Page 120 of The Art of Ruin

“You don’t have to explain. I had no right to ask.”

“I know. I want to explain.”

He looks at the fire instead of me, as if he’s watching the past through a lens only he sees. “We met in college. She was smart. Funny when she wanted to be. Stubborn, beautiful.” His mouth moves, not quite a smile. “We were young, and she got pregnant. Marriage seemed like the right thing to do.”

I listen without interrupting.

“I loved her,” he says, and there’s no hesitation there either. “But I wasn’t in love with her. Not in the way she deserved. Not in the way my parents had taught me to recognize.”

There’s something unbearably sad about the honesty of that.

“We were going to separate,” he continues. “Quietly, if we could manage it. We hadn’t told many people.”

My chest tightens.

“Then the accident happened, and she was gone in the blink of an eye.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whisper.

His jaw tightens slightly, and he reaches for his glass, though he doesn’t drink. “People assume grief is clean because death gives it shape. It isn’t.”

“No,” I say softly. “It’s not.”

He glances at me then, and for a second, I think he might say more, but he doesn’t.

We sit quietly for a while, the grilled cheese cooling on my plate because I suddenly can’t think about eating.

Then he asks, “What happened with Jasper?”

My fingers tighten around the plate. I look down at it, at the perfect diagonal half I haven’t finished, at the buttery crumbs scattered near my thumb.

“I found out he had a baby behind my back.”

Adriano doesn’t move.

Doesn’t speak.

That makes it easier to continue somehow. “I was supposed to be in New York for the week. I flew back early to surprise him because I missed him and because things had been…” I breathe out, hating how stupid it sounds now. “Off. I thought we needed to reconnect.”

His attention stays on me, steady and quiet.

“I stopped at the Farmer’s Market because I wanted to get strawberries. He loved them.” I laugh once, but there’s no humor in it. “God, that sounds pathetic.”

“It doesn’t.”

“It does.”

“It doesn’t. It sounds like care,” he repeats, and there’s enough firmness in it that I don’t argue.

I stare into the fire instead. “I saw him there. Holding her. The baby.” My throat tightens, but I keep going because I’ve started now, and stopping feels worse. “And there was a woman with him. She kissed the baby, then kissed him, and it was just so normal. So domestic. Like I’d walked into someone else’s life by mistake.”

The memory still has teeth, not as sharp as before, but enough to wound me. “He saw me,” I say. “He looked guilty as hell but also annoyed. Like I was the problem because I’d appeared where I wasn’t supposed to be.”

Adriano’s hand tightens slowly around his glass.

“He came to my place later. Told me it was one night. That she didn’t matter, that he loved me. All the usual nonsense men say when they want forgiveness without consequence.”

Adriano’s voice is low when he speaks. “How long had he known?”