Chapter 34
that was part of the problem
Nick
Before I made a move to leave my mother to find Candy, she cleared her throat, and her next words stopped me just as she’d obviously intended to do, but only briefly.
“Instead of interrupting my time, why don’t you speak with the woman who will only make your life more miserable if you continue to grant her the ability to do that?” My mother gave me a bored expression, and I could honestly say that it made the pulse in my neck jump like a flea.
I pointed a finger at her, my jaw turning to stone, but curbed it. “I’m not wasting another second of my breath on you, but I am going to see my wife.” A bitter pill swirled in my stomach.
“Then you better go. I believe I heard her mention something about packing to your housekeeper.”
Her statement was an afterthought, and as much as I’d always stood up for my mother and believed that she only wanted what was for best for me, I wasn’t feeling like she was mother of the year right now.
Why did she let me stand out here having this fruitless conversation when she should’ve opened with that?
This time, I didn’t stop. I only left, picking up speed as I went.
Dread and fear washed over me like I was a truck going through a car wash.
My heart lurched in my throat, not giving up on its incessant thumping.
Candy was packing. How could this be?
I rushed up the stairs, taking them two at a time. I should have gone upstairs first, seen if Candy was home. It would have made the most sense, but I was so blinded by anger for my mother’s poor decision and action, I couldn’t see straight. I hoped by some fucking miracle Candy was still here.
What was I thinking? She had stayed this whole time, wanting to extend the marriage and not divorce quickly. Yeah, for perception purposes. No, it was more than that. Deep down, I think she knew that too.
My stomach pitched as I collided with someone. Candy.
“Someone needs prescription glasses.” Not Candy. Eloise.
I finally peered down, my eyes landing on my sister-in-law. “Did you just leave Candy?”
Eloise pinched the bridge of her nose, shaking her head as she mumbled something under her breath.
Now was not the time to play coy. Speak the hell up.
I wanted to grab hold of her and force her to spit her words out, but I patiently waited for her to get them out at her own pace.
“She’s not here, Nick. She’s already gone. ”
“Gone?” My jaw twitched. I was in no mood for cryptic messages.
“Gone where? Where is my wife, Eloise?” My voice had a rough edge to it, but I couldn’t help it.
I was desperate, spiraling, and needed to know where Candy was.
I couldn’t fix this or clear the damn air if I didn’t know where to find her.
She exhaled. “She’s downstairs waiting for me. We’re going to a hotel. She asked me to come along, and I think she needs me more than she cares to admit right now.”
I swiveled on my heel, about to run down the stairs, consequences be damned. Only, she stopped me, placing a hand on my shoulder, and tried to keep me in place.
“Don’t,” she warned, her eyes flaring with seriousness that I hadn’t seen often from her.
This was the one time she’d chosen to not say something outlandish like gird your loins?
“What do you expect to come from you going down there? She’s made her decision, and while I don’t know everything that’s going on in her head, I know that she’s not in a good headspace. She wants to leave, so let her.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face, frustrated at this entire situation. “Fine,” I said, giving in because I didn’t know what else to do. “You two can stay at a hotel. I’ll talk to Candy tomorrow when she has a clear head.”
“I don’t think you’re understanding.”
What wasn’t I understanding? She was my wife. I was her husband. We had shit to talk about, and tomorrow was Christmas. It wasn’t the most ideal time to flush all this out, but it was still a day. “I get it.”
“No,” she insisted, clearly determined to grind on my last nerve. “She left.”
“I heard you.”
“As in, she’s gone. I don’t think she intends to come back.”
Pause.
“She left you an envelope. It’s on your bed.”
My body began shutting down like a toy that had run out of battery. I’d never felt this way before, but what was left to say? Do?
Every time I breathed, I could feel her.
Every time I closed my eyes, I could see her.
She was everything to me, and she had left. Eloise had pointed it out multiple times. In fact, she had said it so many times, I felt like I had rammed my head into a wall, my skull damaged. Hell, even my heart was damaged.
I’d never considered much about a legal separation, thinking it was what couples did when things weren’t working out.
For some inane reason, I had asked for one.
I had thought it’d be better if we were apart, but if this feeling was what I could have expected, then I had been right to rip up the divorce papers Mel drafted.
“I’m going to go,” Eloise said, my eyes snapping back to her.
I still didn’t know how to react or what to say.
She touched my arm as she brushed past me.
“Take care of yourself.” That was the worst piece of advice I’d ever heard.
Probably because it was useless and did nothing to help my current situation.
A storm had brewed inside me. Now, that the storm had passed, the only thing left in its wake was destruction.
I didn’t know if I could manage to repair everything it had ruined. Frankly, I didn’t know if I wanted to. Why should I?
Everyone made mistakes, and the one that I made was seared into my brain and would probably remain there for all eternity. I should have never told her I was divorcing her.
What.
A.
Fucking.
Mistake.
When I turned around to finally acknowledge Eloise’s parting words, words on the tip of my tongue, she was gone. There was no trace of her. She had vanished as though she was nothing more than a figment of my imagination.
Shaking off those disturbed thoughts, I forced myself to trek into our bedroom, the space lonelier than it had ever been.
Sure, we hadn’t always shared passionate, loving moments in here.
We hadn’t spent every night in each other’s arms, me holding her like I would have wanted.
But it was ours. Our bedroom. In our penthouse. In the city where we had met.
I groaned loudly, my chest heaving. I had been holding my breath ever since I’d seen Candy walk out of that bar. Maybe she didn’t hear me call after her. That was what I kept telling myself… How stupid I had been. Of course she had heard me calling her name.
My gaze shifted around the room before landing on the cream-colored envelope sitting on the top of our bed. A bed that would be worth nothing more than junkyard scrap without her in it, sharing it with me.
I begrudgingly picked up the envelope and sat manspread on the edge of the bed. It sank down as I sat, and Candy’s words popped into my head, reminding me about the potential of an ass mark in the mattress. Who gave a shit about things like that? Candy, that was who. My Candy cane.
On the envelope was my name, scrawled in Candy’s signature handwriting that had a flair all its own—just like her.
As if I could think this was intended for anyone else, but Candy didn’t do anything half-assed.
She double checked things. She did everything I wouldn’t even think to do because I didn’t think it mattered.
I’d taken it all for granted, though, since she’d always done it.
That was the trouble with marriage. It provided false hope that something was certain, but nothing was certain. Things were taken for granted and people stopped caring. Shit changed. In the blink of an eye. In a split second. All of that.
I wasn’t a perfect man. I was flawed.
Heaven knew that I needed Candy in my life.
It had all gotten away from us, and all that I was left with were my inner demons.
Running a hand across her handwriting, I decided it was time to open the envelope.
I felt the unmistakable weight that I knew with certainty were Candy’s wedding rings. Her red diamond engagement ring and the wedding band I had custom designed to match my grandmother’s ring.
I tipped it over, allowing the two rings to spill out and into my other hand. She’d never taken either off of her finger. Yet here they were.
I loved these rings, and when I’d given them to her, I was obsessed with the idea that it was a symbol to every asshole out there that she was taken, off the market, and all mine. Even before I’d proposed, she’d been mine. Just as I’d been hers.
Nothing lasts.
But this was supposed to. We were supposed to.
I clutched them in my hand, making a fist to keep them safe in the palm of it. A searing pain threatened to tear me in half, and I knew that it was my heart.
I couldn’t live without her, and I didn’t want to.
The final thing that remained was a piece of paper that I had yet to read because panic flooded me when I tried.
“Screw it,” I said, throwing caution to the wind and just going for it.
Hesitancy wasn’t something I was interested in.
It wasn’t going to change. Whatever was written on her note would be there for the duration, so I may as well have read the letter.
The words that my wife left for me to feast my eyes on.
It’s for the best.
I hated those words.
Couldn’t stand them. They were just as empty as this bedroom, as this entire house without her in it. It was just as empty as I felt with a giant hole behind my rib cage.
Amazing.
That’s just great.
I was never going to be the same, and Candy thought this was for the best.
I crumbled up the paper into a ball, treating it like the piece of garbage that it was.
It was the only option. There was no way I’d read it over and over again until the pain subsided, and I could actually come around to her way of thinking.
It wasn’t for the best. It wasn’t positive in any way.
It was a horrible, tragic thing that would change the course of our lives.
That wasn’t even dramatic, those were the hard facts, the nasty, indisputable truth.
Just as was the fact that I wasn’t going to fight her on this as much as every particle in my body told me to.
I wanted to text her, to call her, to go to every damn hotel in the city and search for her. But when I found her, I hadn’t a clue what I’d say.
It would have been selfish of me to go against her wishes.
It was clear that this was what she wanted, and while I didn’t think it was for the best, it was how she felt.
This marriage had obviously been painful for her, and if she wanted out, I’d let her out.
It shouldn’t have been a prison sentence.
I never wanted that for her. A life filled with happiness, joy, and laughter—those were all of the things I wanted for her.
So, that was that.
I placed the rings on her nightstand next to our framed wedding photo and the vows I’d recited to Candy on our wedding day and tossed the note in the garbage.
“I vow to be there for you, now and forever. When you’re happy, I want to share in that happiness.
When you’re mad, I want to fight those demons with you.
When you’re sad, I want to kiss away your tears.
Through it all, thick and thin, I’ll be there for you to lean on, to be your punching bag, to be your shoulder to cry on.
You’re everything to me, and I’d do anything to make you happy. ”