The Billionaire Firefighter

Chapter 2: Double Standards

The first thing Derek saw was the wine. Two glasses, deep red, catching the light on the coffee table.

The second thing he saw was Dick wearing Derek's pajamas, the grey ones with the frayed left cuff that Erin had always said she'd throw away but never did.

The third thing he saw was his wife.

Erin was standing in front of the stove, humming softly as she stirred a pan. A cheerful little apron covered in cartoon kittens was tied around her waist.

Derek stood in the doorway and watched her cook. She looked comfortable. She looked *home*.

This was the same woman who had once delivered a forty-minute speech at a fundraiser gala framing the very act of asking a woman to cook dinner as a form of systemic oppression. Who had sent a lengthy email, he still had it somewhere, explaining why she refused to participate in structures that reduced women to domestic servants.

Derek had read that email and agreed with her. He had taken over the cooking. And the cleaning. And the laundry. Every week, every day, without complaint, because he loved her and he believed in her and he thought that was what it meant to be a partner.

He watched her stir the pan.

"Why were you at the hotel?"

His voice came out quieter than he intended. Erin turned, looked at him, and sighed, the sigh of someone interrupted by something tedious.

"Derek."

"Half-dressed." He stepped inside, letting the door close behind him. "With him. In a suite."

Dick straightened on the couch, opening his mouth. Erin silenced him with a look and turned back to Derek with the expression she reserved for particularly unreasonable members of the public at Q&A sessions.

"I'm not going to justify myself to you," she said. "What you're doing right now, demanding explanations, interrogating me about where I was and who I was with, do you understand how that sounds? That is textbook possessive behavior. You have a very fragile male ego."

"I'm your husband."

"And I am not your property." Her voice sharpened. "My body, my choices, my relationships, none of that is subject to your approval. I have spent my entire career fighting against exactly this kind of controlling—"

"Erin." He kept his voice level. "I pulled you out of a burning building tonight. I took a beam across my leg doing it, I was so injured. I just want to know what you were doing in that room."

Something flickered in her eyes. For just a moment.

Then it was gone.

"You know what I noticed?" she said, pivoting cleanly. "You're not wearing the wristband."

Derek looked down at his bare wrist.

"My Firefighter Family Safety Foundation's awareness wristband," Erin continued, her voice sharpening with purpose. "You're a frontline firefighter. You have the single most powerful platform to raise awareness for firefighter family welfare, and you don't use it. That proves exactly what kind of man you are: selfish, cold, and completely indifferent to the families of the people you work alongside. You have no right to stand on any moral high ground and question me."

Derek glanced at Dick.

Dick wasn't wearing one either. He noticed the direction of Derek's gaze, reached quietly into his pocket, and slipped a wristband onto his wrist without a word.

Erin saw it and her expression softened immediately into something warm.

"Don't even worry about it," she said to Dick. "After everything you did securing the Apex deal? You've already done more for firefighter families than most people will in a lifetime. Whether you wear it doesn't matter."

Then she turned back to Derek, and the warmth evaporated completely.

Derek didn't speak for a moment. He just looked at her. Really looked, the way you look at something when you're finally ready to see it clearly. The hypocrisy at the blatant double standards and the theatrical acts made his gaze narrow and his expression darkened. 

"So if *he* does it, it's nothing," Derek said. "But when I do the same thing, I'm the worst man alive."

"It's about pattern and intention—"

"Tell me the truth, Erin."

The words landed quietly. She stilled.

"Just tell me the truth," he said again. "Not the version for the cameras. Not the talking points. Just why are we married?"

The silence stretched.

And then, with the cool precision of someone who had simply decided the performance was no longer necessary, Erin set down her spoon.

"Because it worked," she said. "A frontline firefighter. Blue collar, physical, the kind of job that reads as salt-of-the-earth to every demographic. Do you understand what that does for my image? For my foundation's credibility?" She tilted her head slightly. "What could possibly be more convincing than the founder of the Firefighter Family Safety Foundation being married to an actual firefighter? You made me *real* to people."

The kitchen was very quiet.

"You gave me credibility," she continued, her voice almost gentle now, the way someone sounds when they're explaining something obvious. "And I gave you a life you couldn't have afforded otherwise. That's what this has always been. A fair exchange."

Derek looked at his wife.

Three years. Three years of cooking her meals, washing her clothes, standing beside her at events, and rearranging his life around hers. Three years of believing that every compromise brought them closer.

None of it had meant anything.

Finally, Derek understood. Erin had never seen him as a husband. To her, he was merely a marital prop to serve her political image, her foundation's narrative, and her public persona. His three years of love, tolerance, chores, support, and sacrifice were nothing more than the "role obligations" she expected him to fulfill.

For the first time, he finally stopped wondering what he had done wrong. 

He had not failed their marriage. There had never truly been a marriage to save.

“I want a divorce,” he said calmly.