Chapter 37
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Paige
One week down, and so few left to go before I pack my bags and leave England forever.
Not that I’ve accepted the job in Michigan yet, but I can’t imagine the branch here could put together something that would make me want to stay.
Gwen has offered to nanny for me if Ash quits before my time is up or if I have to transition to a new nanny if the offer to stay is too hard to resist. No part of me wants to stay anymore, though.
All of it is so depressing that I almost can’t stand it.
Since Jack left, the office has been a buzzing hive of rejuvenated energy with the code of conduct implemented.
Even Jack’s friends, the ones I feared would be harder to draw back from the unworkable edge, have rebounded.
Turns out, when you remove the poor weather in the office, the overall climate improves.
The night custodians, who I’ve started to address on a first-name basis, make their way through my floor.
While the mature behavior might be to go home like normal and pretend everything is okay, I haven’t been able to face Ash.
I can’t seem to brace myself hard enough to talk to him again.
After the first night when I came home to find he’d gone for an impromptu drink with Tejinder, I figured I wasn’t the only one who wanted to avoid talking about our situation.
I can’t fire him for going back to Imogen—that would be beyond ridiculous—but I also can’t handle the prospect of my heart being a tattered mess at his feet when he fully confirms what I already know.
Every night when I walk through the door, it feels like something—someone—has died.
I have trouble sucking in a full breath of air, as though the top part of my lungs is just gone.
I’m missing time with Joey to avoid Ash, and the guilt is getting to me. It’s not sustainable, but I don’t know what else to do.
“Paige, you’re still here?” Penelope has her workbag slung over her shoulder.
“Trying to get caught up,” I say, though that’s partly a lie.
Since Jack left, I have been cleaning up the work he left.
But for the last thirty minutes I’ve been down a social media hole examining the latest celebrity breakups and wondering how they survive it when everyone knows.
No one really knows about what’s happened between Ash and me, but my body is bent with it, like Atlas, my whole world resting on my shoulders, in danger of toppling over.
“I’d love to see you first thing in the morning on Monday,” she says. “I’ve got to run now, but I have a contract for you. Really hoping you’ll love it as much as I do.”
“Oh.” I sit up straighter in my chair. “You’ve—you’ve got something? At the global headquarters? I thought it was going to be an offer for England?”
“Coles Notes—and I shouldn’t do this, but we’ve kept you waiting for too long, and we’re getting down to the wire—promotion to oversee the biggest team in the UK office, pay reflects that increase in responsibility, but we are asking for a five-year commitment.”
“Five years?”
“The construction and development project you’ll be taking on is much bigger.
You’d shift into our global offices. Some short travel stints throughout the UK would be required—which might not be exactly what you’d want.
But you’ve done a great job here, and we wanted the offer to reflect that we see you as a long-term investment.
We’ll give you time to consider it, obviously.
Either way, you’re here until the end of April. ”
“Five years,” I whisper again. What a gift that would have been before Imogen returned. All that time with Ash and Chloe.
“Have a fab weekend,” Penelope says as she cruises down the hall to the elevators.
I stare at the computer screen in front of me, and I fight the urge to cry.
Gwen turns over in the bed beside me. Like me, she can probably hear Ash downstairs with the kids, but neither of us is getting out of bed.
“It’s truly impressive to watch someone be ghosted in their own house,” Gwen says.
“Work has been really busy. With Jack leaving and trying to maintain the new completion date . . .”
“No one, not even the most dedicated employee, stays at work until midnight. You didn’t get home until one in the morning. If I didn’t know you were the boss, I’d think you were banging your boss.”
“I have a boss—several, in fact. If you really looked at the chain of command closely.”
“Are you banging another hot English guy?” She eyes me across the pillows.
“No.”
“You need to talk to him. Speak to him like a human being. He deserves that, and you used to be good at it.”
It’s easy to be good at having tough conversations when you feel secure. Before Imogen returned, I knew exactly where Ash stood with me and with her. He was mine, and she was nowhere to be found. As long as things stayed that way, we had no issues.
Our conversation last Sunday was an earthquake, and the aftershocks have been hitting me all week.
He said he wasn’t sure what he wants. Even if I wasn’t leaving, that doesn’t seem like a good sign.
I’d never want to love someone as much as I love Ash and feel like I was somehow someone he settled for.
She’s the obvious choice, the logical one. First love, same age, lengthy shared history, and a child. There’s no competition.
“He’s going back to her,” I say.
“That’s not what he told me.”
“Did he say he wasn’t?”
Gwen purses her lips. “Having Joey was a leap of faith. Coming here to England was a leap of faith. Being with Ash in the first place was a leap of faith. You are capable of surviving risk, Paige. Have you told him that you’re in love with him?”
I shake my head, but I can’t explain to her how I’ve never felt like the kind of woman men like him love forever.
He struggled for a long time to even let Imogen’s name be spoken, and it’s impossible to imagine all those feelings have vanished.
My feelings for Ash are lodged so deeply in me that I don’t think anything or anyone will root them out.
“We were never supposed to turn into this big thing,” I whisper.
“Has he told you that he loves you?” Gwen asks.
“He hasn’t said it either.” I bunch up the pillow and let my mind drift to all the times I’ve felt it.
There’s no doubt he feels something for me, but I just can’t believe it’s enough.
That’s what he’d tell me—that he still loves Imogen more, craves what they once had.
You don’t admit that an ex wants you back to your current girlfriend if a part of you doesn’t want that too.
Not in the serious way he approached it.
“Leap again,” she says. “Tell him.”
“I’m not like you. You quit jobs or get fired and then immediately hop on a standby flight to another country after having packed your whole life into two hefty suitcases.
You never look—you just jump. I’m still measuring distances and mapping out timelines, and you’re already on your way to your next adventure.
Those other things you call my leaps were carefully planned. ”
“Ash was carefully planned?” Her expression is one of disbelief.
“Nothing with Ash has been planned, which is the terrifying part.” I pluck at the duvet cover between us, and the silence sits heavy. “Work is going to offer me a big promotion, a raise, and a five-year contract on Monday.”
“Holy shit,” Gwen breathes. “I’ll get to keep your house in Grand Rapids for five years?”
“Gwen!” I let out an exasperated huff, and she laughs. “I can’t imagine staying here. I can’t. Not now. The smart thing is to go home and lick my wounds.”
Gwen throws back the covers and stretches. “I’m going downstairs. Smells like bacon and pancakes. Do you want me to have Ash deliver some to you in bed?”
“No!” I sit up and glare at her. “Stay out of it.”
“If you stay up here too long, I will have him bring you breakfast, and I will keep the kids occupied while he does it. Lots of alone time with zero emotional buffer.” She tugs a shirt over her head. “Feelings can’t be measured and mapped—they just are.”
Exactly. Unpredictable and messy. Two things I hate.
“I’m getting dressed,” I say begrudgingly, and I set my feet on the ground at the edge of the bed.
“You’ve got ten minutes, and then I’m sending supernanny up.”
It’s strange to creep down the stairs of my own house, but that’s what I’ve been doing for the last week. Up and down them as quietly as possible. Thankfully, when I get to the living room, Chloe and Joey are there playing with their toys.
When Joey catches sight of me, he lets out a screech of joy, and Chloe mimics him. They both clamor to their feet and rush at me, and I get down on my knees to greet them. Their soft bodies hit me with an oomph, and I let out a chuckle.
I listen to them babble about the various things they’ve been doing all week with Aunty Gwen and Ash.
When I glance up, Ash is standing in the doorway to the living room, a tea towel clutched in one hand.
Our gazes connect, and an electrical current shoots through my body.
A massive jolt of awareness and longing that would have brought me to my knees if I wasn’t there already.
It’s the same kind of intensity as I experience when I look at Joey—fierce and overwhelming.
I love him. I love him. I love him.
And it’s breaking my fucking heart.
“Hi,” Ash says.
“Hi,” I say, and my voice sounds thick to my ears.
I can do this. I can go back to seeing him as attractive and not as mine.
It’s possible; it has to be. The alternative is not having him in my life at all, and I don’t know how to do that.
England and Ash are so intertwined in my heart and mind that I can’t untangle them.
If I am still in England, then Ash must be in my life.
“You hungry?” His expression is blank, and I can’t read him.
“I can get myself—”
“I’ve got your smoothie, if you want it.”