CHAPTER FOUR
COURTNEY
SIX YEARS AGO
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I feel like all my dreams are coming true.
I’m married!
To the most amazing man.
One minute I was waitressing on Seventh Avenue, the next I’m modeling for Kate Spade.
All I had to do was pose in a handful of positions with their gorgeous handbags and I got to take one home.
Which I was carrying when our producer and two of the other lovely models and I were walking through the lobby when we bumped into Adam Blackmore.
I knew who he was.
The successful tech mogul was often in the media, and people either loved him or hated him. One thing everyone agreed on was his looks. Adam is gorgeous, and while he’s almost ten years my senior, I still thought he was very handsome.
When he smiled at me, I blushed. I’d never met anyone with that much money. I mean, a billion dollars.
I secretly think that’s why he invited us to join him for drinks. So, we all rode in the elevator up to the rooftop garden bar, which had amazing views and fairy lights. We were treated like celebrities while food and wine flowed.
The night was growing late, but I was in no hurry to go home. I’d been in Manhattan for three months then and was struggling to pay my rent. I thought I’d secure a retail position after working at Walmart back home in South Tucson, but I hadn’t.
Mom and Dad are furious with me still.
At least twice a week I get horrible messages from them, or a phone call. I answer because what if it’s something serious?
Initially, they told me I was an ungrateful bitch taking off like I did, and if I thought whoring my way through New York was a better solution, not to come home with a kid hanging off my hip.
It was horrible. Some nights I cried myself to sleep. The mornings were hard. I’d open my eyes and wonder if my luck would ever change.
Then they did.
The night I met Adam.
“Enjoying the view?” Adam asked when he joined me, looking at the lights of the city that night.
He’d been watching me most of the night, but to single me out felt exciting.
“Yes,” I sipped my drink quickly, wondering what I could say that would be interesting. “It’s stunning. I’ve only been in the city a few months, but it still takes my breath away.”
He laughed. “It does that.”
“Did you grow up here?”
His eyes dipped to mine. “All my life. I have property in Los Angeles also, but New York is home.”
“I’m from Arizona.”
“Do you miss the desert?”
I shook my head. “No. Seeing the ocean blew my mind.”
“Wow, so this is the first time you’ve seen it?”
I guess I’d drunk a lot of wine, so my lips were loose. I began to chat about how exciting it was to be in Manhattan. I got along with my team at the coffee shop, but no one really got up in anyone’s business, so I’d felt lonely for weeks. It was nice to chat.
I was aware that if my fortune didn’t change, I’d have to head back to Arizona and plead with my parents to take me in. Or I’d be homeless.
New York was a lot more expensive than I’d bargained for.
The modeling gig had bought me a few more weeks. I’d earned more that day than I had in a month of waitressing.
“Have you been out to the Statue of Liberty?”
I shook my head.
That cost money, and I didn’t have it. I’d walked around Battery Park and hoped to one day board the ferry and see it close up. A pipe dream.
“You haven’t? Oh, man, we need to remedy that.” Adam winked at me.
I giggled, figuring he was kidding.
“Tomorrow, I’m taking my yacht out. Join me.”
My mouth fell open; I could not believe my ears.
“You have a yacht?”
And you are inviting me to come out on it?!
“It would be pretty bad form if I asked you on a date and turned up with a tugboat.” Adam chuckled.
It’s a date?
It was then I questioned whether he knew I was just one of the models? I was wearing new Gap jeans and a black Old Navy crop top, but the Kate Spade handbag may have misled him.
Instead of telling him I was stone cold broke, I asked another question.
“Do you even know my name?”
His hand flew to his chest in mock offense. “Courtney, please.”
A small flutter started in my tummy, and the next thing I knew, Adam was tugging me onto the dance floor.
Last week, three months after meeting, we got married. Adam said he didn’t care how much money I had, that he loved me. That he wanted our children to have my beautiful green eyes and tenacity for a better life.
I was charmed.
“I want to go to college.” I’d told him a few weeks ago while spinning my enormous diamond ring around and around my slim finger.
Slim now, but I was putting on weight now that I was eating fancy food.
“You can do that when the kids go off to college,” Adam replied.
“That could be twenty years away,” I gasped. “No.”
We’d argued.
“Courtney. I want an heir. Do you want to be one of those women who can’t get pregnant? That’s embarrassing.”
“I’m not even twenty yet. Education is important to me. I want a career.”
“You were a fucking waitress five minutes ago,” he rudely snapped, and I couldn’t argue with him. When I went quiet, he lifted my chin. “Three years. Then I want a child.”
I nodded.
I could hardly argue. I loved him and wanted to make him happy. It was a fair negotiation, so I let it go.
I should be grateful Adam had given me a credit card linked to his account and saved me from homelessness or returning to my uncaring parents.
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PRESENT DAY
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GOD, I WAS young and na?ve. Now, at almost twenty-six, I see life differently. At nineteen, I had been easily impressed, but I was also desperate when I met my husband. He was very charming, handsome, and promised me a life of security and wonder.
Plus, I truly believed he loved me.
I should’ve known, but how could I? I’d barely lived and was scared and alone in New York City, living paycheck to pitiful paycheck.
I believed our meeting was fate. Adam had saved my life in my eyes.
Our first night together was filled with passion, and he showered me with everything a girl could dream of: diamonds, clothing, vacations.
Things I’d never had. We vacationed in Rome, Paris, Hawaii, Sydney, Switzerland, and then one day, he proposed on one knee while we were in the Maldives. The enormous diamond almost blinded me.
“Say yes, Courtney. Spend forever with me.”
I didn’t know what love was. Not then, and I still don’t know today. But he claimed to love me, so I decided I must love him, too.
I thought that I did until recently.
We married in an intimate ceremony in Central Park with his parents and a handful of his friends. His words to me that night were simple: “Remember, Court, three years, and then I want children.”
Those were the words after consummating our marriage vows. I recall feeling unhappy but reminded myself that it was a fair compromise.
That Adam had taken into consideration my feelings.
I smiled and assured him I was fine with that, while secretly hoping he’d change his mind about my desire to go to college.
He never did.
Three years and one day into our marriage, we woke up one morning, and he announced, “It’s time we had children.”
“One more year. I want one degree. I’m only twenty-two, Adam.”
He wasn’t home much at that time, traveling for work, spending half his time in Los Angeles. But I wasn’t allowed to spread my wings. He controlled where I went and whom I saw. His money, his rules.
I was lonely, bored, and going insane. Education was all I wanted. I was eager to learn and see what I was capable of.
Children would be wonderful, but I didn’t feel like I had much to give them after my upbringing. I argued that education would be a contribution to our kids.
“Don’t be ridiculous, we will get a nanny.”
“No way. I’m their mother.”
“For god’s sakes, Courtney, people like us have nannies; that’s just how it works,” Adam dismissed me. “You have other priorities. Right now, that’s getting your body ready for my seed.”
His words had made me feel a little sick.
“One more year, Adam, please. I’ll just start the degree.”
“Cut out this talk. You’re my wife, not some college girl.” The look on his face was loathsome, as if I’d asked to be a call girl.
“I could do most of it online,” I pleaded, though I was excited to meet other young people.
“The answer is no. Go see the doctor and prepare. This is our future. You pregnant with our child and giving birth, not flitting around a college campus.”
He wouldn’t listen.
Adam was in charge and always had been. He reviewed my credit card spending, questioning anything that looked unusual. Needed to know what I did each day and was clear about who he did and didn’t like.
“It’s for your benefit. You don’t know people in this town and what they’re capable of when you have this sort of wealth. I don’t want you walking around the streets.”
The streets? It would be a college campus and knowing Adam, it would be Columbus or Brown.
“I’m not wealthy; you are,” I reminded him, muttering.
“Correct.” He winked at me.
I never argued or pushed, but this was different. This was my education and bringing little people into the world.
“Adam, let’s discuss this. It shouldn’t be rushed into.”
“It’s been three years. Do not argue with me. Anyway, didn’t your mother get pregnant with you out of wedlock at twenty-one?”
“Yes...”
“Well, then, you are worlds ahead of her and likely anyone else in your loser family. Stop taking your contraceptives. There’s nothing else to discuss. I want you pregnant in the next three months.”
Three?
Adam walked out of the room while I lay in our bed wondering what to do. That wasn’t how I imagined discussing having a baby with my husband. I had romanticized it being a joyful moment. A celebration. Not a calendar date I had to meet.
I remember a tear rolling down my cheek and questioning our love. It didn’t feel right.
Perhaps that’s why I continued taking the birth control.
A huge merger and market challenges kept Adam busy for a year until one day he made a comment that hurt.
“There must be something wrong with you. I’m incredibly disappointed. I expected a child from this marriage.”
“Adam, wait. That’s not fai—”
He walked out of the room, and I knew in that moment his patience had run out. I tossed my pills that night and knew if I wanted to keep my husband, I needed to get pregnant.
Little did I know, the worst was yet to come.