Chapter 20
Matthias
The flight here went as well as can be expected, but after getting little sleep on the plane, I’m not sure there’s enough coffee in all of London to get me ready for this meeting with my ex. I catch myself thinking that and have to sadly correct myself.
Jillian, my soon-to-be ex. After today, she damn well better be my ex, or there’s no way my wedding to Ava will happen in eleven days from now.
I gulp down my coffee and then head over to pour myself a second in the hopes it will make me sharp. Dammit, I wish I could sleep on flights like other people can.
Cynthia sets up her folders and papers in front of her on the shiny wood conference table and sips at her cup of coffee. “You ready?”
With a shrug, I say, “I guess, but I’m not sure what I’m supposed to be ready for, to be honest. I don’t understand why this couldn’t have been done with me sitting at my own desk back in New York. Or even better, at my desk in my office at my own damn house.”
She smiles, but it’s a wary smile. “Just try to stay calm. She wants to speak to you in person, and I don’t think blowing up is going to help her to sign the papers today.”
“So pretty much give her whatever she wants?” I ask, confused since that’s what I promised over two weeks ago.
“Yes, but I want to warn you that since this is in person, watch your tone of voice and facial expressions. We want to walk out of here today with her signature, not her storming out because you pissed her off.”
I smile at that description since I don’t think Jillian has ever stormed out of anywhere. She’s far too genteel for that.
“Trust me. I’m Mr. Nice all the way today with a smile on my face and a song in my heart.”
Cynthia rolls her eyes. “Take it easy there, buddy. I don’t want you breaking into some showtune or anything.”
As if I’ve ever broken into song, especially a showtune, in my entire life.
“Got it. Pleasant and nothing more.”
I look past her through the glass doors and see Jillian and her lawyer walking toward the conference room.
She’s still the same woman I remember with long blond hair and that serious expression she always wears.
Dressed in a black skirt and red silk blouse, she reminds me of one night when we went out to dinner right after we met.
It wasn’t a bad night, but other than what she wore, I have little memory of the date or most of our time together.
The doors open, and they walk over to the other side of the conference table.
Her lawyer, a man I guess might be forty, looks flinty, a word my father used to use for anyone who appeared like they wanted to give him a hard time.
He’d hate this guy with his slicked back dark hair and thin lips that seem to have created a single, barely visible line where his mouth should be.
“Good morning. I see you arrived safely,” he says in a refined British accent that nonetheless can’t hide that he’s unhappy about something.
I force myself to smile, even though Jillian hasn’t met my gaze yet since she entered the room. Cynthia stands to shake hands with the attorney, who I hear her call Stanford, and they begin to talk about what they hope to accomplish today.
This all seems unnecessarily complicated. I want a divorce. I doubt Jillian wants to stay married to me. I’m sure this is all some mistake created by having to go through lawyers for the past few weeks.
Still, I do as Cynthia recommended and stay quiet while she and Stanford hash out the preliminaries.
Without anything to do until Jillian looks over at me, I study her and notice she looks thinner now.
Never a heavy person, she seems like she’s lost weight, especially in her face.
Perhaps she’s sick. Maybe that’s why she wanted to meet in person.
Is it that she wants to say goodbye because whatever she has is terminal?
As I wonder all of that, I hear Cynthia say, “Well, we might as well get started. As you wanted, we’re here to talk in person. Is there anything you’d like to say before we get into the meat of the situation?”
Jillian looks over at me for the first time since coming into the conference room and says flatly, “I want to speak to Matthias alone.”
I hope the surprise coursing through my brain isn’t written all over my face. I’ve gotten pretty good at keeping my expressions in check after years of running King Industries, but I didn’t see Jillian wanting to talk only to me right off the bat coming at all.
Looking over at Cynthia, I see she’s unhappy about this turn of events. I think she’s worried I might lose my temper since I’m truly desperate to have this situation done and over with, but she doesn’t have to be concerned. I’m not here to fight with Jillian.
“If my client is okay with that, then I guess I’m fine with it,” she says, looking back at me.
I nod, happy to do whatever’s necessary to get the ball rolling here. “I’m fine with Jillian and me talking alone.”
Packing up her briefcase, Cynthia says, “We’ll be right outside if you need anything.”
I get the sense she wants to tell me to remember how things work, but I’m not worried about losing my shirt in this meeting. I’m happy to give Jillian whatever she wants to get her to divorce me. She can have my actual shirt right off my damn back if that’s the price I have to pay.
Her flinty lawyer and Cynthia shuffle out, and once the glass door to the conference room closes, Jillian sits down at the other end of the table. She has no papers, no notes whatsoever. That surprises me. I figured she’d have a list of some sort.
“Let’s talk, Matthias,” she says in her British accent that always made everything sound so charming.
Even when it wasn’t anything close to that between us.
I take a seat across from her at the conference table in my company’s building, the company I run as CEO, and suddenly, I feel like a visitor and not someone who belongs here.
Something about the icy look in her blue eyes makes me feel like I used to when I’d get called to the principal’s office in high school.
“Why did you want to talk to me in person after all this time?” I ask, genuinely unsure what this is all about.
She inhales sharply and hesitates for a brief moment before answering me. “I wanted to speak to you in person because I have something to say.”
I stop myself from saying that’s obvious since a comment like that isn’t going to help me get what I want out of this meeting. Instead, I remember what Cynthia advised and force a tiny smile.
“Okay. I’m all ears.”
Jillian tilts her chin up slightly and returns my smile. “I spent years thinking of what I’d say to you when you came looking for me again. You see, while you were living your life, I remembered every day that you hadn’t done anything about the divorce you want from me.”
She stops, and I don’t know why, but I feel the need to clear something up about what she just said.
“I wasn’t the one who asked for the divorce, Jillian.
I was back home dealing with my father’s passing, and you took that opportunity to tell me you weren’t interested in remaining married to me anymore. ”
I silently chastise myself for saying that almost immediately. Who said what and when doesn’t matter now. I need to remember that.
Thankfully, her way of preferring to speak plainly, a trait of hers I always admired even if I didn’t appreciate it all the time, means she isn’t insulted. Instead, she nods and seems to relax a bit more after I’ve finished.
“Point taken. I was the one who ended things, and while I didn’t think of it at the time, I do want to say I should have chosen a better time to say what I did. You were dealing with your father’s dying, so I’m sorry for doing it then, Matthias.”
“It’s okay. I understood.”
She looks away for a second or two and then turns to face me again. “I couldn’t keep going knowing how you felt about me, about us.”
“I’m sorry things turned out the way they did, Jillian. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Looking back, I see I had no business marrying anyone. I was trying to please my father, but that was wrong.”
Sadness creeps into her expression when she says, “I didn’t know why you didn’t love me. All I knew was it hurt. That’s why I began with Henry. Not because I cared about him, but because it hurt too much to always be alone, even when you were in the same room with me.”
Now it’s clear why she wanted to meet in person. She’s wanted to say these things to me for years. As much as I hate hearing it, I don’t try to stop her or defend myself. I have no excuse for what I did with her. I shouldn’t have married her knowing I was in love with someone else.
“Are you still with him?” I ask out of curiosity.
She shakes her head and presses her lips together. “No. That ended a long time ago.”
The two of us sit quietly for what feels like forever.
I don’t know what else to say. In many ways, this is harder than writing out a check for millions of dollars.
This is personal, and although I know I have it coming, it doesn’t make it any easier to hear that I hurt her enough that she’s waited five years to tell me about it.
Finally, she breaks the silence with a sentence that stuns me. “You know, I swore I’d make you suffer after your brother told me the real reason why you never cared about me or our marriage. The thing is, though, now that I’m sitting here with you, I can’t do it.”
My brother? Which brother did she talk to? Jillian was never close to anyone in my family.
“What are you talking about?”
“A little while after you left, I ran into your brother Theo here in London. He was on his way to a race, I believe. We had dinner, and he told me the reason you were never really there for our marriage or me was you were in love with someone else. He told me the whole story about how she had been the one you loved for years. I can’t tell you how much that hurt hearing that from him.
To know you married me when you knew you loved someone else felt like a knife to my heart, Matthias. ”
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Why would Theo tell her that? Why would he be so willing to hurt her needlessly?
Closing my eyes, I push those questions aside. They aren’t the point anymore.
“I’m sorry, Jillian. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. Theo was right. I did love Ava when I married you. It was wrong, and I don’t know what else to say but I’m sorry.”
She stands up and walks over to the window that faces the street. Her back to me, she says, “You should have told me. I deserved to know the reason why you never put the effort into our marriage. I deserved a lot more than I got from you, Matthias.”
Nothing she’s saying is wrong. I can’t deny a word of it. All I can do is apologize.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
Then she turns around and she looks like a different person. Like a weight has been lifted off her she’s carried for years.
“I thought that wouldn’t be enough, but you know what, I don’t want to do this anymore. I’ve walked around with all this resentment for five years because I thought I deserved more from you, but now I deserve more from myself. I’ll sign your papers.”
A little surprised, I ask, “Do you want the money or the house?”
Shaking her head, she shrugs. “I don’t need your money. I’ve got my own. As for the house, that would only remind me of the fool I was, and I don’t need that in my life anymore. I’m done beating myself up because you never loved me.”
I let out a heavy sigh, exhausted from this meeting. I feel like I should apologize again, but what good would it do?
Jillian waves for our lawyers to come back in, and as soon as Cynthia slides the papers across the table to her, she signs her name. “There. It’s done.”
Her lawyer says something to her, but she waves him off. “I want nothing more than what I got here today.” Turning to look at me, she says, “Have a nice life, Matthias. Goodbye.”
Without another word, she walks out of the conference room with her lawyer following behind. Cynthia looks at me like she’s impressed and asks what I did to get her to sign.
“No idea. I guess she just wanted to get some things off her chest.”
My attorney’s face lights up. “Great! Let’s go back home. I’ll get this filed immediately.”
As we walk out the glass doors, she congratulates me on winning, but I don’t feel much like someone who’s won anything at this moment.
Another person wanted me to fly thousands of miles just to tell me I was an asshole. She’s carried around that feeling for five years and wanted to ruin my happiness over my actions.
I’m not a winner in this. Just someone who should have been a better man and stood up to my father.
And just when I thought I’d gotten over learning Theo intentionally kept Ava and me apart, I find out he sought out Jillian just to tell her about my being in love with someone else. I don’t know what to do with that knowledge.
All I know is it makes all that happened between him and me hurt once again.