9. Ellie
— · —
Ellie
If there was a manual on how to divorce your husband, I didn’t think falling apart and crying into his chest for a straight hour in public was one of the steps.
I glanced out the window. He’d left hours ago and sent a few texts to check on me, but he hadn’t given me any idea what he was doing. Hell, maybe he’d flown home and was drawing up the divorce papers.
Which should have made me happy. It was what I wanted.
Except the damn man was supposed to be bringing me something to eat.
I practically haunted the apartment all day, wandering from one room to the next as I waffled between the fear that he’d left me, the joy that he’d left me, and the humiliation that I’d broken down like that.
By the time someone knocked on the door, I was more than a fucking mess.
Hoping it was maintenance to finally take a look at why my dishwasher wasn’t working, I yanked open the door and stopped dead.
It was not maintenance.
Gideon stood in the hallway, holding a bouquet of flowers that had definitely seen better days and wearing a suit that did not belong to him.
I blinked.
The suit was cheap, off-the-rack in the worst way, the fabric pulling slightly at his shoulders, the pants a hair too short. The shirt at his throat was a barely-there white, more gray from too many washes.
He looked like a billionaire who’d wandered into a community theater production and borrowed something from the costume rack.
“Um…”
“Your neighbor let me change at her place,” he said, a little breathless. “Apparently, this belonged to her late husband.”
My gaze dropped automatically to the suit again.
The flowers.
He’d even shaved.
“Are you” - I narrowed my eyes - “going somewhere?”
He didn’t flinch. “I was hoping I might be.” He held the flowers out, suddenly looking uncertain. “With you.”
“What?”
“A date, Ellie. I’d like to take you to dinner.”
The flowers rustled slightly as his fingers tightened around them.
Up close, I could see they weren’t the perfectly sculpted arrangements he could have had delivered to the penthouse with a single call.
The bouquet was a little uneven - a mix of carnations, daisies, and one slightly droopy rose.
There was a smear of dirt on the green paper wrapping them, like whoever had put them together had been in a hurry.
“Where did you even get those?” I asked, stalling.
“Corner shop,” he said. “The girl behind the counter said these were the ‘least depressing’ ones.”
Chuckling, I slowly reached out and accepted them. “They’re beautiful. But, Gideon, a date seems…”
“I know you think it’s too late for a date, but I’m hoping for a chance to prove you wrong. I told you that I was going to fight for us, and I meant it. And I’m not above asking that you give me a chance for our daughter.”
My eyes widened. “Are you trying to fight dirty, Gideon?”
“How many times did you wish that you’d even had a chance to know your father?
This is not that. I’ll be in her life no matter what, but I want to be in her life with you.
And it’s not just about her. It’s about you and us.
My joy rises and sets with you, Ellie, and I lost sight of that. Please give me a chance to correct it.”
He did have a point. My father died of a sudden heart attack before I was even born, and one of my first memories was meeting a friend’s father and wondering why I didn’t have one.
There was a picture of him on the mantel, but since I lost my mother to a car accident when I was ten and my grandmother didn’t really know my father, I never got to learn much about him.
Unsure, I sucked in my lower lip. I truly didn’t know if I believed him.
Not that he could change, but that he wanted to change for me and not just because I was carrying his child.
But as a certain sarcastic widow had pointed out a few days before Gideon even arrived, I’d never really voiced how unhappy I was.
I’d made some comments every now and then, but we had never sat down and talked about it.
I’d just quietly taken what I could until I couldn’t anymore.
So maybe this was our chance to sit and talk.
“You’re really going to take me out in a dead man’s suit?”
“I hit a few clothing stores on the way here, but nothing fit, so yes.”
Well, if Mrs. Lowe’s husband really did have Gideon’s cut, it was no wonder she was helping him out. “Then I don’t feel bad that I only have one dress with me, and it’s not exactly the dress of a billionaire’s wife.”
He smiled then, slow and devastating and entirely too soft. “You look beautiful no matter what you wear, and tonight, it’s not about the money. It’s just about us.”
“I need a few minutes to clean myself up and change.”
“I’ll be right here.”
The wait turned out to be longer than I’d expected. The host took our name and told us it would be at least forty minutes.
“Forty minutes,” I sighed when we stepped back outside. “Maybe this was a bad idea. I can eat my own hand in twenty.”
Still, it had been cute to watch him reach for his wallet, grimace, and smile politely at the hostess.
He really was trying to make this a regular date night.
When we’d first started dating, I had no idea how much money he really had.
I knew he was well-off because of his clothes and car, but I never even saw his house until the enormous diamond ring was on my finger.
“Do you remember when I took you to the Crab Shack for a date, my treat, and it took us two hours to get a table?”
“A memorable evening. It was the first time I’d had to wait for anything, and the first time I’d been given a bib with my dinner,” he laughed. “It’s one of my favorite memories. I still have the photo they took after we finished.”
That surprised me. “You do?”
“Of course I do. It’s framed in my office. You look adorable in that little crab hat.”
“Gideon.” I frowned. “I’ve been in your office. I would have noticed that photo.”
“Not the office in the house, sweetheart. The one at work. It sits on my desk. Hold on.” Grabbing his phone, he fiddled with it for a bit and then showed it to me.
“I took this a few months ago when Rogers accidentally nicked the desk, trying to show off his knife skills. I sent it to him, and he immediately sent it to everyone in the office because he was so enamored by the photo.”
Sure enough, there we were. One of several photos on his otherwise clean and minimal desk.
Every photo was of us.
I’d only been to his office a few times because Victoria had warned me that he was busy and didn’t like to be bothered during the day. I was usually just dropping something off for him and was in too much of a hurry to leave, so I never looked at the photos.
My stomach growled.
“Hold that thought.” He gave me a quick kiss on the cheek and then walked back inside while I still held his phone.
He reappeared a minute later with a paper bag in one hand and two bottles of water in the other.
“I come bearing tribute,” he said, holding the bag out.
I peered inside. Breadsticks. Warm ones. The smell of garlic and butter hit me like a physical thing.
My stomach made a sound I was pretty sure was embarrassing.
“Where did you get these?” I demanded.
“I told the hostess that you were pregnant and hungry, and she immediately took care of things. I even got a big smile for taking care of you. The bar is really low for men, isn’t it?”
“It really is,” I laughed. “This was very sweet. I’ll even share a breadstick with you while we wait.”
We sat on a low brick ledge near the restaurant, sharing breadsticks out of the bag. Grease soaked into the napkins. Seeing him like this was almost absurd.
“Are you going to tell me what you’ve been doing all day?”
“I had planned on going straight back to you. I hope you didn’t feel like I abandoned you, but I figured you kept asking for space, and I wasn’t giving it to you, and things were so overwhelming.
” He gave me a soft smile. “And I wanted to see this place you’d called home.
This charming little town that I’m going to have to call home if you refuse to leave. ”
I nearly choked on the breadstick. “Excuse me?”
“My home is where you are, Ellie, and it’s not so bad. I’ll have to buy the apartments, of course, and fix them up. You won’t live there, but we can’t abandon your lovely neighbor. We’ll find a home. Something fit for raising our princess.”
“You would live here?”
He took my hand. “I fucked up the first time, Ellie, so this time, you’re running the show. We do it your way.”
“Jesus Christ, Montgomery? Is that you?”
My head whipped around as an unfamiliar man sauntered up.
He wore a pair of khakis with a crisp shirt so white it was practically blinding in the dying sun.
Whipping off a pair of aviators, he took Gideon in with disbelief.
Next to him, a lovely redhead in a pink summer dress waltzed on high heels.
Stiffening, I didn’t dare look at Gideon.
I didn’t know who they were, but they were people from his world. What the hell were they doing here, and what was Gideon going to do knowing that he was spotted in the world’s cheapest and rattiest suit outside a low-grade steakhouse?
With his free arm, he wrapped it around my shoulders and placed a kiss on my temple.
Nothing else about his body language changed as he stood and held out his hand.
“Jason. I certainly didn’t expect to see you so far away from the city.
And here I thought you were glued to your desk.
This is my lovely wife, Ellie. Ellie, this is Jason, an old acquaintance from college.
And…” His voice trailed off as he looked at the redhead.
She opened her mouth, but Jason didn’t let her speak.
“An old acquaintance? We nearly got expelled together!” he guffawed.
“Oh, those were good times. No, I was driving back from the coast when my appetite got the best of me. Heard this was the best steakhouse in town, but the wait? What’s it going to cost me to get in? ”
“I wouldn’t know,” Gideon said with a shrug. “I’m waiting just like everyone else.”
“Jesus, Gideon, life’s too short for that shit. Let me get a table for the two of us. We can catch up.”
“That’s kind of you, but I’m having date night with my wife.”
I couldn’t help but relax at those words, but Jason looked even more perplexed.
“Shit, she’s your wife. What the hell is date night for, am I right?
C’mon, sweetheart, Gideon and I are old friends.
Surely, you wouldn’t begrudge us catching up like this.
You and Molly can sit at the bar and have some colorful drinks and a salad.
On me, and by the state of that suit, Gideon, I’d say that you need it. ”
He started walking away as if it were a done deal, and Gideon didn’t move. “Jason, it was good to see you again. Have your people call my people, and we’ll get together sometime,” he said evenly. “Like I said, tonight, it’s all about my wife. We’re celebrating some good news.”
“Celebrating? Here?” Jason looked around and frowned. “You’re shitting me, right? What are you doing here anyway? Visiting in-laws or something?”
“A little vacation,” Gideon said and grinned at me. “Or maybe some house hunting. You never know where life is going to take you. Have a good night, Jason. And, Molly, it was nice to meet you.”
Jason opened his mouth, but the cracked little buzzer went off, and Gideon pulled it out of his pocket. “Look at that. Wait’s over.”
He didn’t miss a beat as he walked me inside, and I glanced over my shoulder. “It was nice meeting you,” I called out, which only seemed to piss Jason off even more. “Are you all right?”
“I’m perfect, Ellie. Honestly, even running into an asshole like him couldn’t dampen my spark tonight, and that’s all because of you. I hope he didn’t make you too uncomfortable, and I really do hope that I didn’t treat you the way he treated his companion.”
“It wasn’t that bad,” I whispered.
Stopping short, he turned before the door and stared down at me. “Oh, yeah. I’m a moron. It’s all right. I’m going to spend the rest of my life making it up to you.”
When I smiled, I felt it in my chest. There was a little spark of joy that felt familiar. The kind of spark that he used to give me every day. “Tonight is a good start.”
Dinner ran late. Hours of trying practically everything on the menu and laughing.
We talked. Serious conversations about what went wrong and walks down memory lane.
Stories about the time he’d shown up outside the library in a T-shirt and sweatpants, hair mussed, eyes soft.
He shoved a bag of fries into my hands before I could argue, then drove us to a twenty-four-hour drive-thru and ordered half the menu.
The next night, he showed up again at the library, only to drag me into the stacks and act out one of my fantasies. When I told him that I regretted never finishing nursing school, he actually listened instead of simply pointing out that I never had to work again.
I couldn’t predict an entire future based on one night, but it wasn’t just about the effort he’d put in. It was also about how he seemed to relax and enjoy himself, like when we first met.
After we walked back to my place, I was practically drunk on euphoria.
At my door, he took my hands and kissed me softly.
“I found a hotel nearby. I want to stay there, Ellie, until you don’t feel like I’m taking up all your space.
I want to give you plenty of time to think.
I worry that I didn’t do that the first time.
We burned so hot and so fast, and I didn’t dare slow down because I was so worried you’d realize that you were too fucking good for me, but I won’t make that mistake again. Every step will be your choice.
“So maybe you’ll have breakfast with me tomorrow?” he said and kissed my cheek softly.
I caught the sleeve of his shirt. “Maybe I’m not as ready for that space as I thought,” I whispered. “Come inside, Gideon.”