Chapter 32
JACQUELINE
Miranda topped off my glass, lifting the wine bottle with a little flourish when she was done. “Now that’s what we call a necessary refill.”
I snorted, already a few glasses in and genuinely starting to wonder if this wine might be able to solve all my problems if I just kept drinking. “It wasn’t just necessary. It was critical.”
She grinned, clearly pleased with herself as she tucked one leg under her on the couch. Tonight, she wasn’t in boss behavior mode at all. We were firmly in girls’ night with tea to spill territory and I was tipsy enough to forget that technically she signed my paychecks.
“Alright,” she said as she leaned back. “It’s your turn now. We’ve covered my last couple of dating disasters, who’s boinking who at the office, and even which of our esteemed colleagues in the city have a knack for getting it on with clients. I’d say your stay of execution is over.”
I groaned. “Do we have to?”
“Yes.” She pointed at me with her glass. “I haven’t seen you all week. You’ve been sighing like a Victorian widow every twenty minutes and I deserve answers.”
“A Victorian widow?” I repeated blandly. “Should I feel scandalized?”
She grinned again. “Only if Jesse Westwood has been scandalizing you.”
I laughed, but just hearing his name made my heart ache like she’d stuck a blunt blade right into the center of it. “I’m blaming you for this when I wake up tomorrow and realize I overshared and ruined my professional image.”
“Please,” Miranda waved me off. “I like you. We’re friends now. You’d have to commit tax fraud and try to blame it on me for that to change.”
“You came up with that astonishingly fast,” I said. “I feel like there’s a story there.”
She sent me a coy smile. “Maybe I’ll tell it. After you tell me yours.”
I took a breath, wondering someplace in the back of my mind if I should truly be letting my boss in like this, but then, I started talking. Miranda was a girls’ girl and she wanted me to dish. Plus, she’d already proven herself a friend in the time since I’d met her.
At some point, I was going to have to either accept that or draw the line completely, and since I had not done that, it seemed pointless to start now.
Once I started, the words came out easier than I’d expected, perhaps because she wasn’t judging or maybe because I was a little drunk, but either way, I finally talked to someone about it.
“Okay, so I’ve already told you about Thomas,” I said. “He’s the absolute villain in my origin story, honestly, but then there’s Jesse now as well.”
Miranda leaned forward. “Ah, yes. One can always count on some Westwood drama to thicken the plot.”
I rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t stop the small smile that tugged at the corners of my mouth when I thought about him. “Jesse is that guy, you know? That one we all wanted to end up with when we were younger.”
“Hot, rich, obsessed with you, and well hung?” she guessed, pressing a hand to her chest and pretending to swoon. “I think I know I exactly what you’re talking about.”
I felt my cheeks flush, but she wasn’t wrong on any of those counts.
“Well, yes, but he’s also so much more than that.
He says whatever he wants without thinking about it, which should be annoying, but somehow isn’t.
I don’t know. It also just felt like he really saw me.
It’s weird, so I can’t really explain it, but I’m not used to that. ”
Her features softened. “It sounds like he really likes you.”
I let out a breath, staring at the ceiling for a second before looking back at her. “I think he did, yeah.”
She frowned. “He did, as in, past tense? What on earth happened?”
I laughed, but there wasn’t much humor in it this time. “I have a type, apparently. It’s men who don’t see me as anything more than a shiny object to keep on hand.”
Miranda’s eyebrows shot up. “That can’t be right.”
“Oh, but it is. Thomas had his career, his world, and his people. I just had to fit into it while it was convenient.” I shrugged, trying to make it seem smaller than it’d felt, but from the look on her face, she wasn’t buying it.
“In Jesse’s case, he might not want it to be that way, but his world is even bigger.
The family has their expectations of him and their opinions are loud.
It’s all just seemed so very consuming.”
She arched an eyebrow at me, quiet for a beat before she shook her head. “I don’t believe that about him.”
I frowned. “What?”
“I’m sorry, babe, but I don’t think he was with you just because you were convenient or his family expected something.
I saw those pictures of you two, and the way he looked at you?
” A dreamy smile spread on her lips. “Trust me, I’ve seen men treat women like accessories. Jesse didn’t look at you like that.”
I swallowed hard but finally nodded my agreement. “That’s why it stings so badly. You’re right about him, but not the family. To them, I was convenient. Shiny. The perfect package to serve up to the press. I almost went along with it too, because I do understand it, which makes it even worse.”
“So Jesse’s not the bad guy, but neither is his family?”
“Something like that. I think part of it is…” I trailed off, searching for the words. “I grew up watching my parents fight about this stuff.”
Miranda tilted her head, still frowning at me. “What stuff?”
“My mom’s family,” I said. “The Westwoods. We weren’t poor or anything. I suppose we were comfortable enough, but we were nothing like them and it was always just sort of there, this looming shadow we couldn’t get rid of over our lives.”
I stared down into my glass again, trying to work it out for myself by speaking it out loud to her. “When my great-grandfather passed away, they went into a full-blown meltdown over the inheritance.”
Miranda winced. “I wish I could say I was surprised, but unfortunately, I’m not really.”
“I don’t think many people were, but what did come as a surprise was that they even took my grandparents to court and fought tooth and nail to prevent them from receiving their share of his estate.”
She scoffed. “What? There is such a thing as testamentary freedom. You can leave your stuff to whoever you want. I mean, it’s subject to a few limitations, but was the will not properly executed or something?”
“No, it was. The issue wasn’t that or incapacity,” I said. “Unfortunately, all the primary vehicles for exercising his testamentary freedom, all the trusts and whatnot, were conditional upon certain clauses of his children’s marriage contracts being fulfilled.”
“So, what?” she asked. “If you weren’t married, you couldn’t inherit? You said they took your grandparents to court though, not just your grandfather, so presumably, they were still married.”
I nodded. “Yes, but my grandfather’s brothers argued that the spirit of that clause in the will was to ensure the family’s legacy.
My grandparents were still married, sure, but they’d failed to produce an heir.
According to my great-uncles, that meant they’d violated the spirit of the clause and, as such, they couldn’t inherit. ”
Miranda stared at me slack-jawed and clearly horrified, all traces of humor vanishing from her eyes. “They did produce an heir, though. Your mother.”
“I know, but they didn’t technically produce her, did they?
They adopted her and the family never considered her as one of them,” I said, forcing a small, crooked smile.
“So forgive me if I don’t see a future where that very same family welcomes me with open arms. They blocked my grandparents out of a hefty inheritance like it was nothing. Like we were nothing.”
I didn’t add this, but that inheritance would’ve changed everything for us. Not in a yacht-and-champagne way, but in a my mom doesn’t cry over bills at midnight way.
“Maybe what’s happening to the Westwood name at large right now is a reckoning,” I said. “The media circus and the articles tearing them apart piece by piece. Maybe they’re finally getting what they deserve.”
Miranda’s cottage suddenly fell completely quiet, especially since there wasn’t even ambient or traffic noise filtering in from outside.
It was tucked into a small, touristy town outside the city, where the very air itself smelled faintly like baked bread and overpriced candles.
We’d gone for a walk earlier and the streets were lined with shops that closed at five like it was still the eighties.
She’d invited me here out of the blue this afternoon and I’d said yes because I’d desperately needed to get away. I was now quickly learning that no matter how far a person ran, our troubles—and our heartache—tended to come with us.
Miranda stared at me quietly for several very long moments before she shook her head.
“Okay, look, I see where you’re coming from with the whole Westwoods at large thing.
It seems like the family on the other side of the pond are terrible fucking people, but nothing I’ve seen from the American Westwoods suggest they’ve got the same mindset. Just something to think about.”
I smiled at her and nodded, but neither of our opinions made much of a difference. The fact of the matter was that family would always come first with the Westwoods and I would never be a part of that.
No matter how deeply I understood their current plight and their desire to protect Zach, I could not lose myself to people who would never care about me. They’d burn down the world for each other, but I wasn’t picking up a torch knowing none of them would ever even light a match for me.
Much later in the evening, Miranda had gone to bed and I was alone in the living room, refilling my glass every so often like it would bring about meaningful change in my life.
Rationally, I knew the only change it would bring was a headache and post-party guilt in the morning, but nothing else was going to change my circumstances right now either.
Everything kept circling back to Jesse. I set my glass down and sighed, staring out the window at the dark stretch of nothing beyond the porch light and missing him as acutely as if he’d been a limb.
I’d thought that maybe putting physical distance between us would help.
I’d told myself that a weekend away would clear my head and help me reset.
Perhaps even remind me that I’d had a life before him.
It had, however, not done any of those things.
When I realized there were tears stinging my eyes again, I scoffed and swiped them away with the back of my hand. Enough, Jacque. That’s quite enough.
I stood up immediately and took my once again empty glass to the little kitchenette. I rinsed it and headed to my bedroom, intent on putting yet another day without him to bed. Surely, it will get easier as time passes. It has to.
Unfortunately, my phone had been charging on the nightstand, and as soon as I picked it up, I saw a missed call waiting for me. From none other than Jesse Westwood.
My heart did this stupid, traitorous little leap. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get ahold of me, but so far, I hadn’t picked up because I honestly didn’t know what to say. I still like you, but your entire family structure is fundamentally incompatible with my existence?
A tipsy giggle slid out of me at the thought, but as the screen faded to black, discomfort instead of amusement took up residence in my chest. Along with regret and longing, it pushed me to return the call.
Perhaps if I could just hear his voice one last time, I’d get closure. Probably not, but it was bloody hard to get over someone I was in love with while knowing that he still had feelings for me too.
Technically, nothing had even happened between the two of us to trigger our split. We were still the same two people who’d been sharing a bed every night and waking up together every morning, deliriously happy while it lasted.
But it was suddenly over and dealing with that had been a damn challenge and a half.
Finally, I decided to just do it. The wine had obliterated my inhibitions and I missed him something awful, so I hit call and pressed the phone to my ear.
He didn’t pick up.
Maybe it’s for the best.
The line rang and rang until I got his voicemail, but instead of leaving a message, I simply let my hand drop to my side and then I curled up in my bed. Tomorrow was another day, and perhaps even the day when I’d finally be able to start putting our not-so-fake relationship behind me.