Not because he was perfect.

But becauseshewas allowed to be seen, to express herself, without it needing to be perfect.

Even when it scared her. Even when the pain lingered.

James set a mug of tea gently on the counter and slid it toward her, his voice low and steady.

“You need to rest. Let me take care of things today.”

Kate swallowed hard, the vulnerability pressing deeper than she wanted to admit.

But she didn’t resist. She could trust him with this part of herself—at least for now.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

James

The waiting room felt smaller today.

The same worn leather chairs. The same shelves filled with books on healing, relationships, and mindfulness he used to dismiss as cliché. Now, they felt...different. Less like something other people needed and more like something he was finally starting to understand.

He’d been coming here for weeks now. He knew the drill.

But this time, Kate was sitting beside him.

And that made the entire space feel heavier.

She sat with her hands folded tightly in her lap, gaze lowered to a faint scuff on the floor. Her body was angled slightly away from him—not obvious, but enough that he felt it.

Distance.

And hedeservedit.

God, he hated himself for what he’d done.

For weeks, he’d been peeling back the layers of his own selfishness in these therapy sessions, confronting every uncomfortable truth he’d buried for years. The shame. The way he’d justified that night in New York as nothing more than a lapse—just curiosity—when the truth was so much uglier.

He’d betrayed her.

He haddestroyedsomething rare and beautiful.

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