Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 105825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105825 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“‘Cause sometimes, our dicks go hard and we follow like they’re pointing us to a well. ‘Cause we spend so long looking across the street that we forget what we’ve got at home.” He sighed. “‘Cause we’re dumbasses, I guess.”
I looked up at him. “You must have been away from home a lot, in the army. Did you ever cheat?”
He shook his head and I saw a flash of that soul-deep pain again. Then he looked away.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. When had he gotten divorced, and why? Had she cheated on him: is that what broke his heart?
JD looked at me again. “This isn’t just about your dad,” he said quietly. “Is it?”
I stared at him. Opened my mouth to say yes—
“He cheated on you?” JD said tightly. “Your ex?”
I froze. How did he… Then I nodded.
“You want to talk about it?”
I shook my head. I could feel the pain and hot humiliation filling my chest, the way it always did. I’d swallow it back down. It wasn’t fair to offload it onto someone else. I’d managed, all these years.
But JD leaned across the desk and closed his big, warm hand around mine. He looked right into my eyes and gave me a tiny nod, offering to soak up all the pain I could throw at him.
I hesitated, biting my lip…and then I started to speak.
“I was a dork. God, you’ve seen me with people. I sat huddled down on the planning floor, with the other architects. I didn’t go out, I didn’t meet guys, let alone date. I didn’t think anyone would want me.”
JD’s hand squeezed mine and his eyes burned, furious.
“Then…” I took a deep breath. “I was at this dinner thing, my dad was picking up an award. And there was this guy…” My voice softened and I shook my head in wonder. “Adrian was good-looking and sophisticated and he was so, so charming. He took me to one side and right there, he asked me out. Less than a year later, in The Hamptons, he asked me to marry him.”
“My dad never liked Adrian. But he wanted me to be happy. We had this enormous wedding, I had a huge white dress…I felt like a princess. It was amazing, I’d always thought...”—she looked down at herself—”I’d always thought people like me didn’t get the fairy tale.” She swallowed. “At first, everything was great. My dad set Adrian up with a lot of his connections and Adrian started doing all these deals. I had plans to start my own architecture firm: I figured I’d work for my dad for a few years, then strike out on my own. I got pregnant with Cody and I was awed and scared and just over the moon. But Adrian…it didn’t seem to affect him the same way. He started working away more. I figured it was just different for men.”
I saw JD’s jaw tighten. Like it hadn’t been different for him, like he’d felt all those things I had.
“I had Cody,” I said. “He was perfect. Amazing. I thought that Adrian would want to spend more time with us, now we were a family, but he just threw himself into his work even more. I barely saw him. It was like he had no interest in me or the baby.” I could hear my voice starting to fracture. “And then, when Cody was one, there was this…” I shook my head and dropped my eyes, glaring down at the desk. “God I’m so stupid.”
“No.” JD’s voice was so firm, so unshakeable in its belief, that it broke through all the self-hate. “That’s one thing you’re not.” He put his finger under my chin and lifted it so I had to look at him. “You’re the smartest goddamn person I’ve ever met,” he told me. “Tell me what happened.”
“He played tennis,” I said. “Like, a lot. He went to this fancy tennis club every week. So I’d been learning how to restring a racquet because I figured that was something nice I could do for him, maybe it would make him—”—the words caught in my throat—”want to spend time with us. And it appealed to me, I mean, it’s engineering. I got all excited about it: I’d ordered this really top-quality, state-of-the-art line from the internet and I’d watched all these videos on how to get the tension just right but…” I sighed. “Every time I checked his racquet, it hadn’t gotten loose at all. Even after months and months, like he wasn’t even using it. It didn’t make sense. So eventually, I followed him... all the way to his mistress’s house. The same mistress he’d been fucking the whole time we were married.”
I took a shaky breath. “The—The worst part was, he wasn’t sorry: he was relieved. He’d already gotten what he wanted out of the marriage. He’d made millions from the deals he did with my dad’s friends.” I shook my head. “He never loved me. I don’t—”—my breath hitched—”I don’t think he even liked me. But he put up with being married to me, in return for getting rich.” She gave an awkward shrug. “Turns out, I was right: people like me don’t get the fairy tale.”