14. Rex
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Rex
Louisa set a manila envelope beside my plate, and I knew what it was before she said a word.
Sunday family lunch. A Waller tradition stretching back three generations, hosted at the ranch every week like clockwork.
My brothers were here, Theo with his wife and David with his latest girlfriend.
Aunts and uncles occupied the other seats, filling the formal dining room with the low hum of polite conversation and the clink of expensive silverware.
And there, at the far end of the table, sat Annie Cooper. Still here. Still smiling at me like she had any right to be in my home.
“What’s this?” I asked, though I already knew.
“Good news, darling.” Louisa’s voice was bright, triumphant. “The divorce papers. Freya signed them last week. Her lawyer sent them to the house, and I caught the courier at the gate. I knew she’d come to her senses eventually.”
The table went quiet. Everyone was watching now, forks suspended halfway to mouths, waiting to see how I’d react.
I pulled the papers out of the envelope. Freya’s signature was there at the bottom of the last page, her handwriting familiar and final. She’d agreed to everything. No alimony, no claim on the ranch, no fight over assets. A clean break. Exactly what I deserved.
“Now you’re free,” Louisa continued, reaching over to pat my hand. “I know it’s been a difficult few weeks, but this is for the best. You can finally move on. Find someone more suitable.”
Her eyes flickered toward Annie, who had the grace to look down at her plate instead of preening openly.
I set the papers down carefully. Then I pushed back my chair and stood.
“Rex?” Louisa frowned. “What are you doing?”
“Something I should have done months ago.”
I looked around the table, meeting the eyes of everyone who’d made Freya feel unwelcome in her own home. My family. The people I’d chosen over my wife again and again because it was easier than confronting them.
“I have a few things to say, and you’re all going to listen.”
“Rex, this isn’t the time…” Uncle Max started.
“Shut up.” The words came out cold and hard, and Max actually flinched. “You don’t get to talk right now. None of you do.”
The room went dead silent.
“Uncle Max.” I turned to face him directly.
“At Aunt Caroline’s dinner, you asked me if I regretted marrying her.
I said some days, maybe I did. Then you laughed and changed the subject before I could finish, and I let you, because that’s what I do.
” I paused. “Here’s what I was going to say.
I regret how I married her. And I regret that she got a contract with her father’s signature on it instead of a man who chose her.
I have never once regretted her. She is the best thing that ever happened to me, and I am in love with my wife. ”
The silence stretched.
“Freya was standing in the garden,” I said. “She left that night thinking she was a line item on a ledger.”
Max looked like he wanted to disappear into his chair.
“Bradley.” I turned to my cousin next. “Your wife asked Freya what she did to keep busy out at the ranch. When Freya answered, she called her my ‘first wife.’ Remember that? The whole table laughed.”
Bradley’s face went red. “It was just a joke…”
“It wasn’t funny. You both knew exactly how cruel it was.”
I moved around the table, making eye contact with each person who’d contributed to Freya’s misery. The cousins who’d whispered about gold diggers. The aunts who’d looked down their noses at her family name. And every uncle who’d questioned whether she belonged at Waller family gatherings.
“Every single one of you treated my wife like she was beneath you. Like she was some kind of interloper who’d tricked her way into our family. And I let you.” My voice cracked on the last word. “I sat there and let you tear her apart because I was too much of a coward to start a fight.”
I turned to my mother.
Louisa’s face had gone pale, her usual composure cracking at the edges. She knew what was coming.
“You tried to pay her off.” I kept my voice steady, though everything inside me was shaking with rage. “Thirty million dollars to walk away from her marriage. From me. You sat her down for tea and told her she wasn’t good enough for your son.”
“I was trying to protect you…”
“You were trying to control me.” I stepped closer, and she actually leaned back in her chair. “You brought Annie into our home. You put her next to me at every meal. And you announced, in front of my wife, that Annie would soon be part of the family.”
“I never meant for Freya to take it that way…”
“Don’t.” The word came out like a whip crack. “Don’t you dare pretend you didn’t know exactly what you were doing. You wanted her gone, and you didn’t care how much it hurt her as long as you got what you wanted.”
Louisa’s eyes filled with tears. I’d never spoken to her like this. Never challenged her authority, never pushed back against her manipulations. I’d always been the good son, the obedient one, the one who kept the peace at any cost.
The cost had been Freya. And that was a price I was no longer willing to pay.
I turned to Annie last.
She’d shrunk into her seat, all traces of her usual confidence gone. She should be afraid.
“Get out of my house.”
“Rex…”
“I said get out.” I didn’t raise my voice, but something in my tone made her flinch.
“You spent two weeks throwing yourself at a married man while his wife watched. You answered her phone calls and manufactured excuses to touch me. And you played helpless so I’d catch you.
” I shook my head. “I should have seen it. That’s on me.
But you knew what you were doing, and you did it anyway. ”
Annie’s face crumpled. “I thought… your mother said…”
“I don’t care what my mother said. This is my home, and you’re not welcome in it. Leave now, and don’t come back.”
She stood on shaky legs and practically ran from the room. I heard the front door slam a moment later.
The silence that followed was deafening.
I looked at my family, the people I’d loved my whole life, the people I’d protected and defended and made excuses for. They stared back at me with expressions ranging from shock to shame.
“Here are my terms,” I said quietly. “Anyone who doesn’t treat Freya like family is no longer part of mine. That means respecting her. Welcoming her. Acknowledging that she’s my wife and I love her.” I paused. “That’s not negotiable.”
“Rex.” Louisa’s voice was small, uncertain. “The divorce papers…”
I picked up the envelope and slid the papers back inside.
“She signed them,” I said. “I didn’t. And I won’t.”
I walked out of the dining room without looking back.