Total pages in book: 129
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131459 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Merriman had been decapitated.
Mika and Merriman had been married four months. According to anyone, both in the know and through gossip channels, they were a love match.
Like Tom and Genny.
And the photographic evidence played that positive, something Tom had paid attention to hopefully, for Mika.
They weren’t smitten. She wasn’t his muse.
She was the love of his life.
And he was her world.
So, yes.
He couldn’t imagine.
“She’s pregnant,” he told Genny.
He took her weight as it slumped into him.
“Oh God,” she breathed.
“Yeah.”
“And thank God,” she said.
Tom let that go a beat, feeling it for all its heaviness and joy, doing that pulling his wife closer.
And then he said, “Yeah.”
* * *
Not too long ago…
When he looked through the peephole to see who was at the door, since no one knew where he was, even his children, he still was unsurprised at who he saw.
The man had his ways.
That happened when you were the richest being on the planet.
But Tom thought it was better to get it over with now than deal with his shit later.
He opened the door, looked the man in the eyes, then stepped away, leaving it up to Szabo to catch the door before it closed, then enter.
Szabo did this.
Tom went back to his glass of vodka.
Szabo savored the moment he’d been waiting for for nearly thirty years, not speaking for a long time.
Tom finished his vodka and poured another. Only then did he turn to lift the bottle Szabo’s way.
It was the first time he’d looked at him since he came in.
Szabo hadn’t taken a seat, and the expression on his face was unexpected.
Tom ignored it.
“Drink?” he offered.
“You know I don’t drink, Tom,” Szabo said quietly.
Tom put the bottle down and the ice clinked when he picked up the very full glass.
He walked to the couch in the cottage at the Biltmore where he was staying, a space that would be his home for the foreseeable future since he and Genny had agreed to a divorce and he had moved out.
He folded into the couch, raised his glass and rounded it in the air.
“Let’s have it,” he invited.
“I hate this,” Szabo said.
There it was.
The expression on his face.
“For Genny,” Tom surmised.
“For Genny. For the kids.” Pause then, “For you.”
“Right,” Tom muttered dubiously and sucked back some vodka.
“Tom—”
“She won’t have you,” Tom informed him.
“I know,” Szabo replied. There was sadness in his tone, resignation, and Tom felt his eyes narrow.
“The great Corey Szabo giving up?”
“You can’t have missed that the time came when I stopped disliking you and started to think of you as family.”
Tom was staggered.
“I can have missed it because I did,” he returned.
Szabo nodded, let that go and moved on.
“Yes, I was pissed when I found out you cheated.”
“I’m sure you were,” Tom sneered, no doubt now, just derision, because he suspected Szabo was thrilled Tom had fucked up so incalculably.
Szabo took in a breath.
Then he snapped, “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“If I knew that, don’t you think I would have shared that with my wife so maybe she could find her way past this, and we could move on…together?”
“Fuck that, Tom, and fuck you for saying that shit. Come on. You adored her.”
“More than you.”
Szabo’s face pinched.
“Admit it, you know it, don’t you? You know I loved her more than you,” Tom pushed.
“Which makes your actions all the more perplexing,” Szabo shot back, not quite admitting it, not quite denying it.
“She left me.”
“She didn’t leave you,” Szabo countered. “She ended the marriage.”
“No, Corey, she left me while we were married. And it’s the biggest fucking copout a cheater can drag into a marriage to blame it on the woman he betrayed, but there it is. She checked out of our marriage. I did all I knew how to do to figure out what was going on. I gave her some space. I asked her what was up. I asked again. And again. I tried to reignite our intimacy. I asked her to go away with me, take a vacation from our lives, find each other again. I got frustrated and impatient and tried to coax it out of her through arguments. And when I admitted I stepped out on her, that was when she reengaged, though that wasn’t why I did it. We had therapy, but how do I say any of that shit to her?”
“I can understand your dilemma because that’s exactly what it is. A pile of complete, stinking shit,” Szabo derided.
“Yup,” Tom agreed, and took another sip of his drink.
“Christ, Tom!” Szabo exploded. “Fucking another woman?”
“I was going to leave her.”
Szabo shot stick straight and stared, mouth hanging open.
Tom wished he was in the mood to take a picture. He sensed Corey Szabo had looked like that never in his life.
Not ever.
Flabbergasted.
As much as he’d like to cherish that look, he didn’t.
In that moment, he preferred what was steeping in ice.