What's Left Of Me (The Firebird Trilogy Book 2) by Jennifer Loring

She’d married Alex, after all. Had asked him to marry her. Two public figures that, in the minds of everyone else, had revoked their rights as private individuals and normal human beings. But she had never consented to this incursion into her personal life, not when all she had done was love someone.
     
    ***
     
    Alex’s phone lay on the kitchen counter. Stephanie peered into the great room. No Alex, no Anya, no baby monitor. Upstairs, then. Good.
    She picked up the phone. So heavy in her hand, laden with secrets she did not want to carry. And yet, if she didn’t become its unwilling vector, she would drive herself insane with imagined scenarios. She tried to convince herself it was different from Joe’s invasion of her privacy. Necessary, even. Stephanie tapped the Phone icon, then Recents. Courtney Evans. A Buffalo number. Incoming call from last week, the day before he met with her. Stephanie input the name and number into her Notes app, and returned the phone to what she hoped was the exact position in which he’d left it.
    She ascended the stairs. The unstructured anger, the hurt, her unspeakable doubt in Alex, had compounded by the hour, her already dubious ability to trust others reduced to radioactive remnants. Another painful lesson imparted by her ghostly instructor: Trust no one. Their private pain had become public spectacle, his jury the general public, and her feelings—even about her right to love her husband—collateral damage. Perfect strangers felt justified to weigh in not only on Alex’s guilt or innocence but also on their marriage, their parenting, literally any and every facet of their lives the media could drag into the light.
    Alex was lying in bed in the master suite, Anya on his chest as they watched an animated show on BabyFirst TV. “Hey.” A kind but unenthusiastic greeting. “How was the first day back?”
    Her pulse in her ears, intrusive and foreboding, a reminder of how quickly time was ticking away no matter how she grasped at it, clinging to the last plank of a ship capsized in a dark and merciless ocean. She had played out the conversation in her head on the way home, cautiously analyzed all potential arguments and comebacks, plugged in all possible scenarios to what appeared insurmountable except by one path. In her head, Alex grasped the importance of her conclusion and agreed with it, however half-heartedly. He was different now.
    “Things didn’t go so well. There’s so much crap about me—us—on the internet, and everyone was talking behind my back.”
    “I’m sorry.” Guilt coated his words. He patted the comforter. “Sit. I think we need to talk.”
    “Yeah. We do.” But she didn’t sit. She couldn’t be close to him, or she’d lose what little faith in her convictions she had.
    The lines in his forehead deepened.
    “Until some of this blows over, I think I need to be somewhere else for a little while.” Leave it at that. Don’t overcomplicate it. Tears sliced down her cheeks nevertheless. She retreated to the walk-in closet where she stored her travel bag.
    “I was going to suggest we go to couples’ counseling to help us deal with everything.” Alex, carrying Anya, followed her. “What are you saying? You’re leaving?”
    “No, I just…need some space from all of this.”
    “From me, you mean. That sounds like leaving.”
    She tossed clothes into the bag, heedless of what they were or whether they matched anything else. She could go shopping later. “I’m not trying to push you away. But I need to be me again, separate from you.”
    “Right. Good thing you didn’t change your name, da ? Makes it that much easier to disconnect from me.” Unshed tears saturated his eyes, a deep, verdant forest in which she longed to lose herself.
    “I thought we could have a mature discussion about this.”
    “We’ve been married eight months, and you’re telling me you already need space. What do you want me to say? How do you expect me to