Chapter 44
ALEX
Iwas about two seconds away from burning Chicago to the ground when my doorbell rang. I’d been pacing my living room with my phone in my hand, rereading the same unanswered texts to Jane like they might suddenly rearrange themselves into something better.
Every awful scenario possible had already played out in my head, her deciding she was done with me, with all of it, and her choosing her family over us or simply walking away because the fallout of that vote was just too unimaginable.
So when I opened the door and she was there, suitcases at her feet and her eyes red and glassy, my brain stalled. I could barely register the luggage and what it meant as I stared at her, relief slamming into me with so much force that I almost couldn’t stay upright.
“Hey,” she said, her voice barely there.
I didn’t ask a single question, not why she hadn’t used her key or where she’d been. Not if we were okay now or if she believed me about what’d happened with Mallory at the club. I just pulled her inside, into my arms, and shut the door behind her with my foot.
As soon as she sank into me, she started coming apart. Not quietly or neatly but folding into me like her bones had finally given up holding her upright, her fists twisting into the front of my shirt as she cried.
Her sobs nearly tore me apart, coming from somewhere deep and feral as her body trembled and shook. I wrapped myself around her, holding her close with one hand pressed to the back of her head and the other anchored around her waist.
“I’ve got you,” I murmured into her hair, over and over. “I’ve got you, Jane.”
“I didn’t know where else to go.”
“You’re home,” I said without hesitation. “You’re here, baby. You came to exactly the right place.”
She cried harder and I just stood there with her, letting the dams break and everything she’d been holding back pour out while I took the weight of it. Minutes passed. Maybe more. I didn’t check, but I didn’t care.
She was here now, she was safe, and that was all that mattered. After the doomsday scenarios that had been on repeat in my head for the last few hours, this was the best I could’ve hoped for. She wasn’t gone, wasn’t lying in a ditch somewhere, and she wasn’t alone.
Eventually, her breathing evened out and she slumped against me, exhausted and not trying to hide it. I pressed a kiss to her temple before I eased my eased my grip on her, making sure she was steady enough to stand on her own before I let go.
“Come sit,” I said gently. “I’ll make you something to eat.”
She nodded and let me guide her to the couch, where she curled into one corner, pulling her laptop out of her bag like it was muscle memory. Without missing a beat, she opened it up and woke it, her fingers moving across the keyboard a moment later like work might still be the thing that saved her.
While I had no idea what she could be working on that was so important that she had to get it done right now, I didn’t ask. I just left her to it, going into the kitchen and immediately overestimating myself.
I burned the chicken so bad, it set off the smoke alarm. By the time I remembered to check the pasta and had stopped the chicken from literally bursting into flame, it was so overcooked, it was basically paste.
For a second, I just stood there with my hands on my hips, staring at the mess. Then I shook my head at myself. “Okay. We’re ordering in.”
About twenty minutes later, I set takeout containers and a glass of wine down on the coffee table in front of her. She didn’t really react, just staring through the screen of her laptop with her eyes tired and unfocused.
“Jane,” I said softly, but nothing happened until I sat down beside her, closed her laptop, and gently moved it off her legs.
She didn’t protest, so I picked up the remote and put on the ridiculous reality show she loved. Personally, I thought it had too much yelling and too many people pretending their lives weren’t disasters, but we’d watched it together a few times and she’d always enjoyed it.
Finally, she turned to me, blinking like she was coming back into her body. Those gray eyes were flat when they met mine though, haunted. “I lost everything today. Everything except you.”
I slid an arm around her hips and tugged her closer. “You will never lose me.”
Her lips wobbled. “I lost my company. My mom. My house. Wyatt still won’t talk to me.”
I reached for her hand, wrapping my fingers around hers when her gaze dropped again, her shoulders shaking just a little bit. “Hey. Look at me.”
It took a moment, but she finally managed to look back up, her eyes shining with fresh tears.
“You didn’t lose everything,” I said firmly. “You lost some things. Big things. Painful things. But not everything.”
She swallowed. “It feels like it.”
“I know, and you’re allowed to feel that. You don’t have to be strong here. Just know there’s still hope.”
Her shoulders sagged at that, like she’d been waiting for permission, and she leaned into me again, resting her head against my shoulder while the show played on. We munched on dumplings and drank wine. It didn’t erase the pain of the day, but it eased it a little bit.
Eventually, my gaze drifted to her purse when hers went there again, landing on some papers sticking out of it, crumpled and tear stained.
She kept glancing at it, watching it like it might bite.
I reached over slowly enough to give her time to stop me, but when she didn’t, I pulled the papers free and unfolded them.
My chest tightened as I read the first few paragraphs.
I looked up at her. “Why are you carrying this around like it’s a bomb?”
“That’s Wyatt’s essay,” she said, her voice cracking. “It’s proof that I didn’t imagine it. That I wasn’t crazy. That I really did do everything.”
She stared at the floor for a long time before she finally spoke again.
I didn’t interrupt, just shifting a little closer and holding her when the words came tumbling out.
“He sent it with his application to Yale. He wouldn’t let me read it before.
I guess now I know why. It’s about me.” She drew in a long, shaky breath.
“I mean, I’m sure you saw that. You just read it. ”
“Only the first few paragraphs,” I said. “Do you want to tell me what the rest of it says?”
She shook her head but started telling me about it anyway.
“He wrote about how, when everything happened, after Dad’s arrest and Mom fell apart, I made his lunches, paid our bills, and sat with him at night when he couldn’t sleep.
” She swallowed hard. “He knew I was paying for everything, Alex. He knew.”
A dull ache lodged itself in my chest, but I still didn’t interrupt.
“I tried so hard to keep that from him,” she said, the words spilling out faster now.
“From all of them. I didn’t want them to feel guilty, or trapped, or like they owed me anything.
I wanted them to have choices. I wanted Wyatt to just be a kid.
” She scrubbed at her face with the heels of her hands.
“Apparently, I was terrible at hiding it.”
“You weren’t,” I said gently. “You were doing your best.”
She shook her head. “He wrote that watching me made him want to go into business. That he wants to go to Yale and be like me. That I showed him what responsibility looks like. I didn’t want that for him.”
I frowned but waited for her to continue. Honestly, my wife was awesome. I wasn’t surprised her brother wanted to be just like her, but I was a little surprised that she didn’t want him to be.
“I didn’t want him to go into business,” she said, voice breaking again. “I wanted… I wanted him to go into the arts, or history. Something he actually enjoys. Something that wouldn’t eat him alive the way this did to me.”
She laughed again, but the sound was soft and bitter. “Mom just ruined that. The money she’ll get from the sale isn’t going to last like she thinks it will. She doesn’t understand how fast it disappears when you don’t know what you’re doing, and she doesn’t.”
She finally looked up at me, her eyes red and watery. “I did all of that so they wouldn’t end up right back here.”
I drew in a long, slow breath. “Baby, your brother didn’t write that essay because you forced him into it. He wrote it because he loves you. Because he saw you and what you were doing, and because what you did mattered.”
She pressed her lips together. “I don’t want him to feel like his life is already mapped out for him, and now Thayer is gone and…”
“And you’re the reason he believes he can do something that hard, Jane. He’s knows exactly how tough business can be and you gave him the gift of believing he can still do it. And Thayer isn’t gone.”
“How can you say that? How can you be so calm about all this?”
“I’m not calm,” I said honestly. “Seriously, you should’ve seen me before you got here. I was a wreck, but I’m focused now.”
“Focused on what? Me?”
“No. Well, okay. I am focused on you, too. Obviously, but I’m also focused on fixing it.”
Her shoulders tensed immediately. “You don’t have to do that, Alex.”
“Sure, I don’t, but I’m going to do it anyway.”
She shook her head, sitting up straighter. “It’s not your responsibility to save me.”
“You’re my wife, Jane.” My voice didn’t rise, but it didn’t waver either. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.”
She stared at me like I’d knocked the wind out of her, but I lifted my palm to her cheek and cupped it gently, looking right into her eyes so she could see that there was no talking me out of this.
“I’m not doing it because you need saving.
You don’t. I know that, but you deserve the right to choose what happens next.
You carried everyone else for so long that you forgot you’re allowed to be carried too.
So, I am going to fix this, and when I do, you’re going to decide where we go from there. ”