The Last Vow Chapter 2: Dead Man Walking
Content Warning: Distress, terminal illness
Motherhood, Annie had long ago decided, was essentially an unpaid, highly volatile internship in hostage negotiation.
Ten minutes ago, she had successfully talked seven-year-old Maya out of flushing a decapitated Barbie down the toilet to "give her a sea burial," while simultaneously preventing eight-year-old Leo from feeding the dog a fistful of glitter. Baby Sam had aggressively rejected his pacifier, opting instead to spit up on Annie’s favorite cashmere cardigan.
it was absolute, unmitigated chaos. And as Annie poured herself a desperately earned glass of Cabernet at the kitchen island, she wouldn't have traded a single second of it.
She took a sip of the dark wine, leaning back against the cool marble counter. The house was finally quiet, the dishwasher humming a low, steady lullaby. She pulled up her laptop, scrolling through the excursion options for their Cabo trip next week.
Sunset catamaran cruise? Yes.
Couples massage? Absolutely.
Tequila tasting? A mathematical necessity.
They needed this trip.
Smoke had been working so hard lately, taking on extra contracting jobs, coming home exhausted with dark circles under his eyes. Even this morning, he had seemed miles away, distracted and tense. But a long weekend in the Mexican sun, with endless margaritas and a king-sized bed, was exactly the prescription they needed to reset.
The heavy front door clicked open, followed by the familiar, heavy thud of Smoke’s work boots hitting the entryway rug.
"In the kitchen!" Annie called out, a bright smile automatically taking over her face. She smoothed down her leggings and walked around the island to greet him. "Please tell me you brought tacos, because if not, your gorgeous wife is going to have to eat a sleeve of stale saltines for dinner."
Smoke stepped into the arched doorway of the kitchen.
He didn't laugh.
He didn't even smile.
He just stood there, his massive frame rigid, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticked violently near his ear. He looked exhausted, yes, but there was something else. A profound, hollow emptiness in his eyes that made Annie’s teasing smile falter.
"Hey," she said softly, setting her wine glass down. The playful energy instantly drained from the room, replaced by a sudden, heavy static. "Baby, what's wrong? You look like you've seen a ghost. Did something happen at the site?"
He didn't move toward her.
He stayed perfectly still, keeping his hands shoved deep into his pockets. "Nothing happened at the site, Annie."
His voice was dead. Flat. It sent a cold, warning prickle down the back of her neck.
"Okay..." She took a slow step toward him, her brow furrowing in concern. "How was the urgent care? Did they give you muscle relaxers for your neck?"
"My neck is fine."
Annie closed the distance between them, reaching out to rest her hand against his chest. His heart was beating frantically a wild, panicked rhythm that completely betrayed his cold exterior. She looked up into his eyes, searching for the man who had loved her into a puddle of absolute bliss just twenty-four hours ago.
And then, she smelled it.
Annie froze. She blinked, her brain misfiring as it tried to process the sensory input. It was sharp, synthetic, and overwhelmingly sweet. It smelled like cheap gardenias and vanilla alcohol. It was a scent that didn't belong in her house, on her husband, or in her life.
Her hand slowly dropped from his chest. "Elijah... what is that smell?"
He didn't flinch. He looked down at her with a blank, unreadable mask that terrified her more than if he had started screaming.
"It's over, Annie," he said.
The words hung in the air, heavy and absurd. Annie let out a short, breathless laugh—a pure, unfiltered reflex of disbelief. "What? What are you talking about? What's over?"
"Us."
Smoke pulled his left hand out of his pocket. It was trembling slightly, but his grip was firm as he pulled out a folded piece of paper and dropped it onto the pristine marble of the kitchen island.
Annie stared at the paper. She didn't want to look at it. Her stomach free-fell into a dark, bottomless pit, the Cabernet suddenly turning to acid in her throat. She slowly reached out with a shaking hand and unfolded the receipt.
The Grand Orchid Hotel. Downtown Miami.
One King Suite.
Date: Three weeks ago.
The weekend he told her he was at a fishing cabin in the mountains with the crew.
"No," Annie whispered, stepping back, shaking her head. "No, this is a joke. Is this a joke? Because it isn't funny, Smoke."
"It's not a joke," he said, his voice dropping to a harsh, quiet whisper. "Her name is Elena. I've been seeing her for six months."
"You're lying."
Annie’s voice cracked, tears springing to her eyes with absolute, violent force. "You are lying to me! You love me! We literally made love last night! You held me and told me you loved me more than life!"
"I lied," Smoke said.
The two words hit her like a physical blow to the sternum. Annie gasped, wrapping her arms around her own stomach as if he had literally gutted her with a hunting knife.
The room spun.
The hum of the dishwasher suddenly sounded like a roaring train.
"Why?" she sobbed, the tears spilling over her cheeks, destroying her makeup, destroying her dignity, destroying her entire world. "Why, Elijah? What did I do? Am I not enough? After fifteen years... after three kids... you just... threw us away for some cheap perfume?"
Smoke’s jaw tightened. He looked away from her, fixing his gaze on the dark window above the sink. If he looked at her weeping, broken form, he knew he would shatter. He knew he would fall to his knees and confess everything.
I'm dying. I'm saving you. Please forgive me.
"I'm suffocating here, Annie," Smoke forced out, injecting every ounce of venom he could muster into his tone. "I'm tired of the kids screaming. I'm tired of the mortgage. I'm tired of... you. I just want out."
Annie let out a guttural, wounded sound. She lunged forward, hitting his chest with her open palms, pushing him backward toward the door. "Get out!" she screamed, her voice tearing through her throat, loud enough to wake the dead. "If you want out, then get out! Get the hell out of my house!"
Smoke stumbled back, letting her hit him. He deserved it. He deserved so much worse.
"I'll have a lawyer send the papers," he muttered, turning his back on his sobbing wife.
He turned his back, every instinct in his body screaming in active, violent revolt, and forced his heavy legs to carry him out the front door.
The heavy oak clicked shut behind him, the deadbolt snapping into place with the finality of a gunshot. But the wood wasn't thick enough to muffle the sound of the aftermath.
He heard her hit the floor.
It wasn't just a cry. It was a breathless, guttural wallow the agonizing sound of a soul being ripped violently in half. The sound bled through the door and sank directly into his bones, stopping Smoke dead in his tracks.
His hand instinctively flew back to the brass doorknob. Go back, his mind screamed, panic and love suffocating him.
Go back in there. Pick her up off that floor. Tell her the truth. Tell her you’re terrified and you’re dying and you need her.
His fingers gripped the cool metal, trembling so violently the latch began to rattle. He squeezed his eyes shut, his chest heaving as tears finally burned hot tracks down his face. He was one simple twist of the wrist away from undoing it all. One twist of the wrist to have his wife back.
But the glioblastoma made the choice for him.
A blinding, white-hot spike of agony suddenly detonated behind his left eye—a brutal, sickening reminder of the rotting clock inside his head. Smoke choked on a gasp, his knees instantly buckling under the sheer force of the pain.
He let go of the doorknob.
He stumbled backward, retreating from the door as if it were made of fire, until his broad shoulders hit the siding of his beautiful, perfectly manicured house. He pressed the heel of his hand hard against his eye, fighting through the physical torture of the tumor while Annie’s muffled, broken sobs continued to tear through the night air.
Annie woke up with her cheek pressed against the cold hardwood floor of the living room. Her body was stiff, her throat raw and coated in the metallic taste of grief. For three blissful, hazy seconds of semiconsciousness, she forgot. She thought she had just fallen asleep on the rug watching TV after folding laundry. She thought Smoke was upstairs, sprawled diagonally across their king-sized bed, waiting for her to crawl under his arm.
Then, she opened her eyes and saw the crumpled hotel receipt lying like a discarded weapon near the baseboard.
The memory of the night before crashed over her like a freezing tidal wave. Her name is Elena. I've been seeing her for six months. I don't love you anymore.
Annie squeezed her eyes shut, a fresh, agonizing sob tearing its way up her throat. She pulled her knees to her chest, curling into a tight ball on the floor. The physical pain in her chest was so acute it felt like she was actively having a heart attack. Her mind obsessively replayed the last six months, desperately hunting for the cracks she had missed.
Every late night at the construction site. Every time he had been distracted at dinner. Every time he had pulled away from her touch, blaming it on exhaustion. He hadn't been building their future. He had been dismantling it. He had been with her.
"Mommy?"
Annie flinched. The small, sleepy voice drifted from the top of the stairs.
he forced her eyes open. Seven-year-old Maya was standing on the landing, rubbing her eyes with the sleeve of her oversized pajamas, her dark curls sleep-mussed and tangled.
"Is it time to wake up?" Maya mumbled. "Is Daddy making pancakes again?"
The name was a jagged knife twisting in Annie’s ribs.
Daddy is gone. Daddy left us for someone else.
Annie’s breath hitched in panic.
She couldn't do this. S
he couldn't look into her daughter’s innocent eyes and tell her that the man who hung the moon and the stars in their sky had just burned their universe to the ground. She was entirely empty, entirely broken.
But as Maya took a step down the stairs, looking so incredibly small and vulnerable, a different instinct flared in the back of Annie's mind. It was fierce, primal, and deeply protective. Smoke might have abandoned them, but she would die before she let his betrayal destroy her children.
"Hey, baby bug," Annie rasped. She cleared her throat, forcing herself to sit up, swiping the heels of her hands violently under her swollen eyes. "Come here."
She pushed herself off the floor, every muscle aching, and met Maya at the bottom of the stairs. She pulled her daughter into her chest, burying her face in those warm curls, drawing strength from the little girl's steady heartbeat.
"Daddy had to go to work super early today," Annie lied, the words tasting like ash. "So it's just you, me, the boys, and Eggos this morning. How does that sound?"
Maya frowned, disappointed but easily bribed. "Can I have extra syrup?"
"You can have all the syrup you want," Annie whispered, kissing the top of her head.
The next hour was a masterclass in compartmentalization. Annie moved through the morning routine like a ghost possessing her own body. She packed lunches, broke up a fight over a missing sneaker between Leo and the dog, and fed baby Sam his bottle—all while her heart bled out quietly onto the kitchen floor.
She purposefully avoided looking at the island. She avoided looking at the spot where Smoke had stood just twelve hours ago and murdered their marriage.
By 7:45 AM, the older kids were ushered out the front door toward the bus stop. Annie stood on the porch, holding Sam on her hip, waving until the yellow bus disappeared around the corner.
The forced, bright smile held on her face until the exact moment the bus was out of sight.
As the quiet of the neighborhood settled around her, Annie’s eyes dropped to the porch floorboards. Right where Smoke had been standing the night before, there was a faint, dark smear on the white painted wood.
She slowly knelt down, shifting Sam’s weight on her hip, and touched it.
It was a tiny speck of dried blood.
Annie frowned, her brow furrowing in confusion. It hadn't been there yesterday.
Had Smoke hurt his hand at the site?
Why hadn't he said anything?
The memory of his hands suddenly flashed in her mind
The way he had kept his left hand shoved deep into his pocket during the entire brutal fight.
The way he had seemed so rigid, so intensely tightly coiled, as if he were holding himself together by sheer force of will.
A cold, strange unease rippled through her veins, temporarily breaking through the suffocating fog of her grief.
She stood up slowly, her thumb rubbing the dried flake of blood. It didn't make sense. None of it made sense. The man who had looked at her with such dead, empty eyes last night was not the man who had loved her with such desperate, consuming passion the night before.
I lied, he had said.
Annie looked down the empty street, her jaw tightening.
She was shattered, yes.
She was devastated.
But as she walked back inside and locked the heavy oak door, the tears finally stopped falling. Annie had spent fifteen years studying every square inch of Smoke Moore's soul.
She knew his tells.
She knew his shadows.
And something in the dark didn't add up.
Room 114 of the Sunburst Motel smelled like stale cigarettes, mildew, and despair.
It was a violent downgrade from the sprawling, coastal luxury of the home Elijah and Annie had designed. The wallpaper was peeling, the AC unit rattled like a dying engine, and the mattress felt like it was stuffed with cinderblocks.
Smoke sat at the wobbly laminate desk in the corner, staring at the paperwork spread out before him.
Petition for Dissolution of Marriage.
His lawyer, a sharp, no-nonsense guy named Miller, had emailed them over at 8:00 AM. Miller had been utterly baffled on the phone.
“Smoke, you’re admitting to infidelity on paper? California is a no-fault state. If you put this in writing, she is going to take you to the cleaners. She’ll get the house, full custody, and maximum alimony. You won't have a dime.”
“That’s the point,” Smoke had replied, his voice dead. “Give her everything.”
He picked up the cheap black pen the motel had provided. He needed to sign the bottom line. He needed to make it official so he could file it by tomorrow.
He pressed the pen to the paper.
Twitch.
His left hand violently seized.
The pen violently scratched a harsh, jagged black line across the pristine legal document before snapping out of his grip and rolling onto the floor.
Smoke stared at his empty hand.
The fingers were curled inward, stiff and trembling, entirely refusing to obey his brain’s frantic commands to straighten.
A wave of pure, white-hot fury crashed over him. He grabbed his left wrist with his right hand, gritting his teeth, and forcefully tried to pry his own fingers open.
"Stop it," he hissed to the empty room, his chest heaving. "Just stop it. Not yet."
But the glioblastoma wasn't taking orders.
As he fought his own body, the familiar, blinding spike of pain detonated directly behind his left eye.
It was worse today.
It felt like a physical drill boring into his skull. The peeling wallpaper swam in and out of focus, a loud, high-pitched ringing drowning out the hum of the AC.
Smoke dropped his hand, letting out a raw, agonizing groan. He blindly reached for the orange pill bottle on the desk—the high-dose steroids Dr. Aris had prescribed to manage the brain swelling. He fumbled with the child-proof cap, his uncooperative fingers failing twice before he finally popped it open. He dry-swallowed two pills, his throat burning, and slumped forward until his forehead hit the cool laminate of the desk.
He closed his eyes, waiting for the medication to dull the absolute torture in his head.
Through the pain, his phone vibrated on the desk.
Smoke slowly turned his head, opening one bloodshot eye to look at the screen.
[Incoming Call: Annie]
His heart violently slammed against his ribs. For a fraction of a second, the urge to answer it—to hear her voice, to beg her to come pick him up, to tell her he was so incredibly terrified of dying alone in this filthy room—was completely overwhelming.
He stared at her name until the screen went dark.
Missed Call.
Smoke let out a ragged breath, the tears finally tracking sideways across the bridge of his nose. He picked up the pen with his right hand, awkwardly gripping it in his non-dominant fist.
Slowly, messily, like a child learning to write for the first time, Smoke traced his signature on the divorce papers.
Three miles away, Annie was standing in the center of Smoke’s walk-in closet, completely surrounded by the ghosts of her husband.
Baby Sam was finally down for his morning nap, giving Annie her first uninterrupted moment of silence. She hadn't called Smoke to beg him to come back. She hadn't called him to scream.
She called him because she was standing in front of his meticulously organized side of the closet, staring at his row of gym bags.
He had taken a duffel bag last night. But he had left behind his favorite worn-out leather weekender—the one he always took when he traveled. He had left behind his expensive electric razor. He had left his favorite boots.
Annie reached out and grabbed the gray hoodie he had worn two days ago, pressing the fabric to her face. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.
It smelled like sawdust, heavily roasted coffee, and the musky cedar of his cologne. That was it.
She grabbed the flannel he had worn to the grocery store on Sunday. Same scent. She grabbed the t-shirt he wore to bed on Monday. Nothing.
Annie dropped the shirts to the floor, her heart pounding a strange, frantic rhythm.
Her name is Elena. I've been seeing her for six months.
If her husband had been sleeping with another woman for half a year, why was last night the very first time she had ever smelled that cloying, cheap gardenia perfume? Smoke was meticulous, yes, but no one was that perfect. Scent transferred. It lingered on car seats, on jackets, in hair. For six months, there hadn't been a single trace of another woman on him.
Then, magically, on the exact same night he breaks her heart, he walks in smelling like he bathed in a bottle of it?
"You're an idiot, Smoke," Annie whispered to the empty closet.
She turned on her heel and marched downstairs to his home office. She locked the door behind her and sat down in his heavy leather desk chair, pulling his iPad toward her. She knew his passcode—it was the date of their wedding. He hadn't changed it. Mistake number two.
She unlocked the screen and immediately opened their joint banking app.
She scrolled down to the date on that crumpled hotel receipt.
Three weeks ago.
The receipt was for $450.00 at the Grand Orchid Hotel.
Annie scoured the transactions.
There was no charge for $450.00.
Okay, she thought, her pulse quickening. He paid cash to hide it.
She looked for ATM withdrawals leading up to that weekend. Nothing. Smoke hadn't pulled out a single dollar of cash from their joint accounts in over two months. His personal business account for the contracting firm was linked as well. She checked it.
Zero withdrawals.
Where did he get four hundred and fifty dollars in untraceable cash?
Annie picked up her own phone. Her hands were shaking, but her mind felt razor-sharp for the first time in twelve hours. The paralyzing, suffocating grief from this morning had slowly morphed into a hot, dangerous adrenaline.
She searched for the number of the Grand Orchid Hotel and hit dial.
"Grand Orchid, guest services, how can I direct your call?" a polite voice answered.
"Hi," Annie said, forcing her voice to sound breezy and professional. "My husband stayed with you guys three weeks ago, and his accounting department lost the folio for his expense report. I was wondering if you could email me a copy? The last name is Moore. First name, Elijah."
"Of course, ma'am. Let me pull up that weekend," the receptionist typed for a few seconds. "Moore... Moore... Ah, here it is. Elijah Moore. One King Suite."
Annie’s breath caught. He was there.
"Can you confirm the payment method for the accounting department?" Annie asked, her knuckles turning white as she gripped the phone.
"Yes, it looks like he paid in cash at the front desk," the receptionist confirmed. "It was a walk-in reservation at 2:00 PM on that Friday."
"Great. Thank you," Annie swallowed hard. "And did he charge anything to the room? Room service, drinks?"
There was a pause.
More typing.
"No, ma'am," the receptionist sounded slightly confused. "Actually... the system shows the electronic keycard for that room was never used. He checked in and paid, but the door was never opened."
The air completely vanished from the room.
Annie sat frozen in the leather chair. The silence in the house was suddenly deafening.
The keycard was never used.
He hadn't slept with anyone in that room. He had walked in, handed them cash he had likely hidden from a side job, taken the receipt, and walked out.
He had manufactured the evidence.
Annie slowly lowered the phone from her ear. She looked at the framed photo on Elijah’s desk—a picture of him holding a newborn Sam in the hospital, tears of absolute joy streaming down his rugged face.
The blood on the porch.
The trembling hand.
The sudden, brutal personality shift.
The faked receipt.
He wasn't having an affair.
He was running away.
"What the hell is going on with you, Lijah?" Annie whispered, the hot tears finally returning to her eyes—not out of heartbreak this time, but out of absolute, bone-chilling terror.
Adrenaline is a terrifyingly efficient fuel.
He faked the receipt.
He faked the affair.
But why? Smoke was a fiercely loyal, terrifyingly protective man. He would step in front of a moving train for her and the kids. The only reason—the only conceivable reason—he would intentionally destroy her and run away was if he believed staying would hurt her more.
Annie opened a new tab on his iPad. Her fingers flew across the glass screen, pulling up the FordPass app they used to monitor the maintenance on his F-150.
She clicked on the Vehicle Location tab.
A tiny blue dot appeared on the map. It wasn’t parked at a luxury high-rise downtown with a twenty-six-year-old named Elena. It was parked ten miles away at the Sunburst Motel—a notorious, run-down dive off the interstate that rented rooms by the hour.
A millionaire contractor, voluntarily hiding in a roach motel.
"What are you doing, Smoke?" she breathed, her mind racing.
She closed the app and stared blankly at the screen, desperately hunting for the missing puzzle piece. Her mind violently rewound the last forty-eight hours. The stiffness in his shoulders. The way he avoided looking at her. The weird, rigid way he had held his left hand in his pocket during the fight.
Then, a memory slammed into her with the force of a physical blow.
"I’m going to run by an urgent care clinic down in West Palm just to make sure I didn't tear anything."
He had said that yesterday morning after dropping his coffee mug.
Annie’s hands started to shake.
She opened the web browser and typed in the URL for their Blue Shield health insurance portal. As the primary policyholder, her login granted her access to the entire family’s medical claims. She typed in her password, her breath hitching in her throat as the little blue loading circle spun.
The dashboard loaded.
She immediately clicked on Recent Claims.
There was a new, pending authorization from yesterday afternoon.
Annie leaned closer to the screen. It wasn't an urgent care clinic in West Palm. It was a Level II Hospital in West Palm Beach.
Patient: Moore, Elijah
Department: Neurology / Neuro-Oncology.
Services Rendered: MRI Brain W/WO Contrast.
Diagnosis Code: Pending Final Report.
Annie stopped breathing.
The air in the office was instantly sucked into a vacuum. She stared at the word Neurology. The letters seemed to detach from the screen, floating in her vision, sharp and jagged and dripping with venom.
MRI Brain.
You don't get a STAT MRI of your brain with contrast for a pinched nerve in your neck. You don't go to a neurologist for a strained muscle from lifting weights.
"No," she whispered, her hands flying up to cover her mouth.
The trembling hand. The dropped mug. The blinding headaches he tried to hide in the dark. The blood on the porch from where he had likely collapsed or dug his nails into his own skin in agony.
He wasn't having a midlife crisis.
He wasn't cheating on her.
There was something terrifyingly wrong inside his head.
“I’m suffocating here,” he had lied last night, looking at her with those dead, empty eyes. “I just want out.”
He had taken her hatred, fully absorbing the blow, just to set her free.
"You stupid, beautiful, arrogant idiot," Annie sobbed, a fresh wave of tears pouring freely down her face as she clutched the iPad to her chest.
She didn't collapse this time.
The despair was entirely eradicated by a fierce, blinding, maternal fury. Smoke was used to carrying the weight of the world on his massive shoulders. But he had fundamentally underestimated the woman he married.
Annie shoved the chair back and sprinted out of the office. She grabbed her phone from the kitchen counter and hit her mother's contact name.
"Mom," Annie said the second the line connected, her voice trembling but forged in absolute steel. "I need you at my house. Right now. Sam is asleep in his crib, and the older two get off the bus at three."
"Annie? Honey, what’s wrong? You sound—"
"Smoke is sick, Mom," Annie choked out, grabbing her car keys from the hook. "I don't know what it is yet, but it's bad. And he's trying to run away so I don't have to deal with it."
"Oh my God. I'm leaving right now. I'll be there in five minutes. Go get him."
Annie hung up. She ran out the front door, not even bothering to lock it, and threw herself into the driver's seat of her SUV. She jammed the car into reverse, the tires screeching against the pavement as she backed out of the driveway.
Smoke wanted to play the tragic martyr. He wanted to sit in the dark in a cheap motel room to spare her the pain of whatever was coming.
But as Annie merged onto the highway, slamming her foot down on the gas pedal toward the Sunburst Motel, she made a vow of her own. She was going to kick down the door of that filthy room, grab the love of her life by his stubborn collar, and demand the goddamn truth.
For better or worse. In sickness and in health.
She wasn't just words on a paper.
She was his wife.
And he was about to find out exactly what that meant.
Smoke sat at the edge of the motel bed, staring blankly at the divorce petition. He had finally managed to sign it. His signature looked like the jagged scrawl of a stranger, but it was legally binding. It was done.
He reached for the bottle of high-dose steroids on the desk, intending to take another dose to fight off the heavy, suffocating pressure building behind his left eye.
BANG. BANG. BANG.
The sudden, violent pounding on the motel room door sounded like a SWAT raid. Smoke flinched, his left hand instinctively jerking. He knocked the orange pill bottle over, scattering little white tablets across the sticky laminate floor.
"Smoke!" a voice screamed from the other side of the cheap hollow-core door. "Smoke, open this goddamn door right now!"
Smoke’s heart stopped.
The blood entirely drained from his face, leaving him cold and paralyzed. It was Annie.
How the hell did she find me?
"I know you're in there!" Annie yelled, pounding so hard the wood groaned in the frame. "I tracked your truck! Open the door before I have the manager bring the master key!"
Panic, sharp, wild, and utterly terrifying, clawed at his throat.
He wasn't ready. He hadn't built his walls high enough yet.
The mask he had worn last night was cracking under the weight of the agony in his skull. If she saw him like this, if she looked into his eyes, she would see the truth.
He had to hold the line.
He had to be the monster.
Smoke stood up, his massive frame tight with manufactured fury. He crossed the small room in three strides, unlocked the deadbolt, and yanked the door open.
Annie stood on the concrete walkway. She looked terrible, her eyes were swollen, her dark hair was a mess, and she was wearing the same leggings from yesterday. But beneath the exhaustion, her eyes were burning with a fierce, absolute fire.
"What are you doing here, Annie?" Smoke demanded, his voice a low, hostile rumble. He blocked the doorway with his body, making sure she couldn't see the scattered pills on the floor behind him. "I told you I’d have the lawyer send the papers. You have no right to track me."
Annie didn't flinch.
She stepped forward, practically pressing her chest against his solid chest, forcing him to look down at her.
"The Grand Orchid Hotel," she said, her voice shaking but razor-sharp. "You paid cash. But the electronic keycard was never used. You never opened the door to that room, Smoke."
Smoke’s jaw locked. He stared down at her, a cold sweat breaking out on the back of his neck. Dammit. She checked.
"I stayed at Elena's place," he lied smoothly, without missing a beat. "I just bought the room to have an alibi if you checked the accounts. It doesn't change anything."
"Elena doesn't exist," Annie snapped, her voice rising. "Stop lying to me! I know you didn't go to an urgent care in West Palm. I logged into Blue Shield, Smoke. I saw the claim. Neurology. Brain MRI."
The world tilted on its axis.
The high-pitched ringing in Smoke’s ear suddenly turned into a deafening roar. His chest tightened so violently he could barely pull air into his lungs. She knew. The one thing he had sacrificed his marriage to hide from her, the one thing he was terrified of her finding out—she held it in her hands like a loaded gun.
Deny it. Push her away. Break her.
"I don't know what you're talking about," Smoke said, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. He crossed his arms over his chest, burying his trembling left hand beneath his right bicep. "The urgent care referred me for an MRI because of a pinched nerve in my neck. The machine happened to be in the neuro wing. That’s it."
"A pinched nerve?" Annie repeated, letting out a wild, breathless laugh of sheer disbelief. "You expect me to believe you walked out on fifteen years of marriage, faked an affair, and moved into a roach motel because of a pinched nerve?"
"I walked out because I don't want to be married to you anymore!" Smoke roared, stepping out of the doorway to tower over her on the walkway. "Why is that so hard for you to understand? I’m done, Annie! The MRI was nothing! It was negative! I'm perfectly healthy, and I still don't want you!"
"You're a liar!" she screamed back, tears finally spilling hot and fast down her cheeks. She shoved his chest with both hands. "You're a coward! You're trying to protect me from something, but I am your wife! I took a vow! You don't get to unilaterally decide to shut me out because things get hard!"
"It's not about protecting you!" he shouted, the lie tearing his throat raw. "I don't love you! Look at me, Annie! Look me in the eye and listen to me! I don't love you!"
He stared down at her, forcing every ounce of venom and cold hatred he possessed into his gaze. He needed her to believe it. He needed her to feel the absolute, irrevocable rejection of the man she loved.
Annie stared back up at him, her chest heaving. She searched his dark eyes, looking for the warmth, the adoration, the familiar safe harbor she had known since she was a teenager.
She found nothing. Just a cold, impenetrable wall.
"Fine," Annie whispered, her voice finally breaking. The fight completely drained out of her body, leaving her hollow and defeated. "If you really don't love me... if you really want this divorce... then sign the papers right now. In front of me."
Smoke didn't hesitate. He stepped back into the room, leaving the door open. He picked up the signed petition from the wobbly desk and walked back to the doorway. He shoved the papers roughly into her hands.
"Already done," he said coldly.
Annie looked down at the paper. Her eyes scanned the document, landing on the signature line at the very bottom.
The breath completely left her lungs.
She stared at the ink. It wasn't Elijah’s signature. Elijah had beautiful, sharp, architectural handwriting. The signature on the paper was a jagged, barely legible scrawl. It looked like a young child had violently dragged a pen across the paper.
She slowly looked up from the paper, her tear-filled eyes dropping from his face to his arms.
He was still standing with his arms crossed defensively over his chest. But beneath his right bicep, his left hand—the hand he had used to sign the paper, the hand he had been hiding in his pocket for two days—was violently, uncontrollably trembling.
Smoke saw where she was looking.
He immediately dropped his arms, shoving his left hand deep into his jeans pocket, his face pale and stricken.
But he was too late.
Annie looked up into his eyes, the absolute, horrifying truth finally clicking completely into place.
"Elijah" she whispered, her voice trembling with absolute terror. "What is wrong with your hand?"
A/N:
I hope you all enjoyed this! This is a pretty short series- maybe one or two more chapter. As always, Let me know in the comments how y'all feel! Until Next time 💝
Tag List:
@mmbee675 @warybasiliskloremaster @bananajoeclone @r8dsquid
