Chapter 17
Jackson
Ispend the rest of the weekend torturing myself over Ellie’s date.
On Monday morning, I schedule an urgent session with my therapist, taking a few hours of personal time off from work, which my boss approves once he understands the reason.
It’s times like these that having a godfather for a boss comes in useful.
I’ve messed up with Ellary so badly there’s no coming back from it. So bad she’s started dating, hasn’t told me I’m going to be a father, and is rushing headlong into a divorce I wake up praying won’t go through.
Work has been my only constant. I’ve been putting in the hours at my desk, eating there, and getting the work done. My boss has seen that, and he’s taken his boot off my neck when it comes to the client files. I messed up before. I won’t mess up again. He knows that now.
In my therapist's office, I sit on the edge of my armchair, my elbows on my knees, hands clasped so tightly that my knuckles are white.
I’ve been coming to this office for weeks now, and it has never, and likely will never be normal to empty out the thoughts in my head the way I only do here.
I had trainers and saw a psychologist at college when I played Division 1 hockey. Mindset was important. I had the same in my rookie year in the NHL. But they were concerned with the game. With keeping me healthy: mentally, physically, and nutritionally, to deliver the second I stepped on the ice.
This is different.
Lynn doesn’t push. She never did. She just waits, pen resting loosely in her hand and her notebook flat on her lap.
“So,” she says gently, “you said something happened this weekend.”
I let out a breath that feels too big for my chest. “Yeah.”
I rub a hand over my jaw, taking a second to figure out how to get all the thoughts out of my head that have made relaxing impossible this weekend.
“I saw her.”
Lynn nods. “Ellary.”
I swallow. “Yeah.”
Another pause. She doesn’t fill it. She lets me sit in it, lets me choose the words instead of pulling them out of me.
As tricks to get someone to talk, this one is effective as hell.
“She’s pregnant. I saw her at the grocery store, and she didn’t tell me.”
The slightest widening of her eyes reveals her surprise. I’ve talked at length about how badly Ellary and I wanted a baby. About how we tried for over six years and were talking about starting IVF soon. Lynn knows this is a big deal for Ellie and me.
“How did that make you feel?” she asks.
“Pissed at first. Then hurt. I wanted to make demands on her. To… push myself back into her life.” I swallow. “Even if it was in the middle of the grocery store on a Saturday in front of everyone.”
My first thoughts had been about me. About what I wanted and how I could get it. Not about her, and I thought I’d moved past that.
But maybe I have.
I hadn’t marched over to Ellie in the store and started demanding answers.
I’d walked away, knowing I wasn’t in control of my emotions, and that I could hurt her by not taking a second to think first. So I’d gone to sit in my car, and when thinking alone hadn’t helped figure out my next steps, I’d gone to speak to Wade.
After I saw her on her date, I made an appointment with my therapist so I could figure out a way to talk about this life-changing event with Ellie without hurting her or making it more about me than it is about her.
Ellie made so much of her life about me. I never prioritized my wife’s needs and wants the way she did for me. That has to change.
“And did you?”
I shake my head. “I left my groceries, got into my car, and went to talk it over with my friend.”
“Wade?”
I nod. “He was surprised I didn’t charge over to her and demand to know why she hadn’t told me she was pregnant.”
“And why didn’t you?” There’s no heat or emotion in the question. Nothing to suggest whether I did something right or very wrong.
I hesitate. “I don’t get to want things from her anymore.”
Lynn’s expression doesn’t change, but something in her posture softens. “That sounds like guilt talking.”
“It is guilt,” I snap, then wince. “Sorry. I just… I know what I did. I know what I took from her. I don’t get to ask for anything.”
Lynn tilts her head, her pen hovering over the notebook resting on her dark navy slacks. “Even to be a part of your child’s life?”
“Even that.”
Paper rustles as she makes a note and turns the page. “You told me once before that you wanted to be a father. That you and Ellie had been trying to get pregnant for years.”
My eyes prick with tears, and I swallow the lump in my throat. “That’s right.”
“And now, because you hurt Ellary, you believe you no longer deserve to have this thing you’ve always wanted?”
I take a breath and release it. “Ellie was coming to tell me she was pregnant. She called me three times, then sent a text before she came to my office when I didn’t respond. She said she wanted to talk.”
“About being pregnant?”
I nod. “I’ve thought it over and it’s the only thing that makes sense. She’d been coming to celebrate with me. She knew I wouldn’t want to wait until I finished work. And instead she walked into…” I shake my head. “You know.”
“So you intend to say nothing.”
Frustration pours through my veins.
I let out a humorless laugh. “I don’t know.
If she wanted me to know, she’d have told me.
” I lean back, staring at the ceiling for a moment.
“She’s all I think about. I took your advice and started to do something for me.
Something involving hockey, but then I walk into the coffee shop she works at, and she could just be wiping down a table.
Doing her thing. And then she looks up, and—” My voice cracks.
I clear my throat. “It hits me. All at once. How much I miss her. How much I hurt her. How much I still… feel.”
Lynn’s voice is soft. “What do you feel in that moment?”
I close my eyes. “Like someone punched a hole straight through me.”
“And what do you do?”
“I always freeze.” I shake my head. “I want to apologize again. To tell her I’m trying. But I never do. I just stand there like an idiot. She deserves better than me.”
Lynn leans forward slightly. “Jackson, you’re doing the work. You’re taking responsibility. You’re not trying to force her into anything. That matters. But you’re also allowed to have feelings. You’re allowed to miss her.”
I stare at the floor. “Missing her feels like punishment.”
“Missing her is human.”
I clear my throat. “I saw her at a restaurant. She was on a date. That’s, uh, the other thing that happened when I went to get her flowers and talk about the baby.”
Lynn doesn’t react, but her pen stills. “How did that feel?”
I laugh, a broken, hollow sound. “Like I deserved it.”
“And?”
“Like I was losing her all over again. I know I can’t control what she does. I know she has every right to move on. But seeing her with someone else… it gutted me.”
The expensive bouquet went into the trash, but the memory of what I’d seen through the windows of that small Italian restaurant will haunt me forever. I threw away the best thing I had: Ellary, my wife, and there’s no getting her back.
“What did you do?”
“Tossed the flowers I bought for her and walked away. I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable.”
“That sounds like respect.”
“It felt like dying.”
I thought I would crawl into a bottle of whiskey to escape the pain. But I’ve done that before. The pain never lessens. It follows. It consumes. I don’t just want to be better than that; I need to be. For her. For me. For all the people I let down when I betrayed my wife.
Lynn lets that sit for a moment. “What do you want, Jackson? Not what you think you’re allowed to want. What do you actually want?”
I don’t hesitate.
“I want her back,” I whisper. “But I want to earn it. I want to be someone she can trust again. Someone she can look at without remembering the worst day of her life.”
“And if she never comes back?”
I close my eyes, my heart squeezing with pain. “Then I still want to be better. For me. For whoever I become. But God, I hope it’s her.”
“Then keep doing the work. Not for the outcome—for the man you’re becoming.”
I nod, jaw tight, my eyes burning.
Now that I no longer climb into a bottle of whiskey to escape my pain, I hit the gym a few times a week. More when I’ve had a particularly painful session with Lynn.
I’m walking out of the gym after work, my bag on my shoulder and car keys in my hand as I head to my car in the parking lot when I see him.
The man Ellary was on a date with.
I don’t know his name, but I see why she would go out with him. He’s handsome in a conventional nice-guy way, and he has a gym bag in his hand, heading in.
Our eyes meet for a brief moment as he walks toward me.
I tell myself to let him go.
If I stop, I’ll confront him about why he’s dating my wife. He’ll say something I won’t like, and this will end with him getting up from the floor with a black eye and potentially filing charges.
And Ellary?
I don’t even want to know what she would do if she found out I got into a fight with her new boyfriend.
Yet as the distance between us shortens, and I mentally order myself to keep walking, I stop.
Right in front of him.
We stand in silence for a beat too long, the air thick with awkward tension. I don’t want to talk to him. Don’t want to be civil. All I want to do is bury the man who might replace me.
Clearly a little of my antagonism must slip out or show on my face.
His eyes widen slightly, and his gaze dips a little past me, as if wondering what the fuck I’m doing. “Uh… problem?”
I force myself to relax my shoulders and uncurl my fingers from the fist I want to drive into this guy’s face for kissing my wife. I didn’t see him do it, but he’d been leaning toward her in the restaurant.
How the fuck do I play this?
“You know Ellary,” I say.
He blinks. “Was that a question or a statement?”
A demand. That’s how it came out despite trying to soften my tone.
I try for a smile. From the wariness that floods his eyes as he edges half a step back, it’s more akin to a grimace than true amusement.
“A question.”
When I say nothing else, he glances at his watch. “I don’t mean to be rude, but is this important? I need to get to the hospital in an hour.”
“Hospital?”
“I’m a doctor.”
Of course he’s a fucking doctor. I bet he volunteers at soup kitchens, and all puppies and kittens immediately love him.
The thought is as bitter as it is irrational, and I tell myself to rein it in and get to the point.
“Ellary mentioned you two were… seeing each other,” I lie. “Josh, was it?”
“Clayton.” He gives me a small, polite smile. “We went on a date.”
I nod, jaw tight. “Right.” Then I step around him before I follow through with this need to punch him in the face.
Clayton gives me a knowing, thoughtful look. His eyes dip, and he steps to the right, blocking me. “The husband, right?”
I let out a tired sigh. “That obvious, huh?”
A small flicker of amusement crosses his gaze. “You’re wearing a wedding ring, and I can feel your need to warn me away from your wife.”
With a wince, I rub the back of my neck. “I saw you.” I gesture for some strange, inexplicable reason. “At the restaurant.”
It’s his turn to wince. “I’m going to assume that things between you and Ellary are… complicated. And that feelings are still involved.”
“What makes you think that?”
“The wedding ring you’re still wearing.”
Right.
I clear my throat. “Yeah. Um, I’ll let you get back to whatever you were doing.” I just need this conversation to be over.
Clayton doesn’t move. “Look, I’m not trying to step on anything here.”
My chest tightens. “There’s nothing to step on.”
Clayton studies me for a moment. “You still love her.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yeah. I do,” I admit.
He slowly nods, as if I’ve confirmed something he’d already suspected. “She still has feelings for you.”
My breath catches. “What do you mean?”
Clayton pushes his bag up his arm when it slips. “I drove her home after a date that I thought went great. I tried to kiss her. She froze.”
My heart slams against my ribs.
I don’t know whether to punch him for making moves on my wife or get to my knees in gratitude that she didn’t kiss him. I close my eyes for a second, thankful that I might still have a chance with Ellary. When I open them, Clayton is watching me with a kind of quiet understanding.
He continues, voice gentle. “She pulled back. She told me when I asked her out that things were complicated. That she was getting divorced. I thought that meant she wanted the divorce as much as you. Meeting you makes it clear that isn’t the case.
The way the date ended makes me think she’s not ready to end your marriage either. ”
“How’d the date end?”
“Her suggesting I date her sister.”
I blink. “Oh.” I study him for a beat in case he’s joking, but the punchline never comes.
He grins. “Yeah, oh.”
“And, uh, how is it going with her sister?” I ask, pretending to be casual.
Lila is a sous chef and has likely been planning to murder me ever since I hurt Ellie. The only reason she’s kept her distance is that Ellie would want to keep her sister out of jail for cold-blooded murder.
He laughs. “Need me as far away from your wife as possible, huh?”
I find myself grinning back, liking his amiable nature and honesty. “Damn right.”
His smile fades. “I’m not sure yet. Going on a date with her sister soon after I went out with Ellary feels wrong. Maybe one day. But I’m not making any moves on Ellary.”
“So you don’t like her?”
“I didn’t say that. She’s smart, funny, and sweet. But she’s in love with someone else.”
My breath stutters. “She said that?”
“She didn’t have to.”
Me. He’s telling me that Ellie is still in love with me.
Clayton steps around me. “I’m not going to chase someone whose heart is somewhere else. That’s not fair to either of us.”
“Thanks for telling me.”
Clayton gives me a pointed look. “Just don’t waste it.”
I blink. “Don’t waste what?”
“The chance,” he says. “Whatever’s left of it.”
He walks into the gym, the loud music flowing out through the entrance, then the parking lot falls silent again when the doors slam shut behind him.
I stand just outside, my eyes on Clayton as he waves to the woman at the front desk, steps through the security barriers and disappears from view.
My wife went out on a date, and her date thinks she’s still in love with me.
Now what?