Page 19 of Heartbroken Husband
Lu didn’t look back, but Jennifer did, waving and smiling sadly at me on their way out the door. “Bye, Mommy.”
“Bye, baby,” I managed. As the door fell shut behind them, a sob tore through me.
The silence in the condo was suddenly so complete, so deafening, that I just couldn’t handle it. I hated this part, the quiet and stillness of a place without them in it.
As much as I’d suffered under Louis, I missed my old life where I could be with the girls all day. I missed the stability of knowing thatI wastheir stability. At least then, I’d been there for them. They’d never looked at me like I was leaving them behind.
The sound of my phone ringing made me jump, too shrill and loud in the silence. When I glanced at the device, my cousin’s name, Simon Morris, was on the screen. Uncle Clark’s son.
Even though I’d been about to have the breakdown that had been building deep inside for weeks, I inhaled a deep breath and got myself back together. I couldn’t break. Who else would hold everything together if not me?
CHAPTER 7
ZACH
After everything that had happened last week, I’d decided to work from home today, but I stuck to my usual morning routine. It was one thing I was pretty strict about, waking up early, getting ready, and going for a run.
Theo was in the kitchen when I walked in to grab my water bottle and he sighed as he looked me up and down. “I’ll never understand why you do this to yourself.”
“Are you going to the office today?” I asked instead of explaining—again—that I did it to keep myself sane.
Reasonably, anyway.
Theo shrugged. “Don’t I go in every day? Not all of us have the privilege to pretend we’re working even though we’re just hanging around at home all day.”
I snorted, walking past him on my way to the fridge. “And until you understand that it’s not pretend and that we do actually work when we’re at home, harder even than at the office, you won’t earn that privilege either.”
He laughed. “If it involves working even harder, then I’m out.”
I grabbed my water and turned back to face him. “Why don’t you come on a run with me this morning? We’ll get youradrenaline pumping before you go in and you’ll see. Working hard won’t be that difficult.”
To my surprise, he didn’t shut me down right away, his head rocking from side to side as he considered the offer instead. “You know what? Sure, I’ll come. I’ve been meaning to work on my active hours. My stats aren’t looking so good anymore.”
“Yeah?” I asked, sliding my phone out of my pocket. “I’ve been using this app called Straya. You should get it. I’ve been battling against someone in the neighborhood who keeps overriding myLocal Legendstatus on our exact route. That’ll get you motivated to up your active hours.”
“Dude, unlike yours, my competitive streak is less than an inch wide,” he joked as he backed out of the kitchen. “I’ll come, though. Even if I’m not that sold on your long-ass running route. As long as you don’t say another word about an app or your status.”
“I’m not competitive,” I argued, but thirty minutes later, I was starting to think he might’ve been right to make fun of me for it.
Another runner was just ahead of me and my legs were burning, my lungs felt unable to process another teaspoon of oxygen, and I knew that was an absurd way of thinking about it, but I didn’t even care. I was overtaking this guy, even if it meant forcing Theo to sprint to keep up.
After ten more miles, he sure wasn’t making fun of me anymore. In shambles, he slowed to a stop, his shirt and skin soaked with sweat as he pressed his palms to his knees, breathing like he was about to die.
I jogged in one place beside him, cooling down and suddenly worried that I might’ve broken my brother. “You know, if you take this seriously, you could qualify for the same marathons I run every year. We could even start training for the Chicago Marathon in October together.”
Theo was still panting so hard, he could barely speak, but he managed to argue anyway. “I don’t hate myself enough to run as a hobby. Especially not like this. You’re insane, man. Absolutely fucking insane.”
“Maybe,” I agreed, but the truth was that I needed to let off steam. Otherwise, this Adeline thing would drag me underwater for the second time in my life. “Are you ready yet? We need to get home. I have a meeting starting in twenty.”
All throughout every day, she was on my mind, though. Today was no exception. I’d nearly killed my brother and she wasstillall I could think about as I went about my day at my home office. I always worked better from here on account of the fact that there were no interruptions. No random, quick pop-ins from any of my brothers, my secretary, or anyone else.
But with Adeline back on my mind, I found myself just staring into the middle distance more often than usual. It was probably also because it was quieter without Alex breathing down my neck about prospective clients.
Whatever he was doing in DC, it was clearly keeping him pretty occupied. I briefly considered giving him a call and finding out what the hell Dad had pulled him into, but in the end, I turned back to my computer without even reaching for my phone.
He’d let me know when the time was right. In the meantime, I had more than enough to do. I’d recently been working with Colin on some side projects for Thayer Steelworks. W&S had invested a metric fuck-ton of money into that company to buy out the previous board, but they were doing better than ever and Colin and I were both excited to get these new projects off the ground.
As I reached for my phone to call him, Alex’s name popped up on my screen and I smiled. “Were your ears burning? I wasjust thinking about giving you a call two minutes ago. How’s DC?”
