Beau was sitting on the steps to the front patio, his arms braced on his legs and his head hung low. Stasia paced cautiously towards him, her heels gently clicking on the stone floor.

     As she approached, stopping a few feet away from the first stone step, Beau looked over his shoulder. His eyes fixed on hers, sharpening to steel. "Did you know about it?"

     Stasia knew he could only be alluding to her parents asking for a grandchild. But she didn't expect Beau to address her so openly. There was still a trough of secrets left between the pair. Instead of bridging the gap in their relationship, the uncertainty only threatened to further bring Stasia and Beau down.

     She folded her arms, looking cautiously down at her husband's distraught face. "I didn't know anything about tonight." Stasia answered neutrally.

      She had the unfortunate talent of being pragmatic in emotionally fraught situations. Unfortunate because Stasia could appear colder or more distant than she actually felt.

     Maybe that was where Stasia's reputation as a heartless monster originated from. Stasia didn't let herself care. She could tolerate rumors if the employees under Stasia continued to fear their boss, and produced results from that fear.

It wasn't an ideal working environment. If she had a choice, Stasia wouldn't ask so much from her employees. But the wolves were already snapping at her heels. Even her own family would stop at nothing to deny Stasia her legacy.

      Beau turned towards Stasia properly, jolting the girl out of her thoughts. "I don't blame you." he told her, looking directly into Stasia's eyes.

      The abrupt statement surprised the conglomerate heiress. "You don't blame me for what?" she asked, crossing her ankles where she stood, staring down at her husband.

     "For anything. Your parents. This company." Beau looked around, soaking in the cold feeling that the house exuded. "If I grew up here, I wouldn't know how to live any other way."

     "I'll pretend I understood that." Stasia frowned. "Why did you leave?"

     Beau scoffed, rolling his eyes as he questioned, "Did you really expect me to sit there and listen to your parents instructing us on how we should live our lives?"

     "It was more my mother than my father, really." Stasia corrected him. Beau looked like he wanted to laugh, but then he obviously decided against it.

     "Your parents never even asked us if we want children. They went straight to baby names."

     Stasia smiled idly, looking back into the past. "I seem to remember you talking about baby names. But that was a lifetime ago."

     "Where?" Beau asked curiously. His eyes looked like honey in the sunlight as he looked into Stasia's eyes, and her stomach flipped.

     "On our date at the chicken shop next to the office." Stasia answered quietly. Her long brown hair was picked up by the breeze, and she attempted to smooth it back into place. Beau's eyes followed her fingers, and her cheeks warmed.

     "How could I forget?" Beau joked with a small, tired smile. "You liked Daisy for a girl."

     Stasia shrugged, fixing her hair into place with a clip. "Daisies are my favourite flowers."

      Beau turned so his back was against the adjacent stone wall to the step, stretching his feet out in front of him. "But I think you're more like a rose. Beautiful to the eye, suited up with thorns to prick anyone who dares to get too close."

     "But I let you in." Stasia disagreed quietly. Beau looked at her curiously. "Three years ago, you were closer to me than anyone. Ever."

     "Right." Beau said softly, and they fell into an awkward silence. Instead of focusing on the situation, Stasia tried to follow Beau's advice from their recent outing in London.

     She walked down the steps, stepping over Beau's tall frame. She sat on a step further down from Beau, facing the path stretched out ahead of them.

     Stasia couldn't see Beau anymore, but in the peace of the late afternoon, she could hear his breathing, although the sound was light. Slow, steady, quieter than a whisper. And Stasia looked up. Tilting her head back, listening to the quiet sounds that emerged from the surrounding lawn and woods of the estate.

     "Look at you." Beau's voice woke Stasia up from her daydream. She turned to him, less sharply than she would have before. He was watching her with something soft in his eyes, a tiny smirk curving the corners of his mouth. "You've got it."

      Stasia smiled. "Got what?"

      "Remember that night we spent in London this week? On the way to Southwark, I asked you to stop and look up."

       The irony of Beau's comment didn't pass Stasia. "How could I forget?" she agreed wryly, then Stasia furrowed her brow at her husband. "Why's that relevant?"

      "You've been so in love with work that you never found the need to look elsewhere. But am I wrong in saying that your priorities might be changing?" Beau asked her, his eyes glowing a molten brown in the dying sun.

     Stasia's mouth felt exceptionally dry. "You're not wrong." she whispered.

     Beau studied her in silence, and Stasia's cheeks flushed raspberry-pink as she felt the weight of his gaze on her. The conglomerate heiress tipped her head down, staring at the stone steps before them.

     After a brief moment, Beau stood from his step and walked to the edge of the driveway. Stasia watched him crouch, then return to her with something white in his hand. He opened his hand to her, and in his palm lay a daisy, fresh out of its bud with tiny petals. 

     She took the crushed thing from him hesitantly, feeling the warmth of his large hands for a tiny moment. It rested in her hand, beautiful, slightly broken at the stem.

     "I don't want children, Stasia." Beau admitted. Stasia felt her heart sink in her chest as she turned to study him. "I can't cope with the challenges of raising a kid after everything we've been through."

     Stasia didn't know how to respond. She didn't know what could be an appropriate response to such a life-changing statement. She felt its gravity, but Stasia was so confused. She couldn't tell if she wanted to reverse course or keep to the paths they were supposed to take separately.

      She decided to let go of her usual risk assessments and get straight to the point. In business, she was taught to only take risks if she stood to benefit. Here, Stasia had no idea if she was ruining or improving their marriage by opening the conversation, but it was better than remaining stagnant.

     "Would you ever change your mind?" Stasia said abruptly. She stood from her seat on the stone step, then she turned to stare at her husband, the daisy clutched in her fist.

     He stared up at her with wide eyes, then he cleared his throat, straightening his tie. "Would you want me to change my mind?"

      It was such a tactical reply that Stasia was caught momentarily off-guard. Beau was driving straight to the root of Stasia's questions. Why would she care? Wasn't she too occupied with her work?

       She could have opened up, but opening up wasn't Stasia's forte.

       "It wouldn't be wise to bar off having children ever." Stasia said in a clipped manner, sliding on her business mask once more. Beau's expression closed up immediately, and Stasia knew that she'd chosen her path now.

       "Regardless of what we want? Of what you want?" Beau implored. He stood up, so that he was towering over Stasia again, his hands in his pockets. "We're young, Anastasia. You have your whole life ahead of you. Do you really think that we'll stay together for another forty years? Another five?"

       Shards of ice began to rebuild themselves around Stasia's heart. She glared fiercely at Beau. "You're sounding like you don't want us to. What do you really want, Beau?"

       She saw that, at last, he was starting to get angry. His eyes became heated, and he moved infinitesimally closer to Stasia. "Don't flip this onto me. I never asked you for children after that first year of marriage. I never expected more than what we have."

       "Then leave. Why do you care about me anyway, Beau? Why are we pretending that the last three years never happened?" Stasia fought back, her voice becoming louder by the second. "Tell me what you want from me, Beau!"

       "I don't want anything." Beau muttered. He stepped away from her, running his hand over his face. He looked hurt beyond anything Stasia ever remembered. "I just want that we continue to live the way we always have. In separate rooms, having separate breakfasts, lunches, dinners."

       "In short, you want us to separate." Stasia rolled her eyes, but she was beginning to realise the gravity of their situation. "That sounds perfectly reasonable."

        "I'm happy you understand my point of view- wait, what?"

        "You want to separate." Stasia shrugged. "That's understandable. After three years of failure, any smart man or woman would want to change direction. I hope you understand that we can't divorce, given the circumstances."

         Stasia looked at Beau out of the corner of her eye, and she was surprised to see him with his head hung low, staring at the concrete.

         She carried on. "Simply because my family would come after you, only to raze you to the ground. So to mitigate that small risk, I'll set up a house for you to move into. You will be very... separate from me, don't worry."

         "You don't have to bother." Beau said quietly. "I'll get a house myself. I'll move out by Friday."

        "Good." Stasia nodded sharply, ignoring the pain and fear in her chest. "I think we both knew this was long overdue."

        "Agreed." Beau replied, but Stasia wondered if his voice sounded flat. "I'll see you back at the house. I'll get Natalia to send over a car for you now."

         His back to Stasia, Beau proceeded down the steps towards the car. As she watched him drive away, Stasia felt the first prick of tears in her eyes. What had she done?

         She sat on the stone steps of her family's mansion to grieve the final collapse of her marriage to Beaufort Talbot.

///

     Now back to square one, Stasia Needmore was sitting on a pristine white couch in her four hundred-square foot apartment, and she was eating raspberries.

     The difference was that her husband Beau wasn't in the kitchen, sifting through the fridge. Nor was he in his room, separate from hers, sitting at his desk. He wasn't walking around the empty corridors. 

      But she was in their living room, eating raspberries. The sweet yet tangy taste helped to soothe Stasia's fears. Typically, Anastasia Needmore was fearless. She was a businesswoman in a man's world, and she hoisted the reins of her career with an iron grip.

     Stasia could pretend she didn't care. In fact, it was practically easy. At eight o'clock, her assistant Natalia would come rushing in to give the day's schedule, and Stasia wouldn't have the time nor the space to think about her marriage.

        Her failure. Her fault. Guilt trickled through the gaps in Stasia's iron walled mind. Because whatever happened from now on was done by her hand. She was the one who had so curtly dismissed Beau's efforts to rebuild their relationship.

       At every turn, she rejected him, scorned his perceptions. And that was all his thoughts were; little peeks into the cave that Stasia retreated into, once her duties for the day were over.

       She had so many regrets, and they were all cast into a pit, covered with a cloth. And so she left herself to rot.

        Stasia was so immersed in her thoughts that when a clattering noise spilled into the air, followed by a curse, she leapt to her feet immediately. She instinctively moved towards the door in fear when the sound of the kitchen door opening echoed.

       She watched as Beau walked out of the kitchen, holding a pair of oven-mittens in his hand. He stopped in the hallway, and the pair simply looked at each other for a moment.

       Stasia stared at her husband, eyes wide as dinner-plates. "But I thought you left!" she blurted out.

      Beau looked awkward. "Yeah, but it's going to take a few days. I was hoping you'd let me stay the night at least, so I can pack and move in with my friends."

      "Oh." Stasia straightened her tie, clearing her throat. "Right, yes. Of course you'd want to do that... it's fine. Go ahead."

       "Okay." Beau grimaced. "Don't come into the kitchen, by the way."

       When Stasia was told not to do something, it was her natural instinct to discover why. She narrowed her eyes at her husband. "Why shouldn't I? It's my kitchen too."

       "It'll be your loss." Beau told her straight-forwardly, turning to head back to what Stasia assumed was his cooking.

       Abruptly, she put down her bowl of raspberries and followed her husband, ignoring his resigned sigh. 

      When she stepped into the room, she couldn't believe her eyes.

///