Chapter 41 #3
“I know.”
That pisses me off for some reason. I look up at him. “Then how the fuck are we sitting here dividing our lives like office supplies?”
His jaw tightens. “You know how.”
“Yeah, well, apparently knowing and understanding are two different fucking things.” I lean back and press the heels of my hands into my eyes.
“She doesn’t even want anything, Charles.
Not the house, not my money, not one stupid piece of shit we bought together.
How do you spend eleven years married to someone and walk out wanting none of it? ”
He lets that sit for a second. “Maybe she already took the part she needed.”
I drop my hands. “What the hell does that mean?”
“Her work. Her name. Her life.”
Hits me right in the gut, I’ve to look away. “Jesus Christ.”
Charles exhales and turns back to the window. “You keep asking how this happened like love should’ve prevented it.”
“Shouldn’t it have?”
“No.” His voice is quieter now. “Love was never the disputed fact.”
Dusk has swallowed most of downtown before we finally have terms. Not the decree yet, but close enough that the end no longer feels theoretical.
I sign Grant Mercer at the bottom of the agreement and stare at the name for a second too long. Same signature I put on our marriage license eleven years ago. Same fucking hand. Different piece of paper, completely different life.
Tessa tries steering me toward the private exit, but I’m suddenly too tired to sneak out of another mess I made, so I head straight through the lobby.
The revolving doors barely spit me onto the sidewalk before cameras start going off in my face and questions come flying from every direction.
Do I regret cheating on Laurel? “Yes.” The thing with Sloane? “Yes.” Do I blame her? “No.” Did Laurel know about Magnolia Rain? “No.” Each answer strips another layer of bullshit off the story until there’s not much left to hide behind.
Then a reporter shouts, “Did you knowingly keep the song from your wife?”
Tessa says my name somewhere over my shoulder, sharp and warning, but I’m fresh out of pretending ignorance is different from intent.
I look straight at the microphones. “Yes.”
The sidewalk goes fucking feral. More questions pile on top of one another until one cuts clean through all of them.
“Why?”
Four missed calls on our anniversary. Sloane’s hotel room.
The clearance trail I knew Laurel would never sign off on.
A settlement where she takes what belongs to her and leaves every piece of us sitting on my side of the table.
All the years I treated forgiveness like a standing arrangement.
All the times I pushed one step further, certain there would still be a marriage waiting when I turned around.
The answer has never been complicated. I was just too much of an asshole to say it out loud. “I thought she’d stay.”
The clip is everywhere before the night is over.
My publicist calls it catastrophic. Charles calls it prejudicial.
Tessa sends one text: Well. At least it wasn’t a lie.
Laurel says jack shit. The bridge lender confirms the cure the next afternoon, I dump two more cars into the market to shore up the tour reserve, and on paper my life quits actively trying to kill me.
I’m still filthy rich. Thirty-nine point eight percent of Mercer, touring royalties, investments, a catalogue worth millions even after the corrections, arenas still willing to pack twenty thousand people into seats next month.
Years ago, that kind of money made me feel bulletproof.
Now it reads like an inventory of shit I can afford beside one very long list of things I can’t buy back.
Close to midnight, my phone lights up in the bedroom Laurel used to share with me, and some pathetic part of my brain still jumps straight to her. Wrong. News alert.
Laurel Bellamy spotted leaving Vale House after private studio session.
One photograph loads underneath it. Beckett beside her, his hand at the small of her back. Laurel tipped toward him, laughing at whatever the fuck he just said. Not camera-ready. She looks happy, and that pisses me off so fast my hand starts shaking before I can even pretend I’m above it.
I zoom in like a fucking junkie. Look at his hand.
Her face. The space between them. Every rotten instinct I’ve spent weeks being told to get under control starts running its mouth—call her, call him, get in the car, remind Beckett she is still technically my wife, demand an explanation I’ve got absolutely no right to ask for.
Then I glance up and see my own interview playing soundless across the television.
I THOUGHT SHE’D STAY.
My face under the caption, my confession crawling along the bottom of the screen, Laurel smiling at another man in my hand.
That shuts the whole fucking argument down.
She did stay. Fourteen years. I just kept treating every forgiveness like proof another one would be waiting when I fucked up again.
I didn’t lose Laurel to Beckett Vale. I finally ran out of her.