Married Strangers

1 Once I made up my mind to divorce Holly, I started keeping my distance. I made sure to stay completely out of her orbit. When she walked over to grab my hand in front of my coworkers, I instinctively pulled away. After work, her sleek black car was parked right outside my office building. I pretended it was invisible, practically throwing myself into the back of a passing cab just to escape. At the airport, a buddy of mine noticed my solo arrival and gave me a weird look. “Why didn’t you ask your wife to pick you up?” he asked, chuckling. “Afraid she’ll get too tired? Or just too whipped to let her deal with the traffic?” I shook my head, my expression flat. “Neither.” He raised an eyebrow. “Things between us aren’t exactly a fairytale right now,” I explained, keeping my voice low. “We are more like strangers who just happen to know each other’s daily routines. honestly, I feel more relaxed making small talk with a random guy on the street than I do sitting in a room with her.” Before the words fully left my mouth, a sharp clatter echoed behind me. I turned around. Holly was standing right there. She wore a perfectly tailored black suit, her face completely drained of color. Her hands, hanging rigidly by her sides, curled into tight fists. A stiff, awkward smile forced its way onto my lips. That familiar, suffocating sense of inadequacy I always felt around her rushed back into my chest like a tidal wave. Holly stared at me, her dark eyes heavy, swirling with a storm of emotions I could not even begin to decipher. Before I could figure out what to say, she closed the distance between us. Her pale hand clamped down on the handle of my suitcase. When I hesitated to let go, her gaze darkened completely. Her voice dropped to a freezing whisper. “Let go of the handle, Chad. Or I swear to God, I will pick you up along with the luggage right here in front of everyone.” I immediately released my grip, taking a massive step back to put air between us. She stared at the empty space between our bodies. The corner of her mouth twitched, and the dark storm in her eyes grew even colder. A few minutes later, I found myself practically shoved into the passenger seat of her car. I told her I needed to head back to the office, arguing that getting out of her luxury car in front of my firm would cause too much gossip. “Thanks for helping with the bags,” I muttered, staring out the window. “But I think it is best if I just catch a cab from here.” The politeness in my voice was strictly business. It was a cold, formal boundary I had not even realized I was building. The drive from the airport to the city center was not terribly long, but the thought of being trapped in a sealed metal box with Holly made my skin crawl. She scoffed softly. “What are you so afraid of? We are legally married. If they see us, we will just take it public.” I kept my head down, my fingers digging into my own palms. There was a time when all I wanted was to go public. But now, with divorce papers looming in my near future, throwing our marriage into the spotlight would only create a chaotic mess. The invisible wall between Holly and me had been built a long time ago. As the CEO of Pinnacle Holdings, she drew a brutal line between her professional empire and her private life. I knew exactly how ruthless she could be, which was why, even at my lowest point, I never begged her for a favor. Not even when I spent months pulling all-nighters for a massive pitch, only to have a senior colleague named Brenda snatch it away with a single smug comment. “My husband’s uncle is an executive at Pinnacle,” Brenda had mocked me in the breakroom. “Even the head of our firm has to kiss his feet. What makes a nobody like you think you can compete with my connections?” The project I had bled for was handed over to someone else the next morning. I admit, I wavered back then. When it came to connections, the entirety of Pinnacle belonged to Holly. She would not even need to show her face. A single text message from her would have been enough to hand me back the project that was rightfully mine. That night, after agonizing over it for hours, I finally swallowed my pride. “I heard your company is planning to invest in our firm?” I asked her, my voice trembling slightly. Holly maintained her usual icy composure. She did not even look up from her laptop, simply offering a dismissive hum of acknowledgment. “If someone at the firm was bullying me, would you have my back?” I asked, trying to sound casual and upbeat, though my palms were slick with nervous sweat. Holly finally looked up. Her heavy gaze locked onto me, her brow furrowing as if to say, Are you actually being serious right now? The silence stretched, making me feel utterly pathetic. I forced a laugh, ready to brush it off as a joke to escape the humiliation. But then she spoke. Her throat bobbed, and her voice was strictly corporate. “Investment choices are made by the board of directors. It has not even been finalized if your firm will make the cut.” She paused, her tone perfectly measured. “And while Pinnacle acts as the financial backer, our absolute core principle is to never interfere with internal personnel decisions.” She made it crystal clear. I did not humiliate myself by asking twice. Holly’s principles were absolute. They bent for no one. I was not her exception. But I never expected that Oliver would be. The day Holly showed up at our office as the lead investor, everyone was buzzing. Oliver was the new guy, entirely parachuted in to take over as the lead director of our department. The whispers spread like wildfire around the cubicles. “What do you think is going on between the new guy and the Ice Queen?” “Our boss has been begging for Pinnacle’s money for a year. Oliver walks in, and suddenly the funds are cleared? You do the math.” “Well, Oliver is gorgeous. It makes sense a billionaire CEO would want him. Did you expect her to fall for one of us corporate drones?” “If she didn’t fall for him, I would seriously question her taste. Right, Chad?” The gossip suddenly targeted me. I pressed my lips together, my voice dropping out of pure insecurity. “I don’t think so,” I mumbled. “I heard CEO Sinclair is married.” A coworker rolled her eyes. “How can you be so sure? Nobody has ever seen this supposed husband. For all we know, Oliver is the secret husband.” “Makes total sense. She came down here personally just to make sure her man wasn’t getting bullied. Why else would she care so much about a mid-level director? If they aren’t sleeping together, I will eat my keyboard.” I froze. I had no response. Nobody knew who I was to her, and I could not exactly explain to my coworkers why my own wife was bending over backward for another man. I wanted to ask her myself. Were your principles not set in stone? Why did they magically disappear for Oliver? “You guys have it wrong,” Oliver said gently one afternoon, stepping into the breakroom with a polite smile. “I am Holly’s ex-boyfriend. We broke up three years ago.” He meant it to sound like an innocent clarification, but to everyone else, it carried a completely different, scandalous weight. Two months prior to that office reveal, Holly had received a midnight phone call. That night, Holly, who had quit smoking years ago, stood on our balcony. The cherry of her cigarette burned a hole in the darkness until the sun came up. When the morning light finally broke, she grabbed her coat and walked out the door. I woke up a few hours later, wrapped in a cold blanket. I called her over and over, but it went straight to voicemail. Even her assistant had no idea where she was. There was a critical shareholder meeting that morning, the kind with millions on the line. Holly, a woman who worshipped her career, skipped it without a word. For weeks after that, she would get calls from an unsaved number. Every time her phone lit up, she would leave the room. One evening, a sickening knot of paranoia got the best of me. I followed her quietly down the hall and stood outside her study. Through the crack in the door, I heard the broken, weeping voice of a man on speakerphone. Holly stood with her back to me, her tall frame rigid. I could not see her face, but I heard the absolute tenderness in her voice as she tried to soothe him. The ghost from her past, the man who dragged my wife out of bed in the dead of night, was Oliver. All the doubt and insecurity I had buried for years finally tore through the surface. I cornered Holly in the underground parking garage the next morning. “He is your ex, isn’t he?” I demanded, my voice echoing off the concrete. “Do you regret it? Do you want him back? Or have you two already been sleeping together behind my back for months?” Holly stared at me. Her eyes were like shards of ice. I pressed my lips together, refusing to back down, matching her freezing glare. The silent standoff sucked all the oxygen out of the damp garage. Assistant Rachel nervously glanced between the two of us, finally stepping forward to break the suffocating tension. “Sir, you are completely misunderstanding the situation,” Rachel pleaded softly. “Aside from that one morning you called me, I have been present for every single meeting between CEO Sinclair and Mr. Oliver.” She swallowed hard. “He has been going through absolute hell lately. A family tragedy, and his own health is failing…” Rachel was the only person in Holly’s professional circle who knew I was her husband. Before she could finish her sentence, Holly snapped her head to the side. She tapped sharply on the car window, cutting her assistant off. “Get in the car, Rachel.” Then she turned her dead eyes back to me. “Did you even use your brain before letting that garbage out of your mouth, Chad?” she asked, her voice dangerously low. “Did you ever stop to think how much it would ruin his life if someone overheard you spreading those vicious rumors?” She got into her car, leaving those words hanging in the exhaust fumes. Her glare had been like a physical blade, twisting straight into my ribs. I had been holding those questions in for weeks. But saying them out loud did not bring me any relief. Rachel’s desperate defense made me wonder if I really had become a paranoid, jealous monster. After that fight, Holly and I entered a brutal cold war. I wanted to talk to her. I wanted to fix it. But she was suddenly always on a business trip. When she was in town, she left before I woke up and returned long after I had gone to sleep. We were ghosts living in the same house. I sent her dozens of text messages. She replied to exactly one. Chad: Are you still angry with me? I didn’t think before I spoke that day, and I was out of line. But we really need to sit down and talk. Are you free tomorrow? Holly: I am not angry. I have to fly to Chicago tomorrow for a summit. We can talk when I get back. Go to sleep early, and stop overthinking things. She claimed she was flying to Chicago. But the very next evening, I received a call from an unknown number. The voice on the other end told me to go to a luxury hotel owned by Pinnacle Enterprises at exactly three o’clock the following day. I arrived ten minutes early. My blood turned to ice when I saw Oliver and Holly walking out of the grand lobby doors, side by side. My hands balled into fists. I marched right up to her, pushing down the absolute rage threatening to choke me. “So this is Chicago?” I spat out. “Is this your business trip? Working hard on a king-sized mattress with your ex?” It was only after the words left my mouth that I realized there were about a dozen Pinnacle executives standing a few feet behind her. Assistant Rachel looked mortified, stepping forward to explain, but Holly shot her a lethal glare, forcing the assistant to step back. Holly waved her hand, dismissing her team. Once we were alone, her brow creased in deep annoyance. The look she gave me was genuinely frightening. “Instead of going through the exhausting effort of stalking me like a lunatic,” she said, her voice dripping with aristocratic disdain, “why don’t you just file for divorce?” She stepped closer, towering over my shattered ego. “Do you even have the guts to leave?” It felt like she had dumped a bucket of freezing water over my head. My entire body went numb. I stood frozen on the pavement, completely unable to move. Holly rubbed her temples, looking incredibly tired. Her tone softened just a fraction, but the impatience was still glaringly obvious. “When you are done throwing your tantrum, find your own way home.” She did not spare me a second glance. She walked right past me, never looking back. I wandered the city streets in a daze for hours that afternoon. Without realizing it, my feet had taken me to the old Sinclair family estate. The old patriarch had never approved of our marriage to begin with. When I told him I was filing for divorce, he did not bat an eye. “Has Holly agreed to it?” the old man asked, sipping his tea. I nodded slowly. “She wants it more than I do.” Now, sitting in the passenger seat of her car, the silence was unbearable. Just as the engine purred to life, Holly’s phone rang. It was Oliver. “Holly, my flight just landed,” Oliver’s soft, warm voice filled the cabin. “Are you here yet? I am waiting by the arrivals gate.” He paused, his voice turning incredibly sweet. “I brought you a gift.” The tenderness in his tone made the air inside the car feel suffocatingly thick. Holly almost violently slapped the dashboard, killing the Bluetooth audio instantly. Whatever Oliver said next was completely cut off. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Holly glance in my direction. She picked up her phone and quickly typed out a voice note. “Something urgent came up. Rachel is at the terminal. Find her.” It all clicked. Holly had driven to the airport today specifically to pick up Oliver. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the window, pretending to be utterly exhausted. I did not ask questions. I did not badger her with Oliver this and Oliver that like I used to. During the month I had been away on my business trip, the office group chats had been entirely dominated by their names. Whenever we were drowning in deadlines and the whole team had to stay late, Oliver was the only one allowed to clock out at five. “Sorry guys, I have to run,” he would say with an apologetic smile. “CEO Sinclair is waiting outside.” People were furious. We were all grinding our bones to dust, but he got a free pass. Someone from HR, who clearly knew too much, had dropped a massive bomb in the secret group chat. HR Rep: He is the Ice Queen’s favorite toy. On his first day, she personally called our department. Said his immune system is compromised and forbade us from giving him heavy workloads. Coworker 1: Makes sense. If he burns out here, he won’t have the energy to serve her in the bedroom tonight. (Smirking emoji) Coworker 2: Do you think her secret husband knows she is keeping a boy toy on the payroll? HR Rep: Who cares if he knows? He has been hiding in the shadows for years. Clearly the guy has no spine. Holly and Oliver don’t even try to hide it anymore. It’s like they are the real married couple… Holly’s voice suddenly snapped me back to reality. “Oliver has been seeing specialists lately.” “His health is failing. You know this.” My emotions remained entirely flat. I simply nodded my head. The car descended back into a deathly, oppressive silence. Holly opened her mouth a few times, swallowing whatever words she was trying to force out. Finally, she managed to speak. “Was the business trip exhausting?” After I had visited her grandfather that day, I had immediately volunteered to take a colleague’s out-of-state assignment. I stayed away for a full month. Perhaps noticing the house was completely empty, Holly had actually called me three times during that month. I let every single one ring out. According to the old patriarch’s strict conditions, I had to wait two more months before the divorce papers could be legally processed. As a gesture of goodwill, on top of the standard marital assets, the old man promised to wire five million dollars in cash from his personal accounts directly to me. “It was fine,” I answered absentmindedly, mentally counting down the days on the calendar. I did not notice that Holly’s knuckles were turning stark white from how tightly she was gripping the steering wheel. I was just thinking about how I only had four weeks left until I was finally free. “That hotel project last month… it was a last-minute crisis,” she blurted out. “The moment the meeting ended, I flew straight to Chicago. Rachel has my entire flight itinerary and meeting logs. If you want to see them…” Maybe I was losing my mind, but ever since she picked me up, Holly was talking way too much. She was famously a woman of zero unnecessary words. Right now, she sounded desperate to fill the silence. “There is no need,” I interrupted smoothly. “And I apologize. I am sorry for causing such a scene and embarrassing you that day.” It finally made sense. She had been acting so strange because she was worried I was still hung up on the hotel incident. If it was making her this uncomfortable, my public outburst must have really bruised her ego in front of her executives. “From now on, I will…” I began, ready to swear I would never cross her boundaries again. Before I could finish the sentence, Holly slammed her foot on the brakes, jerking the car to a violent halt.

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