Virgin Dot Com Novel

[Jasmine's POV] Liam's alarm shatters the darkness at five AM. I feel him slip from the bed, the mattress releasing his weight with a sigh that mirrors something in my chest. His hand ghosts across my shoulder-brief, almost apologetic-and then he's gone. The shower runs. The closet door opens and closes. His footsteps descend the stairs with the practiced stealth of a man who's perfected the art of leaving. The front door clicks shut at . I know because I'm still awake, counting the minutes until Asher's alarm.

When it screams at six, he's already dressed, tie knotted with surgical precision. He kisses my forehead-dry lips, minty breath-and his thumb brushes my cheekbone with a tenderness that feels worse than nothing. "Meeting at seven. I'll try to make dinner." He won't. We both know he won't. But I nod anyway because the alternative is admitting that "trying" stopped meaning anything three months ago. Finn leaves at seven, and by then I'm already downstairs.

He finds me in the kitchen, hair still wet from my shower, pouring cereal for two small humans who are arguing about which Disney princess would win in a fight. He kisses my temple, his stubble rough against my skin, and there's a moment-sharp, aching-where I want to grab his collar and demand he stay. Demand any of them stay. "Client presentation." His voice is rough, apologetic. "Big account. I'll text you." The door closes. The house exhales. And I'm alone with Chloe's dissertation on Elsa's ice powers and Zoe's yogurt-covered fingers reaching for my hair. My phone calendar is a war zone.

Three songwriting sessions back-to-back, starting at nine. A recording session at two. Notes from my producer about the new album-"needs more edge, Jazz, dig deeper"-that make my teeth ache because I'm already bleeding on every track and apparently it's not enough. Drop-off is chaos. Chloe's shoes are on the wrong feet. Zoe can't find her stuffed rabbit.

I'm signing permission slips while simultaneously responding to an email from the studio about equipment rental, and some perfect mother in athleisure gives me a look that says she's never forgotten a field trip form in her Pinterest-perfect life. The recording studio is my church. Soundproof walls, expensive equipment, the scent of coffee and ambition. Today I'm working with an artist who's twenty-two and hungry, her voice raw with the kind of passion that comes before the industry sands down your edges. I lose myself in the music.

In the bridge that's not quite right, the harmony that needs adjusting. In the pure, uncomplicated act of creation that doesn't require me to be mother or partner or referee. Here, I'm just Jazz-the woman who can hear the song beneath the noise. My phone buzzes during a water break. An idea, sharp and insistent, burning through my exhaustion. I pull up the voice memo app and sing-just a melody, wordless, something that's been living in my chest since Liam touched my shoulder this morning. Since Asher's thumb grazed my cheek. Since Finn's kiss landed and immediately withdrew.

I send it to Liam with shaking hands. Hours pass. The session ends. I check my phone compulsively-through the drive to school pickup, through the parking lot where I'm five minutes early because I'm never late anymore, never anything but relentlessly present. His response comes as I'm buckling Zoe into her car seat: a heart emoji. That's it. One red heart, and something in my throat constricts because it's not enough but it's something, and I've been living on scraps of "something" for so long I've forgotten what "enough" tastes like.

"Mama, where's Daddy Finn?" Chloe's voice cuts through my spiral. "He promised piggyback rides." My hands freeze on the seatbelt. "He's working, baby." "But he promised." "He'll be home soon." The lie sits heavy on my tongue. "When is soon?" I don't have an answer. Just turn the key and let the engine noise fill the silence. Home is a battleground. Homework at the kitchen table-Zoe's math worksheet, Chloe's reading log. Dinner that I'm cobbling together from whatever's in the fridge because the meal plan I meticulously crafted on Sunday is already obsolete.

Bath time with splashing and soap in my eyes and the kind of exhaustion that goes bone-deep. I'm trying to work on lyrics-my laptop balanced on the counter, notepad covered in half-formed verses-while simultaneously preventing Zoe from drinking the bathwater and making sure Chloe actually uses soap. The nanny appears in the doorway. Maria, forty-five, competent, kind. "I can take over. You look like you need a break." The words should feel like salvation. Instead, they land like an accusation. "I'm their mother." My voice comes out sharper than intended.

"I should be able to do this." Maria's face softens with something that might be pity, and I have to look away before it breaks me. By eight PM, the girls are in their pajamas, teeth brushed, negotiating bedtime with the determination of tiny attorneys. Chloe plants herself in the hallway, arms crossed. "We want a story from all the daddies." "They're not home yet, sweet girl." "Then call them." Zoe's lower lip trembles, and I know-with the certainty of impending disaster-that this is a battle I'm going to lose. I pull up the video call.

Asher answers first, his face filling the screen from some conference room. He's in the middle of a meeting-I can see other faces in the background-but he mutes and waves, his smile strained at the edges. Finn's next, surrounded by recording equipment, dark circles under his eyes that mirror my own. He blows kisses, makes silly faces that get the girls giggling, but there's something hollow in his performance. Liam actually takes the call.

Actually stops whatever he's doing and reads them "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" in his boardroom voice, and the girls curl into me, their small bodies warm and solid while their father's voice crackles through the speaker. The call ends. The girls drift toward sleep, finally, mercifully. I should hang up. Should let Liam return to whatever deal he's structuring, whatever crisis he's managing. Instead, I whisper, "Don't go yet." Silence. Then: "I'm here." His face fills the screen-tired, guilt-etched, beautiful in the harsh fluorescent lighting of his office. My chest aches with wanting him.

Not sexually, though that's always there, humming beneath everything. This is deeper, more dangerous. I want his physical presence, the weight of him in the bed, his breathing syncing with mine in the dark. "I'm sorry." His voice cracks. "Jazz, I hate that I'm not there." "I know." "The merger is almost done. Two more weeks, maybe three, and then-" "It's always almost done." I don't mean for it to come out bitter, but it does. Bitterness and exhaustion and a grief I can't quite name. "There's always another deal, another crisis, another reason why work comes first." "That's not fair." "No.

It's not." I pull the blanket tighter around myself, suddenly cold despite the heating. "But it's true." We talk. Hours bleed into each other-him in his office, me in our bed, the distance between us measured in pixels and fiber optics and all the choices we've made that led us here. He tells me about the merger, the complications, the partner who's sabotaging the deal. I tell him about Zoe's math homework, Chloe's growing suspicion that Santa isn't real, the melody I sent him that he responded to with a single emoji. "I listened to it seventeen times," he admits. "It's beautiful, Jazz.

You're beautiful." My throat closes. "I need more than voice memos and heart emojis, Liam." "I know." "I need you here. In this bed. In this life we supposedly built together." "I know." At two AM, my eyes are burning, and his are bloodshot on the screen. We've talked about everything and nothing, circling around the real problem-that we're fracturing, slowly, inevitably, under the weight of careers and responsibilities and two little girls who deserve better than part-time parents and video-call bedtime stories. "I should let you sleep," he says, but doesn't hang up.

"I should let you work," I say, but don't end the call. We stay connected for another ten minutes. Just breathing. Just existing in the same digital space while the physical distance between us yawns wider, and I can feel it-the slow erosion of something that used to feel indestructible. When the call finally ends, the room is too quiet. Too empty. The bed stretches in all directions, cold sheets and unused pillows, and my body remembers what it's like to be held. To fall asleep with someone's heartbeat beneath my ear.

I curl onto my side, pull my knees to my chest, and stare at the wall until the darkness starts to gray with dawn. Tomorrow, they'll leave again. Liam at five, Asher at six, Finn at seven. And I'll be here, holding everything together with spit and prayer and the increasingly desperate hope that talking until two AM counts as intimacy. But it doesn't. It's not the same as having him home. As having any of them home. And the worst part-the part that keeps me awake as the city begins to stir outside-is knowing that wanting them here isn't enough to make them stay. Virgin Dot Com