Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
JOSH
The woman he had married bustled through the kitchen they had shared for less than thirteen months. Cupboard doors swooshed open and snicked closed in the search of a missing tea sachet, the soft soles of her house slippers and frilly apron a stark contrast to her couture blazer. Holt Renfrew, if he had to guess.
The blazer, not the apron.
She’d never worn an apron before. Maybe it was an escalation of her desire to keep an immaculate space. Maybe it was an attempt to woo him with her profound domesticity. He wondered if she knew neither option was going over the way she intended.
“Mom brought back a whole case when she got back from Hong Kong last month,” she said, going back to the first cupboard she’d opened. The box sat directly in her sightline, eyes passing over it twice more before her hand shot out to pull two sachets from the box. “You’ll love it.”
Probably not. They’d never liked the same tea. She knew that. Or had, at one time. Now was not the time to bring that up again.
“Thank you,” he said, and took a tiny sip out of politeness.
Even when they lived together, they had always been unfailingly polite with each other. Voices level, tone civilized. Even the night he had moved out, Vivian had sat at this table with her hands folded, mouth open and silent tears streaming down her face.
For the first time in years, he leaned into the memory instead of shutting it out.
The clanking of her spoon against her teacup filled the room. Perfect 4/4 time. He could have set a metronome to it.
“You didn’t bring anything with you,” she said, eyes on her cup.
“No.” No sense in bringing the divorce documents. Not today. “I just wanted to talk.”
“About what?”
He hated how hopeful her voice sounded.
“About you.” The words stuck behind his gritted teeth, and he forced his jaw to unclench. “What do you want, Viv?”
“Like something to go with the tea?” She jumped to her feet. “I have?—”
“No. What do you want ?”
Her breath escaped in a quick ha . She dropped to her chair, inching her hand across the table to him. The faintly cloying scent of her perfume wafted across the table. “I want you.”
Anything he said would hurt. It was why he’d avoided it so long. From hurting her. “You don’t want me. You want the idea of me.”
“That’s not true,” she rushed in. “I want us to have our life back. We can pick up where we left off. You just needed to get that”—she twitched her head over her shoulder, like the life he had been living on his own the past three years was a longer than anticipated trip to the grocery store, like seeing him embracing Cass was an awkward elevator ride in close quarters—“out of your system.” She slipped her fingers under his. “It’s all I ever wanted.”
He didn’t avoid her gaze. “Tell me what that is. ”
“It’s …” She stalled. “Us. Having our life together.”
There it was. Hours in therapy together and years apart, and still they talked past each other. Josh left his hand where it was but didn’t return her squeeze.
“We want different lives. You want a life that I can’t give you,” he said softly. “You want kids and a house in the burbs and to have dinner parties with the neighbours. You want summer vacations in Europe and Christmas vacations in Hawaii. You want a husband with a regular job to make all that happen. Tell me I’m wrong.”
“We can do all those things,” she said, the tips of her fine brows drawing up, and the pleading in her voice cut his heart.
“That is perfect. For you. But I don’t want that.” Josh blew out a breath and plowed ahead. “I tried to be that for you, but every minute I was behind a desk, billing hours, sucking up to asshole clients, I wanted to die. When I was assigned to work with Stephen on that film that needed the contract renegotiated, I felt myself come alive for the first time in years.”
“I can make you feel alive.”
Josh closed his eyes. The least he could do was give her patience. “Why did you come to Calgary?”
“Grace said you sounded lonely,” Vivian whispered. “I thought that if I came to you, you’d finally see how much you missed me.”
If she wasn’t bringing up the fact that he’d had his hands on another woman, she was doing it on purpose.
Josh didn’t know if this was cruel or not. “I wasn’t lonely. I was with Cass.”
A flush of colour rose up her neck and cheeks, and her chest rose and fell like the fault line of an earthquake in the aftershocks.
“None of this is your fault, Vivi. I changed, and I’m not changing back. I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I didn’t know myself better before we got married. I’m sorry that I acted shamefully in your family’s eyes. But most of all, I’m sorry that I hurt you, and I’m sorry I can’t love you the way you deserve. And I’m so, so sorry I was too chickenshit to say all this years ago. But now, please, I’m begging you, let me go.”
The facade of her control slid away, and the edges of her face crumpled. “I don’t know how,” she said, voice wobbling, and Josh’s guilt tore a hole in his chest.
“Yes, you do.”
Vivian stared down at where her fingers grasped at his, the gesture unreturned. “You never looked at me the way you look at her,” she whispered.
He hadn’t. He thought he might have, early in their dating, when she went with him to movies and the theatre, before she admitted sitting that long made her bored and restless. Not that he had tried to enjoy her passions, either.
Not in their engagement photos, styled to look like they had been caught frolicking in a park he’d never been to, reclining on a picnic blanket they’d bought for the occasion, her giant engagement ring the focal point in every shot. Not in the formal wedding photos he could see from where he sat, on the meticulously curated gallery wall in the living room, still up years later.
“You are a special woman, and you are going to make someone a wonderful wife and mother. I want that for you, but that won’t be with me.” He withdrew his hands from hers, cupping the tea he wouldn’t drink in the home that was never really his. “And until you let me go, you won’t be able to find the life you deserve.”
A resigned stillness replaced the hope in her eyes, shining with tears that didn’t fall. Her mouth wavered at the corners, but her voice held firm. “I suppose there’s nothing left to say.”
“Say that again?”
“Doesn’t have to be much. A few hours.”
“I think this is a great idea.” Stephen rubbed a hand over the back of his hair to flatten the unruly edges. “I’ve got a list for you.”
Brynne nodded from her end of the Zoom call, and Terry nodded beside him. Everyone was nodding.
All it took for everyone to agree was to make Cass the topic of conversation.
“Think Mrs. Westwood will be okay with this?” Terry asked. “It’s going to cost us.”
“I’ve got her full backing.”
“Let me get this straight,” Dawson said, staring through the laptop screen in disbelief. “You want me to record a video about how wonderful I think she is, so that you can try and win her back?”
“It’s not so I can win her back.” Not only that. Josh furrowed his brow and pressed on. “It’s a featurette on the importance of costume design and the mood of Sirius Darker . If it wasn’t for Cass, you two would have looked like late nineties superheroes in yellow spandex or some shit.”
“For which I am eternally grateful,” Brynne said.
“I want everyone to know how important she is to this movie.” Josh continued, “How wonderful everyone thinks she is. How brilliant and talented and kind and?—”
“We get it,” Brynne cut in, but she smiled.
Josh shot her a quelling glare, and her grin widened in response. “How we couldn’t have done this without her,” he finished. “It’ll make her really happy.”
Dawson leaned away from the screen and ran a hand through the blond locks he was already growing out for his next movie. “Alright, for Cassidy, then.”
Josh gave a curt nod. Everyone else he knew would be a slam dunk. Getting Big D on board was the second biggest hurdle.
The biggest hurdle glared at him from across the table. “You hurt her again, I’ll cut off your dick and put it in a jar on my mantle,” Libby said .
Dawson put his hand up. “If it comes to a duel, I’m Libby’s second.”
“Third,” Stephen said.
“Fourth,” Terry piped up.
Josh nodded grimly. He wouldn’t have it any other way. “Noted. Now, I need help getting her interview portions done without her suspecting …”