CHAPTER SIX
Payton
AFTER THE LITERACY fundraiser, Jules seemed to appear everywhere.
Our social circle made repeated encounters possible — the same families supported the same charities, served on the same boards, attended the same events. Still, I hadn’t seen Jules in years, and within two weeks of her return, I saw her three times.
The first was at a museum benefit. Max and I had barely entered when Jules approached us near the staircase.
“Max,” she said, smiling.
“Jules.”
She greeted me before turning her attention back to him. “I heard you’re joining the museum expansion committee.”
“Possibly.”
“Still making everyone work for a yes?”
“Usually.”
Jules laughed with the familiarity of someone who already knew what his answer would be. After another minute, she glanced at me. “You don’t mind if I steal him for a second, do you? I wanted his opinion on something.”
“He’s free to make his own decisions,” I said.
Max’s eyebrows lifted slightly. Jules hesitated before recovering. “Of course.”
She took him over to a table displaying architectural plans. When Max returned several minutes later, I handed him the drink I’d picked up.
“What did she want?” I asked.
“Advice on a nonprofit lease.”
“Sounds thrilling.”
His mouth curved. “You’re jealous.”
“I’m making conversation.”
“You’re doing something.”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
Max offered me his arm, looking far too amused with himself. “Come on.”
I took it and decided to forget the conversation.
Four days later, Jules attended a private dinner hosted by one of Conrad’s business partners. She was seated two places away from Max and spent much of the evening talking to him about people and places from their shared past.
“Do you remember that terrible apartment in Boston?” she asked.
“I remember the plumbing.”
“I told you not to rent it.”
“You told me after I’d signed the lease.”
“Only because you refused to show it to me first.”
I kept my attention on the conversation beside me. Everything they discussed was harmless. The discomfort came from hearing about a version of Max I had never known — his college friends, his first apartment, years of his life that had happened before Conrad arranged our marriage.
The third encounter came the following week at a retail trade association dinner. Jules arrived alone and eventually found Max during cocktails. From across the room, I saw her touch his arm while laughing.
Max shifted away almost immediately.
When he returned, he handed me a glass of sparkling water. “No lemon.”
“Thank you.”
He studied my face. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Payton.”
I sighed. “She’s been around a lot.”
“Jules moved back. Her family knows most of the people we do.”
“I understand that.”
“Is this bothering you?”
I considered denying it and decided I was tired of pretending. “Were you serious about her?”
His expression changed. “Why are you asking?”
“Everyone seems to know your history with her except me.”
“We dated. For about three years.”
Three years was longer than I had expected. “How serious?”
He glanced toward the crowd before answering. “We talked about the future.”
“Marriage?”
“Yes.”
I looked down at my glass. He moved slightly closer. “Payton.”
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Apparently my face has betrayed me again.”
A hint of a smile appeared, then disappeared when I didn’t return it.
“Why didn’t you ever tell me?” I asked.
“It never seemed relevant.”
“She was someone you considered marrying.”
“A long time ago.”
“Then Conrad arranged our marriage.”
His jaw tightened, and I regretted the comment immediately — we had already established how quickly that subject could put distance between us. Before he could respond, I noticed Jules walking toward us, and something about her expression deepened my unease.
Her family had always moved in the same circles as the Winslows. She had every reason to attend these events.
Still, I remembered the literacy fundraiser and the way she’d told me Max should have married someone from his own world. Watching her approach again, I began to wonder whether coincidence had anything to do with it.
Jules found me near the terrace twenty minutes later. Max had been pulled into a conversation with two executives from the West Coast, so I’d moved toward the quieter end of the room.
“Mind if I join you?” she asked.
“Do I get a vote?”
“Still defensive.”
“Still observant.”
Jules stopped beside me and looked across the ballroom toward Max. “He really hasn’t changed much.”
“You’ve mentioned that.”
“I suppose I’m still getting used to seeing him again.”
“Three years is a long relationship,” I said.
“So he told you.”
“I asked him.”
She seemed surprised. “I didn’t think you two talked about me.”
“We usually find more interesting subjects.”
Her smile tightened briefly. “We were serious, Payton. We talked about a future together. Our families and friends assumed we’d eventually marry.”
“Did Max?”
“We talked about it.”
The answer gave her plenty of room to imply more than she was actually saying.
“What happened between you?” I asked.
“Conrad happened.” She leaned against the window frame. “Max was fighting him constantly by then. He wanted to build something separate from Winslow Retail Group.”
I knew pieces of that history, though Max had never explained how serious it had been.
“He wanted his own company?”
“Eventually. Mostly he wanted control over his own life.” Jules looked toward him again. “I thought we were going to build that life together.”
Jealousy tightened my stomach, and I hated giving her even that much power over me.
“So what changed?”
“Conrad increased the pressure. Opportunities disappeared, connections became difficult, and Max kept getting pulled deeper into the family business.”
“That wouldn’t have stopped him.”
“It would when other people could suffer for his decisions,” she said.
I couldn’t argue. Max could tolerate consequences aimed at himself far more easily than watching employees or colleagues pay for something he’d done.
“Then Conrad started working on the alliance with Edison,” she continued.
My fingers tightened around my glass. “Before Max and I knew about the marriage?”
“Yes.”
“And what happened between you two?”
For the first time, Jules lost some of her confidence. “Max pulled away.”
“I thought Conrad pushed you apart.”
“He created the pressure. Max responded by working constantly, canceling plans, shutting everyone out while he tried to solve it himself.”
That sounded painfully familiar.
“I got tired of waiting,” she said.
“So you ended it.”
Her jaw tightened. “I wasn’t going to spend my life waiting for someone to make room for me.”
The words struck closer to home than I wanted to admit.
“I thought he’d come after me,” Jules said.
“Did he?”
“No. He let me leave.” Genuine hurt crossed her voice before it disappeared. “A year later, I heard Conrad was negotiating your marriage.”
I looked across the room at Max. “And everyone thought you would have married him otherwise.”
“Most people did.”
“Did you?”
“At the time.”
That answer bothered me more than the smug certainty she’d shown earlier.
“You’re wondering whether he loved me,” she said.
“You don’t know what I’m wondering.”
“He did.”
“That’s something only Max can tell me.”
“I was there, Payton.”
“And you’re telling me he loved you even though he let you walk away.”
Her expression hardened. I’d found the weak point.
“People make mistakes,” she said.
“They do.”
“He still didn’t get the life he wanted.”
“You seem very invested in explaining my husband to me.”
“I knew him before you.”
“That doesn’t mean you know him better.”
Her eyes narrowed, then she smiled. “Ask him what he thought his life would look like before Conrad decided for him.”
I followed her gaze and saw Max heading toward us. Jules excused herself before he arrived.
I stayed by the window, unsettled by how much of her story sounded plausible.
I had always known Max resented the marriage Conrad arranged.
What I hadn’t let myself consider was the life he’d imagined beforehand — a life Jules had been part of, before the contracts and the alliance and the wedding neither of us had planned.
Now she was back, and she clearly wanted me thinking about everything he might have lost when he married me.
Max reached me less than a minute after Jules left. His gaze followed her briefly. “What did she want?”
“To reminisce about you.”
“That sounds exhausting.”
Despite myself, I smiled. “Apparently you were fascinating in your twenties.”
“I was intolerable.”
“She left that part out.”
“Selective memory.” He glanced toward the terrace doors. “Want to go outside? It’s quieter.”
“You hate terraces at events.”
“I hate events.”
“Fair.”
We stepped outside, and he rested his hands on the railing while I stood beside him. I had several questions after talking to Jules, but I started with the safest one.
“She told me you wanted to build your own company.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“So it’s true.”
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
He looked out over the city. “Things changed.”
“Jules says Conrad made them change.”
“Jules says a lot.”
“She said you hated him controlling your life.”
His jaw tightened. “I did.”
“Did?”
“I still do.”
The answer made my next question harder to avoid. “Did you hate marrying me?”
Max turned toward me. “Payton.”
“It’s a question.”
“It’s more complicated than that.”
“Then give me the complicated answer.”
He was silent for a moment. “I hated having the decision made for me.”
“That still doesn’t answer what I asked.”
“I know.”
I looked away. “Okay.”
“Don’t turn my silence into an answer.”
“What else am I supposed to do with it?”
His gaze held mine. “I hated the arrangement. I resented my father for putting me in it.”
“And me?”
Before he could answer, the terrace doors opened and another couple came outside. Max straightened. “We should go back in.”
The interruption left his answer unfinished, and I couldn’t decide whether I was relieved.
Near the end of the evening, Max went to speak with Conrad while I waited near the coat check. Jules appeared beside me.
“You asked him about us,” she said.
“Do you have people monitoring my conversations?”
“You have a readable face. What did he say?”
“That’s between me and my husband.”
Her smile tightened. “You really like that word.”
“He is my husband.”
“Conrad made sure of that.”
I turned toward her. “What exactly are you trying to accomplish?”
She took a sip of champagne. “Max spent years fighting for control over his own life. Conrad decided where he worked, which opportunities he took, and eventually who he married.”
“You’ve already told me this.”
“Then you understand what the marriage represented to him.” She lowered her voice. “You were the biggest decision Conrad ever made for him.”
“That sounds very dramatic.”
“It doesn’t make it untrue.”
“You don’t know what our marriage is like.”
“No,” she admitted. “I know what Max was like before it.”
“You knew him years ago,” I said. “Stop acting like that gives you some permanent claim on him.”
Her expression cooled, then eased into a small, satisfied smile. “Maybe.”
She stepped closer. “Have you ever wondered what he’d do if he finally stopped letting Conrad decide his life? What happens if Max decides he wants the life he planned before his father interfered?”
“He’s had six years to leave.”
That silenced her briefly.
“He’s also had six years to cheat, reconnect with you, or find someone else,” I said. “He hasn’t.”
“Maybe he wasn’t ready.”
“Or maybe you don’t know him as well as you think.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Ask yourself one thing. If Max could make the decision again with Conrad completely out of it, would he still marry you?”
She walked away before I could respond.
I stood there, watching Max across the room. Jules wanted me to doubt him, and I knew enough about her now to recognize what she was doing. That didn’t make her question easy to dismiss.
Max had been faithful to me for six years. He respected me, listened to me, cared about me in ways I sometimes understood better than he did.
I knew all of that.
What I still didn’t know was whether, given complete freedom, Max would ever have wanted me as his wife.