Chapter 7 - The Marriott Room 412
The room at the Denver Airport Marriott smelled faintly of stale carpet cleaner and chlorinated pool water, but to me, it felt like the most luxurious sanctuary on earth.
While Luke and Violet were fast asleep curled up in the king-sized bed, their gentle, rhythmic breathing filling the quiet room, Cassandra and I sat on opposite sides of a small round laminate table near the window. Outside, the blizzard had escalated into a full-scale whiteout, howling against the glass pane and burying the highway system under two feet of snow.
"You really did it," Cassandra said, staring down at her lukewarm paper cup of hotel coffee. "You walked away from Prescott Technologies. Just like that."
"It wasn't a sacrifice, Cass. It was an eviction," I replied softly, leaning my forearms on the table. "I spent ten years living inside a spreadsheet, thinking that if I had enough zeroes in my bank account, I’d finally feel safe. But walking down that terminal and realizing I had missed two and a half years of my children's lives... that scared me more than poverty ever did."
She looked up, her green eyes searching my face, testing for cracks in my confession. "What are you going to do? You don't have a job, your corporate shares are locked up in a shareholder dispute, and you just torched your reputation with the board."
"I have savings," I smiled faintly. "And more importantly, I know how to paint walls, assemble cribs, and read bedtime stories. I can get a consulting gig anywhere, or start from scratch. This time, I’m not running back to Wall Street."
Cassandra let out a long, shaky breath, her shoulders sagging as if an invisible anvil had finally been lifted from her back. "When I found out I was pregnant, right after we broke up, I was so angry I wanted to pack up and move to Europe where you could never find us. But then I looked at the test, and I realized half of them belonged to you. The stubborn, brilliant, impossible part of you."
"Why didn't you try calling me one more time?" I asked gently, not out of blame, but out of a desperate need to understand.
"I did," she whispered, a shadow passing over her face. "I called your private cell three weeks before the twins were born. A woman answered—your senior vice president of marketing. She laughed, told me you were in a closed-door merger meeting in Frankfurt, and asked if I wanted to leave a message for your secretary. That was the moment I realized you weren't just busy, Damon. You had built a fortress, and I didn't have the battering ram to knock it down."
My chest tightened with a wave of sickening guilt. I remembered that trip to Frankfurt. I had been so consumed by a hostile takeover bid that I hadn't even checked my personal voicemails for a month.
I reached across the table, sliding my hand over hers. This time, she didn't pull away. Her fingers were cold, but slowly, tentatively, she turned her hand over and laced her fingers through mine.
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"I'm sorry, Cass," I whispered, my voice thick with emotion. "I can't undo the last three years. I can't give you back those sleepless nights or the missed milestones. But I can give you every single day from here on out. If you’ll let me."
Before she could answer, a loud, thunderous knock pounded against the door of Room 412.
