Chapter 10
ADELINE
When Simon had shown up in Chicago, I’d blocked out my entire day for meetings with him and the lawyers, and I was grateful for it now. Douglas, my grandfather, their lawyers, and Nate came back into the room. Alex trailed in behind them a moment later, but without his son.
I assumed he’d handed him over either to his mother or perhaps just to his secretary, but I felt better knowing a child wouldn’t have to listen to this.
Not that I’d known he was here to begin with, but still.
Those ears were still innocent, and given the life he’d been born into, they wouldn’t stay that way forever.
The kid needed every giggle and every lighthearted moment he could squeeze out of life until responsibility came for him, too.
As the men started talking about my fate like they were hammering out a business deal, I drifted toward the wall of windows.
What they were talking about hardly even concerned me, anyway.
It was a family issue, much more to do with the Morris name and reputation than my life.
Mercifully, I had a pretty decent view to admire this time around while they threw around their numbers and expectations.
As I stared out at the skyline of the city where I’d lived the best year of my life—romantically, anyway—my mind drifted to my girls. They were too young to understand, but this had been my life ever since I’d been a young adult.
I’d been a pawn. A player in a grand game of money and status. However else I might fail them, I would not allow the same thing to happen to them once they got older. As it was, I would now have to figure out how to tell them I was getting married again.
I absolutely refused to have either of them ever end up in this position. I wished I had a way to hit pause right about now, but even though I couldn’t, I would find a way out for them. Somehow.
“The Weatherby’s are insisting,” Simon was saying when I tuned back into the conversation behind me for just a second. “Sons were part of the contract.”
As soon as he said it, I blocked them out again, only vaguely aware of them discussing Louis and his family at length. Crossing my arms, I refocused on the windows and thought back on the four months leading up to my rushed marriage to him.
We’d been acquaintances at the time, running in the same circles and crossing paths occasionally. I couldn’t say that I hadn’t liked him back then. My whole heart had belonged to Zach, of course, but I’d gone into the marriage with Louis believing we were friends.
Sort of, anyway.
I’d at least thought that we could become friends. Optimistic that maybe with time, our relationship would eventually lead to being more than just friends. Like it had with me and Zach.
I’d even agreed to get pregnant soon after our wedding.
Young, naive, and determined to make the best of a bad situation, I’d really thought that I’d get over Zach within those first few months of marriage.
I’d told myself that I had my head screwed on straight and that my feelings would change after I’d said my I-do’s to another man.
At first, the match had seemed like a grand success. Louis was happy that I hadn’t resisted the plans for our wedding, and we started trying for a baby soon after. I was just happy that I’d fallen pregnant as fast as I had.
It’d seemed so important to him and to his family, and I hadn’t wanted to disappoint my own, so when it’d happened, I’d been over the moon. They’d wanted a boy to pass down their name, though. I’d given them Jennifer instead.
As Simon had just pointed out, sons had been part of the contract. Not daughters. Which was why I was now left with nothing but the two people who mattered most, and that had to be enough.
I didn’t even realize I’d blocked out the entire conversation until someone touched my elbow.
When I refocused, Zach was standing beside me, that dark blond hair a little messier now but not disheveled.
He wasn’t the type for disheveled. Instead, it just sort of looked like he’d run his hand through it a few times and then smoothed it over again, getting it almost back to perfect, but not quite.
He flashed me a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, but at least the look in them also wasn’t so cold anymore. “Are you ready?”
I frowned. “To get married again?”
“No.” He bit back another, more uncomfortable smile as he shook his head. “For lunch.”
“Oh, right. Of course.” I cleared my throat and tried to focus past the haze of the memories I’d fallen into. “Starburst Diner, right?”
“There’s a quieter place just down the block,” he said. “Let’s go there instead.”
I nodded. I could do with a quieter place right now, so I followed him to a small restaurant nearby. The lunch rush hadn’t started yet, which meant that we were mostly alone in the dining room. Neither of us spoke at first, a tense silence stretching between us as we sat down and ordered coffee.
The waitress asked about food, but we both turned her down. I sure wasn’t hungry and it didn’t look like he was either. This morning had been too much of a mess and it showed.
“I haven’t made my decision yet, Adeline,” he said after another beat of silence passed between us. “You have time.”
“Do I?”
“Yes,” he said confidently, like it was a fact, but I wasn’t so sure. I knew much too well how these things went, but then he cleared his throat and made a subtle correction. “With me, you do.”
I looked into his eyes from across the table, but all I saw there was sincerity. While I didn’t want to compare him to Louis, my mind automatically launched itself to a memory of the first conversation he and I had had alone after we’d been told about the arrangement.
He’d been sure of himself too, but he’d also only talked about himself. About what he wanted. What he expected.
Zach was looking at me like he wanted me to understand.
“This marriage only benefits our families. Yours in that your family name is safe from continued scandal, and mine, because our company will benefit greatly from what your grandfather is offering. W&S has been trying to go into business with the Morris Company for a very long time.”
He leaned forward then and reached out to take my hand, but stopped himself, his fingers pausing only inches away from mine. “I don’t want you to have to go through this again.”
“You’re one of the only people on the planet who understands the ways of our specific world,” I murmured, but I didn’t know what else to say after that.
“What do you want, Adeline?”
I blinked hard. The question caught me so off guard that I really had to think about it for a minute before I could respond. The one thing that had been mine before I’d married Louis had been art. I loved my job at the gallery and I loved that I was back, even if it had been a struggle personally.
“I want to live without the crushing expectation on my shoulders of my contribution to a family,” I said finally. “I want my girls to be safe and happy, and I want them to know that they’re wanted.”
Deep down, all I really wanted for myself was to be loved. Loved for who I was and not what I could offer, but I bit it back. It sucked not to be able to say it, but I knew it wouldn’t be fair.
Maybe if we really did do this, I also wanted a chance to be loved by him again, but I was the reason he’d had his heart torn out in the first place. I couldn’t put that on him. Not now and not like this. No matter how much it weighed on me.
Zach leaned back in his chair and nodded, turning his head and staring out the window. We lapsed into silence then for a long time, just sitting there together without saying a word. There was almost a decade of things left unsaid brewing between us, but in the end, neither of us took the plunge.
“Alright, then,” he said when he finally spoke again, sliding his wallet out of his pocket and leaving a few bills on the table between us. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you in the interim, but for now, I should get back to work. Duty calls.”