Chapter 350: Dinner in twenty
Josh arrived a little after six, dropping his bag by the door with far more precision than JJ had managed, greeting his mother with a kiss on the cheek and a quiet "Smells good" before disappearing upstairs to wash up.
Justina came in twenty minutes after that, earbuds in, phone in hand, offering a small wave in Amara’s direction before heading straight up without a word.
"Justina," Amara called after her. "Dinner in twenty."
"Not that hungry," came the reply, already halfway up the stairs. "I’ll grab something later."
Amara opened her mouth to argue and then closed it again. She was too tired, and there would be another morning, another door left just slightly ajar, another chance to try again. She’d learned, the hard way, that pressing too hard on Justina only sealed the door faster.
Dinner was quiet without Julian and without Justina, JJ carried most of the conversation, Josh answering in the polite, economical sentences of a boy who’d learned early that saying less kept him out of most arguments, Amara nodding along and eating very little.
By ten, Amara had put the kids to bed, or at least the two she could still put to bed in any real sense. JJ tucked in properly, Josh’s door shut with a murmured goodnight through the wood.
Justina’s light still on but the door firmly closed. She’d told herself she wasn’t going to wait up. She’d told herself that at nine, and again at nine forty-five, and she was still telling herself that when her phone buzzed with an address and nothing else, no explanation, just a pin dropped on a map and a room number.
She almost didn’t go. Almost texted back something sharp about how he didn’t get to vanish for six hours and then summon her somewhere like she had nothing better to do.
But some old, stubborn part of her the part that still remembered what it felt like to be chosen by this man before either of them had trillions or billions or a single photograph on a wall got in the car anyway.
The hotel room was the kind of quiet, expensive nowhere that could have been anywhere in the world.
She knocked once and let herself in when there was no answer, and found the room dim, candlelit in a way that felt almost embarrassing in its effort, and a man standing by the window who was, unmistakably, her husband, and who did not, for the moment, seem to want to be recognized as such.
"Hello, Akash," Amara said, playing along despite herself, something loosening in her chest before she’d even decided to let it.
"Sasha." He turned, and there was real warmth in it, real want, and for a moment it didn’t matter that this was absurd, that they were two grown adults with three teenagers and five corporations between them, standing in a rented room pretending to be other people. "I’ve missed you so much."
She crossed the room and kissed him, and he kissed her back like it was the only thing he’d done all day that he actually wanted to do, arms coming around her, pulling her in.
"I missed you too," she said against his mouth. "So much."
"How is your husband?" Akash asked, drawing back just enough to look at her, something teasing in his eyes now.
"He’s always busy." The words came out lighter than she meant them, a joke wrapped around something that wasn’t one. "I’m starting to feel the weight of it all alone."
"I know he’s a jerk," Akash said, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "This isn’t what he promised you. But can we not talk about him? I want to have you all to myself tonight."
"Don’t call my husband a jerk," Amara said, breaking character before she could stop herself, the real Amara surfacing faster than the game could hold her under.
"Excuse me, I am your husband," Julian protested, dropping the accent, dropping all of it at once, laughing despite himself.
"Yes, but you still can’t insult my husband," Amara said, laughing too now, some of the day’s weight sliding off her shoulders for the first time since the flowers had been left abandoned on the kitchen counter.
"Fine, fine, this whole thing is silly." Julian pulled her down onto the edge of the bed with him, still smiling, but something more serious moving in underneath it.
"I just wanted you to step out of mum for a second. Out of boss. Just for an hour."
"Julian,"
"I’m sorry," he said, before she could get further, and he meant it, she could hear that he meant it. "I’m sorry for leaving everything on you. I promise once the Korea deal is done, no more trips. I mean it this time."
She wanted, badly, to believe him. She let herself, for the length of the hug that followed, arms around each other in the candlelit dark, the whole elaborate distraction of Akash and Sasha finally serving the purpose it had clearly been built for not romance for its own sake, but a door Julian had built to pull her, just for one hour, out of the house and the worry and the wall of photographs and everything else waiting for her at home.
It was working, too, right up until her phone buzzed against the nightstand.
Amara reached for it without thinking, the way mothers do even mid-embrace, even in a hotel room lit by candles, and felt her whole body go still when she read it.
Justina just left the house.
"See, this is what I wanted to talk to you about," she said, already sitting up, already pulling away from him.
"Justina supposedly went to study with Lucy. My problem is she told us she wasn’t going to the party. Now she’s out of the house at ten at night."
Julian sat up too, all the softness from a moment ago gone out of his voice. "She’s in college now, Amara. Those parties happen. It doesn’t have to mean anything."
"That’s exactly how Jolly’s son started now he is a drug addict, before he even turned eighteen," Amara said, already reaching for her bag.
"Fine, let’s call her. Tell her to be careful."
"No," Amara said, standing, shoes already half back on. "I’m going to that party."
Julian was pulling his shirt back on before she’d even reached the door, following her out into the hallway without another word of argument.