CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
CLARA
CLARA
The next few weeks were a whirlwind of life milestones, like the most painful and productive tornado I’d ever been swept up in.
I moved out of the first penthouse I’d ever lived in.
I separated from my fake-turned-real husband, because he fucking dumped me.
I was accepted into the green space master’s program due to my portfolio work, with classes beginning in two months.
And then I received full custody of Mia from the state of New York, including a promise of back child support for all those years Preston had wriggled out of his financial responsibilities to his daughter.
It was both the best time of my life and the worst time.
I was so much better off than I was three months ago in a financial sense, but I was worse than ever when it came to my heart.
No matter how cold Nash Nightingale had been to me, I still ached for him every day.
And Mia reminded me that she ached for him too.
“When Naff coming?” she asked over breakfast that morning, on day twenty of our separation.
Not that I was counting or felt every second of it inside my broken heart.
Somehow, even the plants seemed depressed that we were back here.
I’d just finished putting everything back into its original place in our apartment, save the exotic plants Nash and I had picked out at the botanical garden.
Those I’d left behind in the greenhouse he’d built for us, partly because they were associated with him now, and partly because they wouldn’t have lasted long in my Lower East Side apartment.
“Not today, sweetie.” I couldn’t even feign warmth in my voice when it came to this question. I had answered it so many times. I stopped thinking of creative responses days ago. I just didn’t have it in me anymore.
“When he come play with me?”
“I don’t know.” It broke my heart every time to hear it, reinforcing the ways in which I’d failed in my personal mission: protect Mia’s heart.
I hadn’t wanted her to get attached, and here we were. Both of us so attached that the day he broke up with me had felt more like an amputation than a relationship ending. And now Mia was drawing pictures of our family constantly: her, Nash, and me. Talk about heartbreak central.
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck you, Nash.
Because despite it all, I only wanted him to show up at my doorstep and say that he’d had a change of heart.
But if he wouldn’t, if he truly didn’t care, then I needed to believe it was for the better. I didn’t have time for men who could walk away from me and Mia. That was for damn sure.
I wasn’t going to be crawling back to him after what he’d said to me. No way, no how.
I could do this alone. I would do this alone.
So that just meant I needed to muddle through the constant questions until Mia and I eventually forgot about Nash in roughly one hundred twenty-five years.
Great.
It didn’t help that nothing felt quite right in my old apartment. I felt like I was facing down a different version of me in these four walls. I had confidence I'd never had before—confidence Nash had helped me find. I had realized dreams I'd never dared to dream.
And I had a broken heart I had no idea how to fix.
So what did you do when a heart was broken?
You took action. And since I was quite fond of my hair and didn’t want to make a drastic change to my appearance, I chose a different type of action.
Obsessive research.
To be honest, it had started with Nash’s permit troubles for the Gideon project.
Something seemed fishy with that permit revocation since the start, so I’d spent free time researching, doing deep dives, and getting lost in internet rabbit holes.
It seemed like a win-win for me—cultivating skills that would only help me in my grad program and future career.
But now that I was back in my apartment, about to go back to school and needing any excuse for a distraction, I found myself playing detective.
My “distraction research” had gone so far as me submitting FOIA requests and investigating the money trail on political campaigns.
I’d certainly never had a breakup affect me like this before.
I resumed attending the community meetings for the Queens neighborhood Nash had been protecting.
By this point, it was habit. I’d been attending these since I entered Nash’s world, and it seemed wrong to stop even though Nash and I were done for.
The Queens project had been hitting mainstream media lately, mostly due to the fight between Cross Developments and Nightly Developments. The media loved this head-to-head battle, especially because there was a lawsuit involved and lots of salacious allegations that made good headlines.
But what was making headlines lately was that Nightly Developments was failing.
Stalled projects. Humiliating blows to their egos in the form of missed deals, investors backing out.
Losses upon losses. It hurt to hear and read, and it was everywhere these days.
If nothing else, I wanted to give Nash and Archer a hug and thank them for sticking to their morals when nobody else at their height seemed to do so.
But a hug didn’t solve problems. A hug didn’t fund their righteous battle. Only capital and cashflow and credit could sustain them. None of which I exactly had access to.
“The Nightingales are fighting for us.” The warbly voice of an elderly lady carried across the showroom floor of a former appliance store that had sat empty for a long time.
Now, on cracked and dusty tiles, it was where the community gathered to stress over their future.
“I spoke with Nash yesterday. Their lawsuit is underway. This will buy us all time.”
“But my eviction notice says I need to be out by the end of August,” one of the younger men in the crowd complained. “That’s no time at all.”
Throughout the months, I’d noticed the invested community members come together, form a chain of command, and create action plans alongside Nash and Archer.
If nothing else, it was inspiring to observe.
These people wanted to stay where they were.
They didn’t want this weird bubble of wealth that Sebastian was promising—or rather, threatening.
“Where are the Nightingales?” someone else piped up.
“I haven’t seen Nash in a couple weeks,” someone nearby muttered. “The other one comes around. He’s like his spokesperson now.”
“I heard he’s sick,” a woman nearby chimed in. That made my stomach clench. Nash was sick? Did he need anything? Did he need me? Then my logical mind kicked in.
Of course he doesn’t need you. You’d have known by now. He’s made himself more than clear. He doesn’t need you, want you, or care about you.
My eyes fluttered shut as I weathered another tsunami of anguish. This heartbreak shit sucked. It was grief, pure and simple. And the fact that it hurt this badly after so little time together made me wonder if I was an idiot.
Or maybe we’d truly been soul mates like I’d suspected. Like I’d felt since day one.
Even thinking ‘since day one’ made tears come to my eyes so I forced myself to focus on other things. Literally anything else. I watched as more people shared news, concerns, frustrations.
Speculation about where Nash was cycled through the crowd. At one point, a middle-aged man turned my way, looking at me over his shoulder.
“You should know, right?” he asked. “You’re his wife! Where’s Nash been?”
The question cut deep. I didn’t know, and that’s what hurt worst of all.
“He’s been sick,” I finally said, my voice sounding weak and distant. “Very ill. He’s so sad to not be here.” This seemed to placate the crowd. An older lady shuffled my way, squeezing my shoulder.
“It’s such a relief to see you attend these,” she said with a grin. “We always believed in Nash and Archer, but for you to be here, it just means a little more.”
I covered her hand with mine, smiling up at her. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that Nash had cast me out, that the entire thing had been a farce, that now I was left brokenhearted and in love with a man who’d truly only wanted me for financial gain.
There was no greater humiliation in my life than that.
So I said nothing.
Back at my apartment, I paid Sarah for her time watching Mia and got Mia ready for bed. We read two stories, I answered fifteen questions about Naff, and then she was ready to lie down.
“I love you, Mommy.” Her sweet little voice in the dimly lit room almost made me cry. “I love Naff too. Tell him.”
“I’ll tell him,” I whispered, before leaving her room.
I poured myself a glass of wine and sank onto the couch, exhausted. My phone buzzed with a message from Zoey.
ZOEY: How’s things?
I hadn’t been able to bring myself to tell Zoey the truth yet. Instead, I’d been dodging her requests to hang out or come to the penthouse. It was easy enough, with how many galas and events I’d attended with Nash. But there was no more hiding it. I needed to come clean with my best friend.
Fully clean.
CLARA: I’ve been better. I didn’t tell you I moved back into my apartment.
ZOEY: Really? What happened to the penthouse?
CLARA: I’m not with Nash anymore.
ZOEY: OMG. What??? Are you home now? I’m coming over immediately.
Tears pressed at my eyes. This is what unconditional love felt like. I needed to remember this in my darkest hours when I was missing Nash’s arms around me and wishing he’d show up.
Twenty minutes later, Zoey appeared with reinforcements—a bottle of expensive red wine and a box of chocolates.
"Okay," she said, settling onto the couch beside me after a long hug that had started me crying. "Tell me everything. And I mean everything.”
“I don’t know where to begin,” I whispered, wiping away spilt tears. “I just know that it was my fault. I didn’t uphold my…end of the bargain, so to speak.”
“Your end of the—” She tutted, swatting my arm. “What does that even mean? This sounds like some medieval shit, Clara. Like you were supposed to birth him three sons and failed or something.”
I laughed despite the tears streaming down my cheeks. “Well…that’s not too far from the truth.”
When she dipped her chin and sent me a look that said what the hell are you talking about, I dove into the truth.
All of it. The hookup four years ago when I had discovered Preston cheating, the white-hot night in the penthouse hotel room, the way he’d discovered my lie the next morning and I’d gone on to watch him give a presentation while burning with humiliation—and sick from my unexpected pregnancy with Mia.
I told her about running into him in April, the way he’d saved me, the immediate sparks.
The way he’d shown up at my former job…and asked me to marry him so he could get an inheritance.
By the end of my story, her jaw was on the floor.
“So you married him for money,” she said, sounding distant.
“I mean, yes. Technically. But I failed to uphold my end of the deal, and he lost the inheritance. So now we’re done.”
Zoey was quiet for a long moment, processing. “Okay, can I be honest? This actually makes perfect sense.”
“How?”
She looked at me with narrowed eyes, waggling her finger in my direction.
“I knew something was fishy with how fast you two got married. But you looked so happy. So genuinely happy. What could I say? But now, the contract part of it makes total sense.” She paused, her gaze drifting away as she tapped her chin.
“What doesn’t make sense is how perfect you two were for each other. ”
“It doesn’t matter now. He walked away.”
She frowned, wrapping an arm around me. “I’m sorry, babe. Let’s just hope he’s rotting in his own misery right now. Just…festering in unhappiness.”
“Crying himself to sleep each night,” I added.
“And crying into his Cheerios in the morning,” she said with a giggle.
“And maybe all his…plants die,” I blurted, then sighed. “No, I don’t wish that on him. Also, I took all my plants. Though I did leave the ones that need to stay in the greenhouse.”
“Yeah, that’s not gonna work.” She patted my knee as she took a sip of her wine. “So are you guys going to divorce now?”
I heaved a sigh. “I don’t know. I can’t bring myself to ask him. And he hasn’t reached out. So I guess we’ll just…stay married until one of us can finally speak to the other.”
“We should have a divorce party when it’s finalized,” Zoey suggested. “Don’t women do that nowadays?"
"I guess I'll find out," I said glumly before taking another sip of my wine. “I feel like an idiot saying it but…I really loved that man.”
“It looked like he loved you too,” Zoey said. “In fact, I was positive he loved you. The only thing that tipped me off was how fast you two moved. But it also made sense in a way. You two just seemed so…right for each other.”
I sighed, feeling more of that heartbreak kicking back to life inside me. “It shouldn’t feel this bad still. But I feel like I’ll never get over him.”
Zoey wrapped her arm around me again and pulled me into a hug. “Oh, honey. I promise it’ll get easier.”
“And I feel like an idiot because I can’t stop being invested in him and his projects,” I complained.
“I loved being in his world, working alongside him, helping the people he served. I still go to the community meetings in Queens. I’ve been spending the last several weeks researching this stupid permit issue because I believe in what he does and I want to see him succeed. ”
Zoey blinked. “Does he know you’ve been doing this?”
“No! I’ve just been spiraling off into my own internet rabbit hole. I’m really getting somewhere too. It’s all been fascinating research, I’ll be honest. But sometimes I look up and realize how far I’ve taken it and wonder if this is just me being too attached.”
“Do you think your research will help him?” she asked. “Or are you just using it as a way to feel close to him?”
My insides sank, because I knew Zoey was zeroing in on the thing I didn’t want to admit. “I think it’s a little of both. And I hate to admit that.”
And the longer Zoey sat with me that night, the more I realized something else I didn’t want to admit.
Nash had given up on us.
If he wanted to be here, to make nice, he would have. He was a man of action. And I…
Well, at this point, I was just a heartbroken single mom.
Back to square one.