Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Marlowe woke up bright and early in her brand-new apartment and cried again. She made coffee, and cried in the shower, and then she took herself on a little tour of the grounds and kept on crying.
She hated this.
She didn’t want to cry. Didn’t want to infect her new life with all of this sadness from her old life, but the problem was there was just no space between the two things.
How was she supposed to be okay?
She couldn’t be, not just yet.
She wanted to call Aiden so that she could tell him the most unbelievable thing had happened to her. That her husband had abruptly ended their marriage and admitted he was having an affair.
Except, he was the husband, so what was she supposed to do?
Then she wanted to call him and yell at him.
To demand explanations, but when she really thought about that, she realized there was no amount of explaining that was ever going to make this feel okay.
There was no amount of explanation that could ever possibly make her feel like she wasn’t losing her mind, like she hadn’t been blindsided, and like what he had done had any kind of justification.
The trouble was, it didn’t matter why. And the other problem was he was probably never going to feel bad about it.
Because he was the one who had decided their relationship couldn’t go further.
He was the one who had made his peace with the fact that they weren’t together and wouldn’t be together.
He was the one who had pulled the trigger, and the murderer might have consequences, but he was always going to be better off than the victim.
That might be dramatic, but she felt a little bit dramatic.
What she needed to do was get her head on straight so that she could have a coherent meeting with Cody later. Just thinking about that made her whole body shiver with anticipation.
A meeting with Cody.
The thought made her warm all over.
While she was crying about her husband.
Sweet.
Everything was so normal.
She walked through the lobby and took the elevator upstairs back to her apartment.
Then she dug around in her bag and found a notebook.
She decided to take it downstairs. The lobby really was gorgeous, with massive floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the same beautiful view she had from her room.
Right now, the hotel was empty, and it felt so serene to be here.
The calm before a storm that needed to be intense. Because it wasn’t a good thing to have an empty hotel.
She started making notes about the kinds of things that she needed to ask Cody. Because she needed to know what he expected, so that she could make plans. Obviously, she had opinions about what it took to run a hotel, her degree was in hospitality, but she hadn’t worked in a place this size.
So her opinions were just opinions, and not formed from experience. She had a feeling that Cody didn’t really have experience either. He didn’t give off a luxury hotelier vibe, which was stereotyping, perhaps. Or just observational skills.
Cara had texted her and asked if she needed her to come with the car for any reason, but Marlowe couldn’t see leaving the ranch today.
And as much as she loved her sister-in-law and was eager to see her new house, she had also just spent the last few days with her.
It had been off-putting and terrible to be alone, and it was definitely what had started the emotional upheaval.
But it was necessary.
As much as she hated all of it, it was necessary. Because she had to accept that she wasn’t with Aiden anymore.
She got a text letting her know that Cody was five minutes away.
I was thinking that we could meet at my place. My brother and sister will be there too, and we can all get on the same page.
She had liked the message, and then she ended up pacing by the lobby doors, anticipation making her lungs tight.
When his truck rolled in, her heart almost tumbled out of her mouth.
She took a sharp breath and didn’t wait for him to get out. Instead, she walked outside and went directly to the passenger side. If she had to stand in front of him again, she was going to lose it. He was so tall, and she didn’t need to be reminded of that.
Because there was something about the extreme… quantity of man that really did something to her.
Was it normal to lose your mind like this after a relationship dissolved?
Was it normal to suddenly have wild fantasies about the first hot man you came across?
That would be more convincing if you weren’t already having fantasies about his voice even before your husband ruined your life.
“Morning,” she said.
She clutched her notebook tightly, as if giving her hands something to do would make everything better.
“Yeah, basically late afternoon for me. I’ve been up since four.”
“Oh. Well. I guess… Cattle ranching.”
“Yes. Cattle ranching.”
Awkward silence. Lovely. Her brain wanted to take that silence and turn it into a moment of fantasy. Which she would not allow.
“My things are going to be here at around three o’clock. Do you think that the meeting will be over by then?”
“Definitely,” he said. “I didn’t realize that you didn’t have your things. But I guess I didn’t see any with you.”
“My sister-in-law brought some things, but I had a moving service arranged. Because you know, I thought I was going to have twice the amount of stuff.”
She sounded pathetic.
“Weren’t you guys together for a long time?”
She frowned. “How did you know that?”
“I just got that vibe when we spoke. You seemed like a couple that was really familiar with each other. Not newlyweds or anything like that.”
Not newlyweds.
She was going to marinate on that for a long time. But not right now.
“Yeah. We’ve been married for five years. But together for fifteen. Mostly. We had a little bit of a break in college. But we were high school sweethearts.”
“I see.”
“So, my lesson of the week is that you can’t trust anybody, and people are liars. Very glad that you got to meet me under these circumstances. I’m not usually…”
What was she? She was weird, she supposed.
Cagey and stressed out about whether she was going to get the job, and oh yeah, lusting after him in a way that was completely inappropriate.
But hopefully he hadn’t picked up on that.
And if she could blame all the weirdness on the sudden loss of her marriage, that suited her just fine.
“You haven’t always been cynical?” he asked.
“No. Guarded,” she said, a strange metallic tang filling her mouth. She really didn’t want to get into all that. “But I haven’t always been cynical. Obviously, or I wouldn’t have married my first boyfriend. I wouldn’t have fallen in love at all.”
“Take it from me. Cynicism doesn’t kill you. It doesn’t make you stronger, either, but it doesn’t kill you. “
“You’re cynical?” she asked, her tone reflecting her lack of surprise. The only surprise was that he was telling her about himself.
“Did you not hear the story about my dad yesterday?”
“I did.”
“I like to tell everybody. Because that’s how much I hate him.
Even though he’s dead and in the ground.
And I take great pride in having my mother’s last name and not his.
Also, in changing the name of the ranch.
It used to have his name. Kind of. Triple R.
His last name was Reynolds. But I changed it to Painted Ridge because I liked it better.
It represents the area, instead of his name.
And now it’s mine. To do with as I please. “
“I kind of get the deadbeat dad thing.”
“Really? And that didn’t make you cynical?”
She shook her head. “No. I mean, I could see people around me had better lives. Better parents. For example, Cara and Aiden. I loved their parents. Their dad died pretty quickly after we started dating. Their mom just passed away. She was lovely. The best mother-in-law I could’ve ever asked for. “
“Not a story you hear very often.”
“No. But… When I married him, I really did get a family, like I never had before. You can see that with Cara. So, I guess… Maybe I still can’t be totally cynical. There are good people.”
“But how do you identify the good people? Asking for science.”
Oof. She didn’t like that at all. Because it echoed the worst part of all her feelings right now.
She had known Aiden that long, and she had never thought he would do something like that.
“I guess I should just be thankful that I’m not on Dateline. Or to catch a predator. Because if he’s capable of this, I guess he could’ve also been a serial killer. Or chatting with a police officer that he thought was a thirteen-year-old on the internet.”
“Always a possibility.”
“I never would have thought that. Not before this. I mean, I never would have thought it was a possibility for Aiden to be anything other than what I knew. We met in high school. Everything he grew into, he grew into beside me, so how could I have missed anything? But… It’s the affair, really.
That’s the thing that gets me. I thought he was a man who would never do that, but I missed something fundamental about him.
And for… I don’t even know how long he’s been with somebody else, and I didn’t even know.
That’s what I can’t…How do you look at somebody and lie like that? ”
“I don’t know,” Cody said. “I’m not a liar.”
She believed him. Which was funny, because they were only just talking about how you couldn’t trust anybody, and here she was, ready to believe this, but he had no reason to lie to her, not now.
She had a feeling that Cody was the kind of man who would just hurt your feelings before he told a lie, because it would be more efficient and cause fewer problems later.