The Contract Wife Chapter 08
Nathan Ashford spent that entire month in the air.
New York. Chicago. London. Hong Kong. Tokyo. Meetings, negotiations, business dinners.
He crammed his schedule so full there was no room for a single unoccupied second.
During that month, Ruby reached out many times.
She called, her voice soft, laced with tears: “Nathan, you’ve been so busy lately, haven’t you? I wanted to… thank you in person for the campaign.”
He said, “Not necessary. It was a routine business decision.”
Later, she sent him several long voice memos.
He listened to one. She said breaking up with him had been the greatest regret of her life. That she had never forgotten him. That every word in those letters had been sincere.
He didn’t listen to the rest.
Didn’t reply.
He had once thought Ruby was the wound he couldn’t close, the regret snapped in half by forces outside his control.
He had always felt he owed her. Always thought that if not for the interference, they would have gone on.
But over that month, he found he could barely remember what she looked like anymore.
Someone else kept surfacing instead—for no reason at all.
Once the divorce decree was in his hands, once everything was settled, he no longer had any excuse not to go home.
The apartment looked the same. Everything else was different.
In the bedroom, the bed was made neatly. His clothes hung in one side of the closet. The other side was empty.
Her designer bags, her heels—gone.
Her skincare bottles on the vanity—gone.
In the bathroom, his towel hung alone on the rack.
He stood in the empty bedroom, and suddenly he was remembering things.
The time she fainted from low blood sugar. He’d carried her downstairs, kept vigil in the ER all night. When she woke and saw his exhausted face, she’d smiled, eyes crinkling, and pressed her cheek into his palm.
The times they came home from work events and sat on the living room rug at three in the morning, sharing a single bowl of ramen.
The way she used to shift toward him in her sleep, unconsciously nudging into his chest to find the most comfortable angle.
Three years. More than a thousand days and nights.
He’d told himself it was all just performing the role of “husband.” But—
Standing in the emptiness now, he realized it hadn’t been.
If it had only ever been contractual, he wouldn’t have remembered the shape of her smile.
He wouldn’t have suddenly zoned out in the middle of a video conference, thinking of the way she curled up on the sofa with a book.
He wouldn’t have walked into this home and felt the air itself had changed, because it lacked her presence.
He didn’t dare think further.
He shook his head and forced himself into the study to work.
The housekeeper came to tidy the bedroom.
He was still working when she knocked on the study door and held out an old notebook. “Mr. Ashford. I found this in the safe Madam used to use. I thought you should have it.”
He took it. A Moleskine.
He opened to the first page.
September 3rd, 2015.
He kept turning pages.
Seven years of unrequited love. Three years of marriage.
Ten years.
She had loved him for ten straight years.
The last entry was from the night before their divorce.
“Nathan. It’s been long enough. I’m taking my love back now.”
He closed the notebook. His fingers were trembling.
He remembered one night, when she’d been curled up on the sofa and suddenly asked him, out of nowhere:
“Nathan, have you ever wondered what we’d be like if we hadn’t gotten together because of a contract?”
He had said, “Hypotheticals don’t mean anything.”
She had smiled, and said nothing more.
Now he stood holding that diary, wanting nothing more than to travel back to that night and hit himself across the face.