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)
“But she didn’t fuck someone else.”
“No, you’re right. She didn’t. But I wished she did. God’s honest truth. Because I would have understood that. Silence. Distance. When she’s sleeping beside me in our bed. That I did not get.”
“Did you address this in therapy?”
Tom nodded and took another sip from his drink.
“And what did she say about pulling away?”
“It was what that fucked-up place does to women’s heads. It’s what happens to them when they aren’t twenty-five anymore. It took her to her knees.”
“And you didn’t get that?”
“How could I if she didn’t give it to me?”
“But she did, in therapy. When it was too late,” Corey surmised.
“She did. In therapy. When I’d made it too late,” Tom confirmed.
“And you didn’t explain your issues to her, not even through therapy?”
“Not fully. It makes it sound like I think it’s her fault I had an affair. And it isn’t.”
“You’re right, it isn’t.” Szabo leaned back. “So that’s your Scylla and Charybdis. You had a beef. You can’t share your beef. Because it might be a beef, but it doesn’t explain what you did.”
Since that was precisely it, Tom had no reply.
It was then, Szabo sat on the very edge of a chair across from Tom.
He leaned forward.
And urgently, he said, “Tell her, Tom.”
Tom stared at Genny’s best friend, a man she’d known since she was eight, the closest person to her outside her family and Tom.
They were a miracle, those two. Kids from a small town in the Midwest. He became the richest man in the world, brilliant, genius at computers, anything tech, and business. The Midas Touch. She became the most famous woman in the world, beautiful, sweet, talented, smart, and one of the best actresses of her generation.
The third of their friendship posse from that small town, the one who broke their hearts…he didn’t do so badly either.
But Szabo was also the man who loved her, not more than Tom, but too much for Tom ever to have been comfortable with.
In other words, this earnestness was a shock.
And he didn’t trust it.
“It’ll make things worse, and you know it,” he replied.
“It might help her understand,” Szabo suggested.
“Again, I don’t even know why I did it.”
“Not about what you did, but about where you were, and where you both need to be.”
“She needs space.”
“You need to fight for her.”
“I know my wife, and she needs space.”
“Tom, I’m telling you. Listen to me right now. You need to fight for her.”
Something about that made Tom’s skin feel strange. He wasn’t certain what it was. The tone. The words. The odd look on Szabo’s face.
Or all of it.
It wasn’t like he was giving advice.
It was like he was issuing an order.
“Are you going to fight for her?” Szabo pressed.
“I know my wife, Corey. Therapy didn’t work not because of what I didn’t share, because even if I did share it, she’s not in a place to hear it. I have to wait. So I’ll wait.”
They stared at each other over the coffee table.
And then Szabo said something that snaked down Tom’s spine.
“So be it.”
He stood.
Tom stood.
Szabo moved to the door.
Tom moved with him.
He turned and looked at Tom.
“I didn’t always like you, but I always admired you. Even when I didn’t want to. But then, I started liking you. And now…” His gaze grew intent. “Now, Tom, I care about you deeply. You. Not Genny. Not the family. You. And this hurts.”
Tom didn’t like that either.
There was something wrong about it.
“Corey—”
Szabo cut him off with a nod and a statement.
A statement that was uttered almost like a wish.
Or a plan.
“You’ll be happy again.”
After he delivered that, he walked out the door.
It was the last time Tom saw him.
Within a few months, Corey Szabo blew his brains out.
And set his plans into motion.
When he did, Tom didn’t stand a chance.
Then again, he’d refused a direct order.
And that was what happened when you defied Corey Szabo.
* * *
Some time later…
When the call came through, since he didn’t know the number, he didn’t take it.
They left a voicemail.
He had all sorts of shit going down, most of it surrounding the YouTube gossipmonger Elsa Cohen and Corey’s bitch of an ex, so he didn’t bother listening to it or clearing it. Not for weeks.
When that time came, and he was set to listen to the first few seconds before he trashed it, and he heard Mika’s voice for the first time in nearly two decades, he did not trash it.
He listened.
And he wished he didn’t.
“So you aren’t one of the good ones. I’m gutted. Absolutely.”
That was it.
All she said.
Genny and her PR team had spun it so no one outside immediate family knew the truth.
But Tom knew in that instant that Mika knew it.
And Tom had recently realized he’d lost his wife forever.
So he was unable to handle the blow of knowing he’d lost Mika too.