Page 53 of Escape Girl

I didn’t need to be scared of talking with Bobby over coffee. I didn’t need to make any large life decisions this morning. I could just chat with him, say goodbye, and go back to my hotel. I’d take a few days to absorb our evening together. I had time to think about what it meant, what it changed.

I went downstairs, surprised at how quiet it was. Bobby didn’t exist in quiet. He played music constantly, and if there wasn’t a speaker nearby, he sang. I once found him belting out Sia’s “Chandelier” while he was scrambling eggs and laughed for thirty minutes.

It was so unnaturally quiet that I almost gasped when I caught sight of him sitting at a table in a small dining alcove. His back was to me and he was hunched over, as if in pain. “Bobby, are you OK?”

“Do you know why I sent you those escape rooms?”

I froze in my tracks. His voice was empty and hollow. What the hell had happened since he left me in the bedroom? I swallowed. “No.”

He made another sound I didn’t recognize. It was either an awful laugh or an awful sob. “I had a whole plan, Em. First, I’d send you rooms that showed all the moments we were happiest. To remind you what falling in love had been like. To remind you how giddy we were to find each other.”

I twitched, but didn’t move forward or say anything. His rooms had worked exactly as planned; that was for sure.

“Right up until last night, I was working on the next set of rooms.” He raised a hand as if it were unbearably heavy and made a circular motion. “If the first set of rooms was to make you remember, the next set was intended to intrigue you. I was going to walk you through my home here. A brand-new place, a nice place, an unfamiliar place—but with things you’d recognize, like the teapot. I wanted to make you wonder about my life, to entice you back into it. Then I was going to do one of the office and my workspace, to show you how I’ve changed. To show you that I’m working hard to be the man who deserves you.”

Oh no.My heart seized in my chest and my throat closed. Jo had been right. He thought I’d left because of something lacking in him. He couldn’t be more wrong, and I needed to find the words to convince him.

He half turned, exposing a sheaf of papers on the table in front of him. “But I guess I’m too late.”

What the—? I took a step forward, squinting at the papers. My gaze caught on the letterhead, and all the breath in my lungs wheezed out.

I’m confident we can serve Mr. March within the next couple of days. We’ve identified both his new residence and place of employment, so serving him the paperwork will not be difficult.

I’d completely forgotten about Cal Bergman’s last voice message. I hadn’t responded to it either. So he’d proceeded as planned and served Bobby with the divorce paperwork at his home.

While I was freakin’ upstairs.

Bobby used the table to lever himself into a standing position, like he was a frail old man who didn’t have the strength to get to his feet on his own. When he fully faced me, my jaw dropped. He looked utterly destroyed.

Different, even, from the night I left. He’d been upset then too, but also bewildered and disbelieving and confused. Now, there were none of those tempering other emotions. Now, he looked plain miserable and defeated. Black-eyed and hollow-cheeked. Like a good percentage of his life force had been sucked right out of his skin.

“So you and me last night,” he whispered. “It was just a goodbye.”

No. Yes?God, I had no clue—and that didn’t seem better.

I had no idea where to start with all the things I should say. “Bobby.” I licked my lips and tried to slow my frantic breathing and pulse. “I didn’t leave because of anything you did or didn’t do. You are the most incredible person I’ve ever met. Please don’t think that you were not deserving or anything absurd like that.”

A spark of anger fired through Bobby’s face, briefly lifting his features. I was happy to see it and wanted to curse when it died out as quickly as it flamed up. “Really, Em? The old ‘it’s not you, it’s me’?”

I put my hands on my hips.C’mon, Bobby, fight with me at least.I wished for him to swell with righteous anger. Because it would make him feel better, and it was appropriate. “It’s not that simple,” I tried.

He looked away, down at the paperwork. “If it wasn’t anything I did or about who I am, then what is it? Do not give me that shit about balancing work and marriage either. I would never have been anything but supportive of your career, and you know that.Why did you leave?” The dreaded question again, asked for the last time.

Talk, Emily!My heart screamed at me to lessen Bobby’s pain by explaining, but my stupid fucking brain still didn’t provide any answers.

The month after our wedding, I began to spin out of control.

Some days I couldn’t get out of bed because my lack of energy made it hard for me to move my limbs.

Some days I was so irritable that I bit my new assistant’s head off for the slightest of errors, something I’d never done in my entire career. I complained loudly at Starbucks, at the dry cleaner, at the gym. Every tiny inconvenience suddenly drove me bananas.

Bobby had noticed the crying spells. It was hard to hide noisy, racking sobs and swollen eyes. When he begged to know why I was upset, I just shrugged and showered and said I didn’t want to talk about it.

He knew about my insomnia, of course, but not that it grew so bad I was only sleeping an hour or two at a time.

He didn’t know that I grew weirdly anxious about his safety whenever he wasn’t in my sight. I was suddenly terrified that he’d get hit by a car or caught up in an armed robbery or get hijacked. Any bad thing I read about on the internet, I was absolutely sure was going to happen to Bobby.

And God, the anger. The constant simmering anger. I tried to hide it, but I snapped at him all the time. I yelled at my father too, more than once. Neither of them deserved this wrath, I knew. I had no idea where it was coming from, but it was unstoppable. I’d been even-tempered all my life. I had no idea how to live while floundering in a sea of rage.

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