Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 89145 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89145 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 446(@200wpm)___ 357(@250wpm)___ 297(@300wpm)
For the record, you do not have a small place in CC. You have a three-story rowhouse that you actually own. No amount of extra bartending hours can make a difference with that mortgage. And just yesterday, Ellie was talking at dinner about how much she loves Daddy’s new roof deck. Are you fucking kidding me? I may have asked for the divorce, but you cut me out of your life. I was the one who had to wake up in the goddamn bed we’d shared together. I was the one who had to find a way to start fresh in a place that’d been ours.
No, you can go to hell and rot, Alfie.
I scratched my head.
My mind was strangely quiet. I didn’t know how to process anything he’d written.
I went to my playlists and searched for the angriest metal I could find.
The run didn’t help for shit. For every mile, I just got angrier and angrier, and the moment I came home again, I hauled my sweat-soaked tee over my head, fetched a bottle of water in the kitchen, and went for the chin-up bar in the hallway.
Fuck you, West.
He thought I’d turned into a brick wall?
He thought I’d cut him out of my life? Yeah, after he’d asked for the motherfucking divorce—sure as hell not before then.
I hauled myself up with a grunt and glanced at my reflection in the mirror across the little space.
He’d made one valid point. I had definitely stopped sharing aspects about my life once we’d split. Because what fucking choice had he left me with? He’d dumped me. He’d broken my goddamn heart. I’d tried so damn hard to be good for him. To be both the jokester he’d fallen for and the man who could carry on a polite conversation when he had people over.
He’d grown up that way. Weekends were for friends and networking. He’d become a big shot producer, and for someone of his caliber to consider leaving LA, the offer had to be good. He’d been headhunted personally for this morning show, and it was his name at the top of the credits, so to speak. A lot depended on his reputation and the persona he had at work. And he was an idiot if he didn’t think his partner played a part. How would it look at a banquet if he showed up with me and I couldn’t string a coherent sentence together without saying shite or motherfucker?
I gnashed my teeth and pulled myself up again, and my reflection in the mirror revealed everything I’d tried to subdue in my marriage. Maybe not the abs. Being single and angry a lot had turned me into a workout junkie. But the rest…? How would West’s parents react if they saw this? The ink dedicated to my life. The street I’d grown up on, the license plate of the first car Ma had scraped together money to afford, Ellie’s and Trip’s birth dates. Street signs of memories—like the first date West had taken me on, like the one time I’d revisited my roots in Ireland, the hostel I’d stayed at. Lyrics, quotes, the pub I’d worked at in Cork, a Celtic cross, spotlights, shadows, vines, an Irish fiddle, shamrocks, sheet music to the lullabies I’d sung to Ellie and Trip, the little house in San Juan my grandparents on Ma’s side lived in… Two full sleeves that connected across my shoulder blades and bled down my back and toward my rib cage.
I had cut out West. He didn’t know any of this about me, though I was sure our kids had mentioned some of it. But in my defense, what was I supposed to have done instead? Beg for him to take me back? Oh right, I’d tried that too.
In the weeks following our final fight, I’d fucking tried. I’d told him I’d do anything.
“Tell me what to do, West. Please don’t give up on us. You want me to change something?”
That one had triggered an explosion.
“You’ve changed enough, Alfie! That’s the fucking problem! You’re not the man I married anymore!”
I screwed my eyes shut and pulled myself up over and over. Sweat trickled down my chest, my face, my arms.
We’d gone around in circles with the same fucking fight.
He didn’t want me to change, and yet he took me to places where people would judge the fuck out of me—and him—for not fitting in.
He couldn’t have it both ways. Didn’t he get that? Didn’t he understand that it fucking hurt to be looked at like I had no business standing next to my own husband?
West’s mother had been born into the wealth of the Main Line life. We were talking old money and all that prestigious bullshit. Somehow, West’s old man had conformed to their ways. He’d been upper middle class, but it wasn’t like a Fed earned that much. Still. He walked the walk and talked the talk.