The Suarez Myth: Chapter 2

They were five months in.

It was time to host a formal party, something intimate for a few of his associates and their wives, her first serious task as “Roman Suarez’s girlfriend”. Roman wanted it at his home in Barcelona. Saoirse had heard about this villa many times by now. It was his “family seat”, where his parents, whom she hadn’t met yet, still lived. 

The Suarez villa had been raised stone by stone by merchants who became bankers, bankers who became something more than kings in their own city. It was where tapestries aged more slowly than people, where the furniture had been commissioned when Napoleon still frightened Europe, and where (Roman once mentioned with a faint smile) the clocks were wound just because his mother liked the sound.

He wanted formal, candlelight, linen napkins and imported champagne. Of course, he had staff to handle all that. All Saoirse could think of was how it would be the first time she would meet his parents Amancio and Allegra Suarez, the first time she would see his primary home, the first time she would see Barcelona. It would be the first time she played his hostess, and she started to crumble under the pressure from his very first, very casual mention of it.

She suggested something else. What about the Madrid rooftop mezze bar she loved, plates to share, warm air, and laughter that didn’t echo against glass.

“I just think… maybe something less perfect? A little messy could be nice.”

He stared at her. “Messy?”

She laughed, backtracking, “I mean… warm.”

She didn’t expect him to bristle, but the silence that followed was just a breath too long. He stood by the window, his glass of wine untouched on the dresser. Then he turned, slowly, and crossed to where she sat on the tufted ottoman.

“Saoirse,” his voice was unexpectedly soft. “I know you think I do things to impress people. I don’t. I do things to protect our legacy.”

She blinked. Her stomach flipped. He took her hand.

“You once told me you hated chaos, that noise made you feel like you were disappearing. I listened to that. All of this? It’s not for them. It’s for you. So you don’t have to flinch or shout just to be seen.”

She looked down. Her hand was warm in his.

“I wasn’t criticizing,” she whispered. She wanted to say that she was scared to death about meeting his family, but felt too ashamed to confess that.

He smiled. “I know. But if you ever feel the urge to disrupt what keeps you safe, ask yourself why first? Or ask me.”

Their next night was in Barcelona. 

The villa was not what she expected. Saoirse had imagined grandeur, but grandeur here was hushed and old. It crouched like something carved into the hillside, its shutters green with age, its stone pale from centuries of salt air. Yet inside, every object had the weight of centuries. Frescoed ceilings dimmed with candle smoke, rugs so fine the patterns seemed whispered rather than woven, glassware so thin it was a miracle they survived generations of Suarez hands.

It was ostentation, but more than that, it was permanence, and it made her shiver as they walked across one grand hall into his wing, accompanied by house staff.

At dinner with his family, she wore the dress he had laid out for her, a bone-colored silk that whispered when she walked. She sat at the long walnut table the staff set, candles burning in silver sticks that looked older than her country, crystal bowls of blood-red roses that were theatrical in the half-light. Her job, as she understood it, was simple. Say the right things, laugh at the right pauses, be beautiful and still.

Amancio and Allegra presided at the heads of the table as though they had not moved in forty years. Their faces bore the smooth, waxen look of people who had lived without weather or worry, their conversation clipped and correct. His sisters, Bibiana and Marcela, who flew in from their respective homes, sat opposite them. They were much older than Roman, much sharper than their parents. Their jewels caught the candlelight but not their eyes.

Everyone was polite, certainly, courteous, but cold in the way of people who considered emotion provincial. Their questions, when they came, were less about curiosity than verification, like they were simply testing details Roman had already provided, confirming that Saoirse was indeed studying literature, that her parents were lost and dead respectively, that her family was from Northern Ireland and her only living sibling was really just a half-sibling, that she had indeed been in Madrid for a residency. 

Each fact was treated like a line item on a ledger already balanced. They smiled without warmth, listened without listening. Each nod felt rehearsed. Saoirse felt herself shrinking into silence, every story she might have told suffocated before it could form.

At one point, a silver serving dish slipped in a footman’s hand and clattered faintly against the table. The sound was sharp enough to make Saoirse flinch, but the Suarez family did not so much as blink. She realized then that one could die in this house, and they would still finish dessert before calling a doctor.

The food itself was nice, though she could hardly taste it. There was velvet consommé in porcelain cups, sole in a sauce so delicate it seemed transparent, lamb roasted to impossible tenderness. Each dish appeared, was praised with a single syllable, “Correcto, bien,” from Allegra, who was actually Italian, and was cleared in silence. Not a crumb misplaced, not a drop spilled.

Marcela, the younger of the two sisters, at last turned her pale gaze on Saoirse. “You write poems,” she said in clear English, as though observing a child’s hobby. “Roman tells us you are very… earnest.”

Saoirse smiled too quickly. “I suppose I am.”

Marcela gave a single nod, then lowered her eyes to her plate, her interest extinguished as abruptly as it had been lit.

Bibiana spoke only once, to correct the date of a festival Saoirse mentioned in Madrid. “It is in April,” she said coolly, cutting into her lamb. “Not March.” Then silence, the knife glinting like a definite full stop.

Roman, beside her, rested his hand lightly over hers on the tablecloth, an anchor in the icy drift. His thumb moved once, just enough to remind her of his presence. She felt it as protection, his warmth against the chill of the room, a quiet signal that even here, under his parents’ roof, she was his to manage, to reassure, to hold still. He smiled at his family with the same quiet command he used with his staff, unruffled, unreadable.

By the time dessert arrived, an almond torte so fine it melted at the fork, Saoirse’s cheeks hurt from smiling, and she had learned something essential. In this family, perfection was a requirement. Humanity was optional.

Yet, as she looked around the table, she told herself it was a kind of discipline she could learn from. More importantly, she saw room for her own tenderness to mean something, to thaw what had probably been frozen for generations. Wasn’t it beautiful, in its way, to be tested by marble and found worthy?

Perhaps she was meant to bring light into this house. Why else would Roman have walked up to her at the bar that random evening in Madrid? He had the whole world at his table, and yet he stopped for her. He clearly needed some warmth in his cold world, and she could give him that, she would give him that.

His hand lingered on hers, and she believed it was a sign that, although his family may never understand her, he did. That in a world as polished and airless as this, her warmth was precious.

And the mezze bar never came up again.

+

The night of the party for his associates, the villa glowed. Everyone was dressed like influence, wealth, and control. Saoirse wore bone silk. Her hair was tucked, her lipstick barely there. She was beautiful and quiet. She had practiced both.

The men and women came in twos. They were polished, air-kissing, wearing their status in scent and silence. Roman proudly introduced her to them all as his girlfriend.

Then Clair walked in. Clair Neumann, one of the expected guests. She was the only one not “partnered”. But Roman’s family knew her, everyone knew her, it seemed. Someone would later whisper that her mother was Amancio Suarez’s oldest counsel. 

She was very late, and she was laughing loudly about it. She wore a striking red dress, and her hair was unpinned, her bracelet clinking against her wine glass like punctuation. She kissed Saoirse on both cheeks, looked her up and down with a warm smirk.

“You’re the one Roman’s been hiding.” Saoirse blinked and smiled reflexively. “Don’t worry. I’m just nosy,” Clair said and laughed.

She poured her own wine, loudly. Mid-conversation with one of the men, she said, completely unprompted, “God, I miss being terrible at things. Remember when we were all mediocre at something and still felt okay about it?”

The room chuckled. Roman’s jaw flexed. Saoirse felt it in her spine, that shift in the room’s tone, and then, her own flinch. Clair hadn’t said anything wrong, but Saoirse had forgotten it was possible to be that unfiltered, to take up space without wrapping it in apology.

Clair sat beside her at dinner, drank too much wine, interrupted Roman twice, and laughed with her mouth wide open, like Saoirse had done that first night at the Madrid penthouse.

As the house fell back into stillness that night, Roman slid his hand onto Saoirse’s back.

“Loud women never last. You know that, right?” He said with his low voice.

“She seemed… alive,” Saoirse responded.

“So does fire, until it ruins the room.”

She told herself she was growing more refined, but later, alone in bed, face turned to the pillow, she dreamed of dancing on an ugly rooftop with plastic cups and music too loud to hear herself think.

When she woke up, she didn’t write that down like she usually would.

Three days later, she got a long SMS:

Hey porcelain girl,

I keep thinking about you from the other night. Not sure if you noticed, but I watch people the way most men watch sport. You were luminous but every time you spoke, your eyes checked his face first. Just an observation.

I’ve done it too. I once married a man who said I “sparkled too much in public” so I learned to dim. Just wanted to say you don’t have to answer this but if you ever want dinner with too much wine, all the wrong forks, and people who let you talk with your hands…

I’m in town for another week and I promise not to call you rare, fragile, or poetic.

– Clair from your dinner party

Saoirse read it in bed when Roman was in the shower. As the white noise of the distant water gushing immersed her in a brief, suspended moment, she read it again and again. She didn’t reply, not yet. She just… stared at it and felt the quiet flutter of something like recognition.

At the giant island of one of the Barcelona kitchens the next morning, Roman was slicing blood oranges into perfect rounds. The sun shone through the glass wall like gold paint, and Saoirse held her phone like something burning just beneath her skin.

She didn’t mean to show him. She just… didn’t want to keep a secret, not even a small one.

“Clair sent me a message,” she said softly.

He didn’t look up, “Mmm. Of course she did.” She slid the phone across the counter. He read it carefully, twice. “Red dress needs attention. Chocante.” He chewed on a slice and chuckled. He set the knife down, wiped his hands on a linen towel, and looked at her fully now. “Do you want to go to dinner with her?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know.” 

He walked to her and touched her cheek.

“Women like Clair are threatened by stillness. They only feel real when they’re being loud.” Saoirse nodded, staring into his earnest eyes. “So when they see someone who commands presence without demanding it… they panic.” She chewed on her lower lip, processing his words. His fingers slid to her chin, gently tugging to release her lip from her teeth.

“They want you to believe you’re muted. But sweetheart… You’re composed.” He smiled and turned around. “Some people don’t know how to exist without unraveling in public. It’s not your job to become chaotic so they can feel comfortable.”

She nodded again. He put some blood orange slices into two porcelain fruit bowls and handed her one with a kiss on the temple.

That night, he was asleep beside her in their bedroom, breathing soft and steady as she lay awake.

She opened her phone and typed slowly, a draft reply to Clair:

Thank you.

I didn’t realize I was checking his face but you’re right, I do. I don’t know when that started. I think he loves me. I think I love him. But I’m starting to wonder if this love only works when I’m quiet enough not to disturb it. I miss being a little wrong. I miss the version of me who didn’t worry if her laugh landed elegantly.

Thank you for noticing. That kind of noticing feels… rare. (Ironic, right?)

She stared at the message for several minutes and realized she hadn’t spoken with Nina in too long. “Let her live her life while you live yours,” Roman had once said. 

She pressed <Back>, tucking her message into the quiet. Finally, she turned out the little light on her bedside table.

+

Roman proposed exactly ten months after they met. Long enough for it to feel serious. Short enough for it to still feel like magic.

Saoirse was newly 22, barely anchored in the world. Roman was 37, impossibly composed, impossibly sure, impossibly powerful. He’d made her feel like a singular event in his long, curated life, like choosing her was inevitable.

She said yes immediately. They were in Lisbon on a surprise three-day trip. Roman had chosen the hotel for its views and quiet.

He’d packed for her. Every dress in the suite was already pressed and hanging when they arrived. That morning, a pair of vacation-grade espadrilles she hadn’t seen before lay on the floor beneath a note that said:

On the day of the proposal, they walked through Alfama, the old quarter with its labyrinthine streets and historic architecture. It was late afternoon, golden. He held her hand like it belonged to him in a contract. They reached a rooftop overlooking the orange tiles and soft haze of the sea, and there was a table set for two with linen, lemon water, and a single silver box beside the wine. 

She smiled. “What’s this?”

“A question,” he responded with all the calm in the world. He didn’t kneel. He just opened the box, slowly, like a man offering certainty. Inside was a ring she’d once admired in a museum book. It was art deco, diamond like a blade of light. She hadn’t remembered telling him. He had remembered.

“You once told me you don’t want to be saved,” he said. “Just held in a way that lets you stay soft.” He exhaled. “Let me do that.”

She didn’t hesitate for even a second. She said yes, then cried. He kissed her hand and said, “You’ll never have to explain yourself again.”

That night, she lay in bed in his shirt, watching him sleep. She couldn’t sleep. She turned out of bed, opened her journal, and wrote with a whimsical pen he gave her in Florence.

She stopped and stared at that last line. Where did it come from? She left it and went to sleep beside a man who remembered her preferences but had never once asked what she wanted.

+

He planned everything.

The planner was someone from Milan who was elegant, discreet, and only spoke to Saoirse via email, and even then, sparingly. Every time she tried to suggest something—songs she liked, her mother’s lace veil, a family poem to read during the ceremony—it was smoothed away.

The colors were his. Ivory, bone, silver. No red. No green. Nothing that reminded her of before. The guest list? 118 people. She only knew 12, and none of them was Sinead, her only family left.

She didn’t have bridesmaids because he said she didn’t need them, and she didn’t try to argue. The way he loved her was so total, it felt selfish to want anything more.

When she saw herself in the final dress, hand-stitched silk, simple, perfect, she cried. She didn’t recognize the woman in the mirror, but she still wanted to be her.

The wedding was at a private villa in Puglia because that’s where Allegra Suarez wanted it. It was all vineyard, marble, a chapel with no ceiling, just sky. Saoirse knew she looked unreal, hair slicked into a low twist, gown whispering at the hem. She walked like someone suspended, not grounded.

Nina was invited but not treated like a close friend. The planner sat her far from the family table, didn’t give her a speech slot or more than five minutes alone with the bride, with her. Saoirse let it be the planner’s fault when it was obvious whose fault it was and how complicit she was in that decision.

Because Roman knew Nina saw too much, and Saoirse knew Nina’s presence was a tether to her old self, the version still half-wild, unpolished, full of light and contradictions.

Nina arrived late. Her flight was delayed. The car from the airport took too long. By the time she slipped into her seat (Row 6, aisle), the ceremony had already begun. She saw Saoirse walk up the aisle and felt it like a bruise. Her best friend looked perfect but not like herself.

They only spoke once at the reception, between toasts.

“You made it,” Saoirse whispered as Nina walked up to her.

“Barely. But I wasn’t going to miss it. You look…” She took Saoirse in from head to toe, and smiled a very tight, thin-lipped smile. “You’re so thin now.”

Saoirse hesitated. “Thank you for being here.”

Pause. “Is it everything you wanted?” Nina asked. Saoirse smiled.

“It’s everything he wanted for me.”

Nina nodded once and said as gently as possible, “Okay.”

She left before dessert, a note, folded and left on the bedside table of Saoirse’s bridal suite, through a kindly Suarez staff member Nina managed to waylay:

The reception reached its still point when Roman’s parents rose to present their gifts with few words, small smiles, and no embrace. For the couple, an estate deed in Galicia, thousands of acres of vineyard and forest, handed over in a slim velvet-lined folder as casually as others might give a toaster. 

For her alone, Allegra produced a necklace, 24 cabochon sapphires set in antique platinum, the kind of piece that had lived through centuries of locked vaults. 

“For permanence,” she said softly amidst loud cheers from the guests, fastening it around Saoirse’s throat with cool, perfumed fingers.

It was their one show of warmth, a molecule of inclusion, but it was warmth that weighed. The necklace sat heavy against her collarbone. The deed was passed to Roman to tuck into his silver jacket pocket before the applause was finished. Saoirse told herself it meant she was theirs now, that was why she did not shiver when she felt the invisible chain tighten.

They honeymooned in the new Galicia property, of course. The estate was carved into the cliffside, with whitewashed stone, a private plunge pool, and bougainvillea curling against every edge.

There were no TVs, no clocks, no staff unless summoned. Roman arranged everything.

They woke up with the sun. He brought her fruit on a silver tray. He read to her from Rilke in the mornings, rubbed oil into her shoulders at night. Every moment was perfect.

And yet… Saoirse started to feel a strange kind of weightlessness.

On the third day, she tried to write. She brought her notebook to the terrace, where the view was unreal, the blue sea like something invented. She stared at the page and wrote…

Stopped. She tried again…

Stopped. She tore out the page just as Roman appeared behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“That’s the trouble with want,” he murmured. “It keeps you from enjoying what you already have.”

Later that night, they had dinner by a private chef different from the one on staff, candles in glass bowls. The food was flawless. 

“I love watching you like this. No noise, no one pulling at you. Just still.”

She smiled. Have I stopped pulling at myself, too?

The next morning, she asked if they could go into town “just to wander and see things.”

“What things?”

“I don’t know. Just… to walk. Maybe find a bookstore.”

He tilted his head and smiled. “I brought all your favorites here. Why go looking for things when we’ve curated exactly what you love?”

She laughed. He kissed her neck, and she let it go. But that night, she woke up with her heart racing from a sudden awareness of just how still she’d become.

She went to the bathroom, turned on the tap, and stared at herself in the mirror. The robe hung perfectly, her skin glowed, she looked like the kind of woman who had everything.

On another night, they hadn’t spoken for a full hour. Dinner was soft, candlelit, barefoot on the terrace. Wine was ancient and from somewhere coastal. Dessert was mousse fed to her from his fingers. Her body was already humming before he even touched her.

He didn’t undress her quickly. He didn’t even undress her completely. He just unbuttoned the back of her dress and let it fall to her waist, brushed her shoulders with his mouth, tasted her collarbone like something he’d earned.

When he finally kissed her, he murmured against her lips, “Every time I touch you, I learn something new.”

She was on top at first, his hands on her hips, letting her move, lead. And then, he shifted so she was underneath again, his weight perfectly balanced. His mouth at her ear, breathing. 

“Let me hold the part of you that keeps disappearing.”

She didn’t know what that meant, but her body answered.

He made her come slowly and held her there, let her unravel in silence, kissed her through it. When she opened her eyes, dazed, undone, floating, he was looking at her like she was a cathedral he’d finished restoring.

They didn’t speak for a while after. His hand traced lazy circles on her thigh. Then, so quietly she almost missed it—

“No one will ever know you like this, not even yourself.”

She kissed his chest and let the words settle into her skin as she fell asleep.

+

It came in phases.

Phase 1 was Roman the Worshipper. This was the beginning, their relationship era. They had constant sex, all tenderness, devotion, permission. He made Saoirse feel like worship was a language only he could speak fluently. 

He touched her like she was rare. He asked for everything. He centered her pleasure, watching her face when she climaxed. His tenderness was her sexual awakening.

Phase 2 was when he started to edit. They moved into a Suarez family estate in outer Madrid after their two-week honeymoon. They did this even though Roman kept his penthouse near Salamanca, where he stayed between overnight trips and late board meetings at the family company HQ. 

Right after the honeymoon and into the first year of their marriage, there was a general shift in their relationship. Saoirse felt this most clearly during sex. He still worshipped her, but he guided the rhythm strictly and always corrected her.

“Slower. You rush when you want to impress.”

“Don’t speak, just feel.”

“You’re most beautiful when you give in.”

He kissed her after saying these things, so they sounded like intimacy, and she learned to respond the way he preferred.

Somewhere between phases two and three was the “withholder”, the version of Roman that came in every once in a while just to mess with Saoirse’s head.

The first time this happened was in the first year of their marriage. Roman was still warm, present, predictable. He never ever stopped making her coffee in the mornings or kissing her forehead. But one day, he just stopped making love to her. 

During this strange period, he even laid her notebook by the window for her, next to a vase of fresh lavender, yet he didn’t touch her for days.

It had started with a short story, a small piece, barely 1,500 words.

Months after they returned from their honeymoon in Galicia, she started to write it in the mornings before he woke, curled on the balcony with her knees tucked to her chest. It wasn’t about him, not directly. It was about a girl who talked to birds and didn’t know she was lonely until they stopped answering.

When she finished it, she printed it with the standing printer in his study and left it on his table like it didn’t matter.

That night, at dinner, he brought it up.

They ate sea bass and sipped the wine he picked. They talked about someone’s IPO, a summit he was hosting in October. Then, as the staff cleared the plates, he dropped it casually: “The story was interesting.”

Surprised, she perked up. “You read it?”

“Of course. You left it where I’d see it.”

“I didn’t mean to. I just… wanted to write again,” she whispered.

He tilted his head. “Writing is fine. I just didn’t know you’d started needing things again.”

She blinked. “Needing?”

“Space, time, privacy. You used to be so contained.” His eyes narrowed as if trying to understand her. “Now, there’s… spill.” He looked genuinely curious, like a man watching a plant grow in the wrong direction. “It’s not a problem. I’m just noticing the shift.”

He smiled, reached across the table, and touched her wrist.

“I fell in love with how little you demanded, that stillness, that openness. It let me pour into you.”

Something inside her went cold. He stood and walked into the hallway, back toward his study.

She didn’t plan to do it. She just clicked <Submit> on a literary mag’s website one morning while he was on a call in the other room. She had no cover letter, no fanfare. Just the story and her name, her former name. Saoirse Sweeney.

She stared at the submission confirmation email like it was a crime. Weeks passed, and she almost forgot about it. Then another email.

Accepted. With a short note: We loved the strange quiet of this piece. We’d love to include it in our winter issue.

She didn’t tell him, at first, because it felt too delicate. After a while, it felt too late to tell him. The piece went live on a rainy Thursday on a quiet corner of the internet. He found out within two hours.

The staff had set the table for dinner in the dining room when he entered, phone in hand. She stopped slicing her fruit and looked up at him.

“You published something,” he said as if talking about the weather.

She froze. “You saw it?”

“I see everything with your name on it.” He walked toward her. It wasn’t anger she sensed from him but something cooler and more precise. “You didn’t tell me.”

Saoirse took a deep breath. “I didn’t think I had to.”

He reached out, gently wiped a bit of juice from her wrist with his thumb.

“It’s beautiful.” She relaxed. “But it’s missing something. It’s not as clean as it used to be.” Their eyes locked. “Your writing has always been better when you let me give you notes first.”

She didn’t speak. He kissed her temple.

“Still, I’m proud. You’re returning to yourself.” He smiled. “Just don’t forget who made space for that return.”

He walked out of the room, and she looked down at the dessert bowl of fruit. There was a thin line of blood on her index finger. She hadn’t even felt the slice.

He didn’t touch her when he came to bed that night or for the rest of the week. So when she came into the study one night in a silk robe, barefoot, freshly showered, just a hint of perfume behind her ear, it was a quiet, careful invitation she’d never tried or needed to try before. She leaned against the doorframe and said, “Come to bed?”

He looked up from a flat dossier on his desk and frowned just a little. “You tired?”

She smiled and shrugged. “Not exactly.”

He studied her, then smiled too gently.

“Not tonight, mi amor.” He returned his attention to his phone. “You look beautiful, but it’s been a long week.” He grunted. “You should rest.”

Her breath caught. He made the “no” sound like a favor, and she couldn’t argue with that, so she nodded and walked away.

In bed, she lay still, hands folded, eyes open.

In the morning, he brought her black coffee with a kiss on her forehead and said, “You see? You’re glowing. I was right.”

She told herself he was, until it had been weeks of soft avoidance, gentle nos, too-tired-tonights, forehead kisses, and coffee left steaming but untouched.

Try again. Ask differently. Be soft, softer… and maybe he’d return to her the way he used to. Meanwhile, he was busier than ever with work, and she, idler than ever because she couldn’t write a word.

One night, she waited until he’d showered, towel wrapped low on his hips, hair damp, jaw clean-shaven. She lit candles in the bedroom, more for courage than for seduction. She walked to him slowly, barefoot, in a white silk nightdress she hadn’t worn in months.

“Touch me,” she whispered. She reached for his hands, placed them on her waist, and tipped her face up for a kiss.

For a moment, he did. His mouth found hers. His hand slid up the back of her neck. Their bodies pressed, heat curling between them like recognition.

Then, he pulled away and looked at her, assessing her face… or her soul.

His voice came out low and way too controlled, “I miss when you used to let me lead you.”

Saoirse froze, then said quietly, “I thought I was.”

“No. You’re asking, not waiting.” He kissed her forehead and turned away to pull on his shirt. “We need to recalibrate, mi amor. We’re too off rhythm.”

He left the room like that, and she stood there. The candles burned down. The room smelled like wax and silence. She stood there and wrapped her own arms around herself. What if he only wanted me when I didn’t know how to want myself?

When he finally made love to her, it was on the carpeted floor of their vast home library one late afternoon. He had just returned from a week-long business trip to Geneva, excited to have closed a big acquisition. She cried, wept with no sound, the tears just kept leaking out as he thrust into her, and she didn’t know why.

After, they lay on the plush carpet, hearts beating in fast tempo as he kissed her all over her face. And again and again, he repeated “I love you” between the kisses.

After that, she never wrote again, not really.

The Suarez Myth: Chapter 1

Five years ago.

They met in Madrid, on his turf, when she was there for a writers' residency in January. She’d just turned 21 and was getting a kick out of graduating and leaving the country for the first time. She lived in a shared flat that smelled like citrus peel and burnt toast.

She’d just presented a poem at a small gallery. Five people clapped, and one of them had actually coughed first. She left before the wine got warm, to duck into a nice dim bar across the street, head low, journal tucked under her arm, her grey London Metropolitan University sweater too big.

She wasn’t dressed for seduction, she wasn’t trying to be seen, and that’s exactly when or why he noticed her.

Roman Suarez, 36, already mythic in elite circles as a coldly private heir you never want sitting across the table unless he’s on your side. In a snug black t-shirt and pressed dress slacks, he sat with two executives in office wear, barely listening. He’d built three companies outside of the Suarez family business by then, owned property in his own right in four countries. He wasn’t supposed to be in that part of the city. It was too bohemian, too… messy.

But he saw her.

The way she swirled her wine like it was a task. The way she perked up when the music changed, like she kept forgetting where she was. The way she scribbled something and smiled just a little at it. That soft ginger hair that moved as she moved, that glowed even in the dimness.

He stood in the middle of one of the executives’ sentences and walked over.

“Do you write, or are you just hiding something?” He said gently as he reached her.

Startled, Saoirse (pronounced similarly to "Sasha") said, “Excuse me?”

He motioned to the journal. “People who write in bars are usually running from a conversation or creating one. Which are you?”

She chuckled, covering her lips with the hand that held her green pen, because it was the first time someone had made her feel observed without being judged.

“Both, maybe,” she said finally.

“Good answer.” He didn’t sit. He didn’t ask to. He just watched her like she was already part of his design.

And when she asked what he did, he said: “I build things.”

She thought that meant buildings, art, cities, something noble. She had no idea it meant her.

They had dinner two nights later. She wore a black dress with loose seams. He never rushed her, didn’t touch her too soon. He just studied her, and when he kissed her lips for the first time, at the door of her building that night, he whispered, “You move like you don’t realize you’ve already been chosen.”

That was the hook, the feeling she’d waited years for. To be recognized before she even recognized herself. His lips were soft too; it felt good.

The first email came the next morning. No subject line. Just his name in the sender field and a timestamp that made it clear he’d written it in the ungodly hours of the morning, Madrid time. She opened it in bed, still half-asleep, still replaying the way he had looked at her like a riddle only he could solve, how he’d spoken to her in poetry.

The message was short but dense, measured, like he’d crafted it with the same precision he used to hold his glass, or fold a napkin perfectly into his lap.

Saoirse,

I’ve spent enough time in rooms full of people performing significance to know what it looks like when someone doesn’t have to try. You weren’t trying. And that’s what made you... memorable.

If I overstepped, forgive me. But if I’m right and you are, in fact, someone who writes not just to escape but to remember, then I hope you’ll let me buy you another glass of wine and ask you one hundred questions I didn’t get to ask last night.

I’m free tomorrow evening. Or the evening after that. I suspect I’ll be free the evening after that, too, should you say no twice.

Warmly,

RS

She read it three times before replying. And even then, her reply was shorter than she meant it to be.

I’m not in the habit of saying yes to people who watch me more closely than I watch myself. But… maybe I’d like to be.

This would be her last unedited sentence for a very long time.

They met again at a restaurant she couldn’t pronounce. The kind of place without menus. Just a wine list, a seasonal theory, and waitstaff who seemed to read your mood instead of taking orders.

Roman was already there when she arrived, at a corner table, back to the wall, the city lights falling over his shoulders like a painting.

He stood when she walked in, kissed her hand, and held it long enough for her pulse to notice, transporting her into a world beyond the mundane, where peak romance existed just as casually as air. 

“You’re wearing green,” he said once they’d seated, the first of many assessments of her wardrobe choices.

“Should I not be?” Her laugh came out nervous.

“You don’t seem like someone who asks for permission,” he said, and she frowned a little, trying to understand what he meant.

He asked what she liked, but he still did the ordering for her without hesitation.

“She’ll have the veal… unless she’s vegetarian. You’re not, are you?”

She shook her head. He smiled like he already knew.

He didn’t flirt, not in the traditional way. He didn’t compliment her dress, her body, her face. He complimented her mind.

“You don’t speak quickly. That’s rare. Most women mistake speed for power.”

“You listen like someone who edits as she breathes.”

“You have no idea how perfect you are.”

She asked about his work. He spoke lightly of it. He was still a mystery to the world at the time. All she’d found of him online was that his family was old and powerful. His great-grandfather funded Spain’s neutral stance in both the First and Second World Wars, for example.

But he kept turning the conversation back to her.

“You write about women like they’re ghosts trying to be real again.”

“You read it?” She’d responded, startled. She could barely get ten people to read her work.

“I read all of it.” A pause as he stared at his food. “You write pain well. You make it almost… tasteful.”

She wasn’t sure if that was a compliment, but she blushed anyway because no one had ever said it like that.

By the time the second glass of wine arrived, she felt warm, curious, swept off her feet, invited into a version of herself she hadn’t met before. Through his golden dark eyes, she felt like a rare book.

And he read her slowly. He came to the date to study her, shape her, to convince her that being seen is the same thing as being understood. And because she was young, brilliant, and aching to be understood… she let him.

He leaned in over the empty plates. “What would you do if no one ever misunderstood you again?”

She didn’t have an answer at the time, but she thought about it all night.

When he walked her out of his sleek car, he didn’t ask to come inside. He just touched her face gently, thumb beneath her chin, and said, “You don’t yet believe you’re allowed to take up space.” Then, softly, he whispered, “Let me help with that.”

She nodded, and for the first time in her life, silence felt like agreement.

The first time they had sex was weeks later, and it was soft. It was her second sexual experience ever, and it was a thousand times better than the first. Roman was never rushed. He took her in like scripture, slow, reverent, memorized in pieces. It felt choreographed, like he had already imagined it a hundred different ways as he waited until he’d decided she was fully ready.

“You don’t have to do anything here,” he whispered against her neck on his silk-sheeted bed in his sprawling Madrid penthouse bedroom. “You just have to be.”

He kissed her wrists like they were breakable. He asked before every shift of touch, and managed not to make it awkward.

“Is this okay?”

“Tell me what your body says, not your mouth.”

After, he didn’t fall asleep. He stroked her spine in silence and told her what he noticed:

“You don’t let go easily.”

“You hold your breath when I touch you.”

“You don’t believe you’re worthy of worship, but I do.”

It was on their fourth or fifth time together, not a date, not exactly, but an evening curated for intimacy still, jazz playing low, an Italian wine he said was “like an embrace with a secret,” soft light from a dimmed lamp, that he waved the first red-tinged flag.

Saoirse was sitting on the floor of his living room, her back against the edge of the couch, barefoot, laughing, really laughing, at something absurd he'd said about critics and "the aesthetic of scarcity." For the first time in a while, her laugh was real, breathless, and a little loud. She covered her face, flushed. And that’s when it happened.

He reached down, grabbed her wrist away from her face too suddenly, and pulled her up all the way to standing without warning.

Still smiling but with a low voice, he said, “Don’t do that.”

“Do what?” Saoirse said, very confused.

“Cover your face when you laugh. You ruin it.” He let go of her wrist and smoothed her soft ginger hair like nothing had happened.

She stood there, heart pounding from the pause, the feeling that she’d just been corrected. She tried to laugh again.

“I’m not used to being told my laugh has rules.”

“Not rules, preferences.” He chuckled. “I just like to see you clearly.”

She sat back down, and her wine glass shook slightly as she picked it up. She smiled once more to smooth it over, but her wrist still felt warm where his fingers had been. It didn’t hurt, but it felt… marked.

Later that night, he touched her ankle in bed, gently, like reverence. Kissed her knee, held her neck like a sacred object. He whispered unprompted, “I would never hurt you. You’re too rare.”

She nodded.

The next morning, he brought her coffee just the way she liked it. Two sugars and a dash of milk, like someone who knew her best. And she tried to forget the feeling of being pulled into stillness.

+

The call was casual.

It was a late Sunday morning, a week later. Saoirse was wrapped in her linen robe, spinning a pen in her hand. Her oldest and bestest friend from university in London, Nina Calloway’s voice came through the phone, warm and familiar.

“Just checking in, babe. You fell off the grid a bit. How’s life with the golden god?”

Saoirse laughed lightly. “Golden and still godly.”

“And you? How are you?”

Saoirse paused. “Shiny, I guess. I’ve learned how to drink very old wine and sit very still while people talk about hedge funds.” She knew her voice was much too bright to sound sincere to Nina.

“That sounds like a hostage situation with good catering.”

“Stop. I’m serious. It’s… good. He’s attentive, intense, but in that ‘I read your soul in candlelight’ kind of way.” She saw Roman’s face in her head as she said this. “He really sees me, Nina.”

Nina went quiet for a moment.

“Okay, but does he let you see yourself?”

Saoirse blinked before too long a pause, then, with a smile, “What does that even mean?”

Nina responded softly, “It means, when you laugh, are you still funny? Or are you calculated?”

Saoirse laughed again, but thinner, this one. “God, you sound like my childhood therapist,” she said mid-scoff. “He’s not... dangerous. He’s just focused. He notices everything.”

“Okay. But just in case, remember that people who notice everything often do it so they can edit faster.”

Saoirse chuckled. She’d forgotten Nina had literary jokes for every occasion. 

Her chuckle stopped dead when she realized they’d spoken less and less in the last several weeks. When did that start? She didn’t bring it up, however, and they moved on to lighter topics like their near-future plans, cool new books, school gossip. 

After the call, Saoirse sat quietly on the couch in Roman’s home library. Her tea had gone cold, and for a moment, she lifted her sleeve and stared at her wrist.

+

She didn’t know exactly when it started, but he started making her coffee black, no sugar, a dash of cinnamon. One morning, he brought it to her bedside with a folded linen napkin and The Paris Review.

He’d already circled the poem he wanted her to read.

“It reminded me of you,” he said. “Quiet women who are really like lightning.” He smiled gently.

She smiled too, half-asleep. It sounded like worship.

He cooked for her. Or rather, he orchestrated meals.

Once, she mentioned a soup her dead grandmother, who had raised her after her mother died, used to make. The next week, he recreated it: hired a chef, sourced the ingredients from a specific farm in Northern Ireland, presented it with a linen card that said: “For the girl who remembers taste.”

She cried. He kissed her temple. “This is the kind of woman I love. One who’s not afraid to feel.”

He never told her not to see her friends, but every time she did, he said things like, “I’ll miss you, of course. But you’re your own person. That’s what I admire about you.”

She stayed home, in his penthouse, most weekends after that. How many people did she really know in Madrid anyway? 

He convinced the organizers of her residency program to let her continue from his estate instead of the general lodge. He just had someone from his office telephone in one evening, and a confirmation was in her inbox by morning. She told herself it made no difference since she’d been sleeping more and more nights in his penthouse anyway.

He bought her books, stacked them by her bedside before she even asked. Once, he handed her a novel and said, “You’re going to cry at page 74. I can feel it.”

And she did! He knew her that well.

When she got nervous about a speaking engagement, he ran his fingers down her spine and whispered, “The world listens when you speak slowly. That’s your gift.”

She began to pace herself, began to filter, because if he found it beautiful, wasn’t that the goal?

He didn’t correct her in front of others at first. He started by waiting until they were alone.

“You did wonderfully tonight. That story about your father was so honest. Maybe next time, just take a breath before you mention the loss. It landed a little… messy.” He sighed, his brow stern. “You’re more powerful when you’re clean.”

She nodded. She always nodded. Because he never said she was wrong. She was always almost right. And almost, in his world, simply meant a lack of refinement. 

These were the good days. The ones she’d later miss. They were so nearly perfect.

He used to wait for her at the door when her weekly creative workshops ended. He’d be there in a dark coat that managed to be both tailored and casual, holding her gloves, saying something like, “You look more fluent in yourself today.”

She would blush as he opened the car door for her. It felt like poetry.

He once told her she reminded him of a cello. “Low and difficult and elegant.” She laughed, unsure if it was a compliment, but he followed it up with, “It means you’re hard to play but worth the effort if you know how.”

She let him say it again at a dinner party. And every time someone asked how they met, he told the story like a parable. He never said where they met, just that he saw her “writing herself into the world and not realizing it”.

“She’s a rare book,” he’d say. “First edition with no reprints.” People loved that, so she smiled. Even when the words started feeling like branding.

He picked out her dresses before events. Always soft shades: ivory, blush, bone.

“Loud colors steal from your presence,” he said. “You speak best in quietness.” So she stopped wearing red or green. She told herself it was maturity, refinement.

He loved her writing until she wrote something sharp, a short poem she shared in bed about the ocean and grief and forgetting.

He read it, folded the paper neatly, then said, “I’d never let anyone forget you.”

She waited for more, but he just turned off the light.

Later, he made her tea and brought her a different poem, one by a male poet she’d once admired.

“This is more like you,” he said. “Still powerful, but less lonely.”

She started editing her writing more after that.

He asked for her passwords, gently. “Just in case. I’m not worried. But I worry.” Translation: I trust you. I just want to make sure you’re safe. He said it so casually, Saoirse was pressured to treat it likewise, to give up her privacy without making a fuss. He was worried enough to ask, so she gave them.

He never used them, at least not that she could tell, but once, when she liked a photo of a man from her BFA, he brought it up without explanation: “He looks like someone who wants to be noticed by women who already belong to someone.”

It was a note. Like her laugh, her dresses, her writing. But the love between them was too overwhelming to notice any of these things. 

When she asked what he saw in her, he said, “You change the temperature in a room, but you don’t even know it. That’s the part I love most. You’re so unaware of your power.”

She wrote that down as she swooned. Thank God she did because only later, years later, would she realize he didn’t love her power. He loved that she didn’t know she had any.

He’d brush her hair late at night, after she’d washed it and curled into his lap on the rug. He’d sit behind her, towel over her shoulders, and run a brush slowly through the length of her bouncy hair. Sometimes for seconds. Sometimes, much longer.

One evening, she mentioned offhandedly that she hated flying coach as a child because of the noise, the closeness, how she’d press her nails into her wrist just to feel a little control.

The next week, she got an email confirmation for a solo trip to Florence. It was first class, a window seat with noise-canceling headphones monogrammed with her initials. Then, he sent a text that said: “I remember things.”

She’d cried on the plane.

Once, she joked that she hated mornings. Her voice sounded like gravel. Her thoughts were always so sluggish.

The next week, Roman bought her a new alarm clock: a soft-lit one that simulated sunrise and played the sound of distant waves. He set it for her himself and made her coffee, not the way she once liked it but in the new way, before she woke.

When she opened her eyes, he whispered, “Even your slowness is a kind of music,” and kissed her.

Once, she had to fly back to London for a brief in-person chat with a newspaper editor she wanted to convince to publish her BFA short story project as singular pieces. Still incandescent with idealism after the meeting, she rushed into her old, cramped London flat barefoot, cheeks flushed, holding a short letter in her hands because they’d accepted her work on the spot.

“Annie? I got it. The Night Orchard wants the piece!” But her flatmate wasn’t there. The lights were off, and the kettle was cold. Saoirse was confused until she found a note on the table.

She stared at it until her phone buzzed.

She didn’t respect your boundaries. This is what it looks like when someone protects your peace.

You’re welcome, mi amor.

She was a little shocked, but more than anything, she felt cared for, safe, like someone just built a wall around her softest parts. She called him to be sure.

“Thank you.” She thought about it for a few seconds. “I didn’t know how to ask her to leave.”

“You’ll never have to ask for what you need again,” he responded. She was back in Madrid with him by nightfall.

He curated a scent for her, a room scent. He brought in a fragrance specialist and asked what memories she wanted to feel in her body when she was writing.

She thought of her earliest childhood, her happiest moments in Belfast, and said, “Fresh rain and old wood.”

One day, she walked into his study and paused. The scent was hers. Every room, he let her write in it, smell it, carry it with her.

“Now, the air knows you too,” he said.

She once admitted that she had trouble sleeping in unfamiliar places, so anytime they traveled, he sent a member of his staff ahead with her pillowcase.

“So your body knows it’s still safe,” he told her, tucking her in. And she believed him.

These were the days when she felt completely known. She told herself often, No one has ever loved me like this. And it was true. 

Saoirse never knew her father, couldn’t remember her mother, wanted to forget her grandmother, who she’d had to take care of for a year as she died slowly of skin cancer while taking her O-levels. 

The few boys she’d been with only liked kissing her because she was pretty, but never really talked to her, and always fled one month in as soon as they realized she actually liked literature as an interest beyond academics. Wayne Adams had even called her dull.

At the end of the residency, it was clear she wouldn’t return to London. 

It wasn’t discussed, he never really asked, but it was ridiculous to even question it at that point. She was so firmly rooted in Madrid, or more accurately, his home, that she couldn’t even conceive what it was she’d be returning to. She went back to her flat in London three separate times in the next year, and that was it.

+

Nina came to celebrate her program completion and the little chapbook she’d managed to send out for publishing, a requirement of the residency, called Blue Milk. She’d firmly refused Roman’s help with this one thing, instead deciding to have it published and translated by the local French house she’d attracted on merit.

Saoirse and Nina met for brunch in Madrid. A sunlit café with wildflowers on the tables, the kind of place that served slow eggs and had waiters who knew your name after one visit.

Saoirse looked radiant, pale skin dewy, ginger hair long and wavy, white linen blouse, inconspicuous gold VCA chain around her wrist. She was glowing in that curated, fragile way Nina had started to recognize. Like light through expensive glass.

“He’s… impossible, Nina. He remembers everything. The way I like my water, which page I cried on in a book I read years ago.” She sighed. “Last week, I mentioned an author I missed reading during undergrad, and a first-edition copy just appeared on my desk.”

Nina smiled but was sarcastic when she spoke, “He does sound like a wizard.”

Saoirse grinned. “He’s a dream. Like… it’s stupid. I know it sounds stupid. But he’s always three steps ahead of me. It’s like he curates the world so I don’t have to bump into anything harsh.”

“That doesn’t sound stupid. Just… intense.”

Saoirse laughed. “It is. But in a good way. He makes me feel… finished. Like I’ve arrived somewhere.”

“And in all that finishing, when was the last time he let you be messy?”

Saoirse paused. She’d heard that word a couple of times lately, from Roman. She tilted her head. “What do you mean?

“Like… unbrushed-hair, no-perfect-answer, mid-spiral, saying-the-wrong-thing messy. Just you without the curation. Did he still call that beautiful?”

Saoirse blinked. Her smile faltered slightly as she reached for her tea.

“I don’t really get like that anymore. I don’t… need to.”

“Maybe not.”

Someone at the next table laughed loudly, and a spoon clinked. Saoirse stirred her tea twice but didn’t drink it.

“We’re planning a trip to the Dolomites next,” Saoirse’s voice brightened again. “He says I need to learn how to be still in the snow.” Nina smiled.

+

Saoirse was still 21 and full of dreams, curled up on a secondhand couch in her London flat one late evening. She’d insisted on returning for one last closure-stay before her lease was up. 

Her legs were tucked under her, speaking to Roman on video chat. He’s backlit in a hotel suite somewhere in Berlin, shirt unbuttoned at the collar.

“I hate when you’re there. You disappear into your friends. It’s like I only get pieces of you,” he said, even though she’d only been back here on two very short visits since she’d known him, smiling wide.

“You get the best pieces.” Saoirse laughed after saying it.

“I want all the pieces,” he said it like a joke, but her smile faltered for just a second.

By the end of the call, she’d somehow agreed to return to Madrid, to him, the next evening, even though she’d also promised to allow Nina plus-one her for multiple London art events over a week at least, to make up for their “lost time”. 

At their favourite cafe just one long walk from Nina’s grad school hall, Nina wasn’t having it.

“This is the millionth time you’ve rescheduled. You finally made it back to London, and you promised, PROMISED, you’d be here for up to a week. What’s going on?” Nina said, squeezing her palms against the sides of the short and stout teal mug, sniffing the creamy scent of her coffee. Saoirse stared longingly at the cream.

“Roman booked a last-minute flight. He said it was a surprise.”

“A surprise that costs you your life?”

Saoirse stirred her tea. “He just wants me close. That’s not a crime,” she murmured. 

She was also supposed to attend her older sister’s wedding this weekend. Sinead was curt and hurt on the phone, but they’d never been close, and no real family connected them, so she didn’t feel too bad about it.

+

Roman poured champagne into crystal flutes on the private plane that night. Saoirse sat beside him, freshly styled, nervous.

“It’s her wedding,” Saoirse whispered to him as he passed her the glass, and she accepted it.

“She’s your adoptive sister, not your real one.”

“Mmhmm.”

“The same sister whose blood brother tried to touch you…” She looked up at him sharply. “Several times.” His voice was gentle as he emphasized her trauma, brushing her ginger hair away from her face, behind her ear.

“And… you hate crowds. Why put yourself through that?”

She squeezed her eyes shut and forced the dark memories he’d sprung up so casually back into the recesses of her mind so they could, once more, cease to exist.

“Because she’s family.” She didn’t really believe herself even as she said it.

“You have me. We can go somewhere quiet. You’ll sleep better and smile more.”

She hesitated. He took her hand. “Say no and I’ll take you anyway.” She laughed, but she didn’t say no.

1ST GEN: ROMAN & SAOIRSE

The white marble glows. Everything smells like eucalyptus and old money. 

A digital lifestyle magazine lies open on the waiting lounge table of the luxury spa in Madrid. The headline? "Power & Grace: Inside the Private World of Roman Suarez and His Beloved Irish Muse, Saoirse." The photo shows them on a yacht. Roman in white linen, sunglasses, arms around Saoirse’s waist. She’s laughing, sun-kissed, bump just showing beneath a kaftan only the most perspicacious of trained eyes would recognize as Dior. A golden couple.

Two spa receptionists in all-white uniforms glance at the page.

“She always looks like that,” one whispers to the other. “She looks unreal, like she’s porcelain.”

“Well, she barely speaks. The last time she came in, she just smiled and pointed at the lavender oil like it actually cost her something.” They giggle quietly.

“I don’t know how she lives with him. He’s so intimidating. Even with all those cameras, she looks like someone trying to disappear politely.”

+

A dozen suited executives sit around the glass conference table at the flagship Suarez Group office, a few miles from the spa. The once scion, now man at the helm of the Suarez family, is at the head of the table. The room waits for his direction.

One younger executive leans toward the Head of Comms during a break. “Is it true his wife used to be some kind of artist?”

“A writer, sort of. Poetry, I think, before she married into the firmament.” He chuckles.

“She’s beautiful. But did you notice she never says anything at events?”

The comms head smirks, absentmindedly sifting through hard white folders. “That’s the point. She doesn’t have to. She’s the accessory you don’t need to explain. Makes him look... soft, human, even a little romantic.”

“Isn’t she like a decade younger?”

“Yep. He met her when she was barely legal and swept her off her barstool. The press lapped it up. The Tycoon and the Muse. Still sells.” He pauses to chuckle again. “Now, get to work before he gets back in here.”

+

A ring light glows as a Spanish lifestyle influencer with tight mahogany curls and glossy lips smiles into her Instagram Live.

“Okay, unpopular opinion… but does anyone else think Saoirse Suarez is too perfect? Like, what’s her thing? She’s always dressed like a silent film star. She never interviews, never posts, never speaks Spanish in public…” She laughs as the comments and thumbs-up start to pop up on her screen. “All everyone talks about is how she never talks. But really, what billionaire wife have we seen speaking in public? Also, if my husband were Roman Suarez, I’d probably keep my mouth shut too. She’s won. Game over.”

Live comment section:

“She’s an aesthetic, not a person lol”

“Rich girl sadness is still sadness, babes.”

“She’s smart. Quiet girls survive men like that.”

+

Lisa Aguirre is at the cheese counter of the large grocery store, holding Mariana's hand while carrying David, who’s munching on a breadstick, up in her other arm. The cashier watches them and says in a low voice to his colleague: “Those are the Suarez twins.”

“That’s the nanny?”

“Yeah. The wife never comes in here. I heard she’s not allowed,” he says, smiling like he’s privy to some inner gossip. 

“Or maybe she just doesn’t want to be seen.”

They both glance out the window at the black car idling by the curb.

+

Private online forum [translated thread]: “WIVES of the powerful in Spain”

“Does anyone know if Saoirse Suarez actually works?”

“No, but she had a miscarriage two years ago. I read it in ¡Hola! They say Roman never left her side.”

“I heard she’s emotionally fragile. A friend of mine who worked their foundation’s gala said she looked like she was drugged.”

“Maybe she’s just very, very calm.”

“Or trapped.”

+

Saoirse stands at the base of the stairs in the foyer of their Barcelona home, removing her earrings in silence. She’s just returned from a charity dinner. The driver closed the car door behind her with too much care, reminding her just how everything in her world had to be soft, including her.

She picks up the magazine from the console. It’s the yacht photo again. She simply can’t escape it. She looks at her own face, her own hand wrapped in his, and whispers aloud, as if surprised to hear herself, “I don't remember laughing that day.”

Muted sunlight seeps through the tall windows of her private sitting room the next morning, a tray of untouched breakfast pastries on a side table. She sits in a low velvet chair, ankles tucked beneath her, a silk robe draped like armor. Her phone buzzes once, then again.

It’s not her usual line. It’s the one only a handful of people know. The one Roman calls her little poetry phone. She looks down at an unknown number. +44… UK. Her breath catches.

She answers slowly, quietly. “Hello?”

A woman’s calm, professional, warm voice, “Saoirse Suarez?”

A long pause. “Speaking,” Saoirse responds finally, her voice cracking.

“My name is Lila Kavanagh. I’m a senior editor at The Fable. We’re putting together a series on women who’ve stepped out of their husband’s shadows or burned the whole palace down through quiet revolutions, private reclaimings, that kind of thing.”

“Me?” Saoirse says.

“I think so.” A pause. “I studied your early writing. Your chapbook, Blue Milk. I’ve kept it in my drawer for years. It felt like it came from someone who’d already learned to disappear and was trying to find her way back.”

Saoirse goes completely still.

“We’d like to speak with you. Not as Mrs. Roman Suarez. As yourself.” Another pause. “Even if it’s just a quote or a ghost of a poem.”

“How did you get this number?” Saoirse whispers.

“An old mutual acquaintance. Someone who said you might not answer.”

Clair… probably. Or more likely, Nina. A longer silence. Saoirse rises from the chair and walks to the window. Her hand rests instinctively on her growing belly. Her reflection stares back at her, hollowed and soft in equal measure.

“You don’t have to say yes. You don’t even have to reply. But the door’s there, so just walk through when you’re ready.”

Click. The call ends. Saoirse stares at the phone screen, the number already removed from view. 

Later that night, she opens the desk drawer in her private study and takes out a pen. She writes a single line across the top of an old notebook page:

Back in her bedroom, soft jazz hums from the speakers. Saoirse lies on the bed in a pale slip dress, the book open on her chest, but she hasn’t turned a page in 20 minutes. She’s still thinking about the call, about Lila’s voice, about Blue Milk. The twins’ giggling rings across the hallway.

It’s not loud or dramatic, but it strikes a nerve. No one has reached out to her so directly in years. A voice not filtered through Roman. A chance to speak… for herself. Whether she takes it or not is another matter entirely.

Later that night, after Roman falls asleep beside her, she walks quietly back to her study. She takes the page where she’d written earlier and rips it into four careful pieces. A large heirloom clock ticks nearby as she tucks the pieces into the spine of the old notebook and adds a new line beneath the tear: