Page 26 of Heartbroken Husband
He leaned forward then and reached out to take my hand, but stopped himself, his fingers pausing only inches away from mine. “I don’t want you to have to go through this again.”
“You’re one of the only people on the planet who understands the ways of our specific world,” I murmured, but I didn’t know what else to say after that.
“What do you want, Adeline?”
I blinked hard. The question caught me so off guard that I really had to think about it for a minute before I could respond. The one thing that had been mine before I’d married Louis had been art. I loved my job at the gallery and I loved that I was back, even if it had been a struggle personally.
“I want to live without the crushing expectation on my shoulders of my contribution to a family,” I said finally. “I want my girls to be safe and happy, and I want them to know that they’re wanted.”
Deep down, all I really wanted for myself was to be loved. Loved for who I was and not what I could offer, but I bit it back. It sucked not to be able to say it, but I knew it wouldn’t be fair.
Maybe if we really did do this, I also wanted a chance to be loved by him again, but I was the reason he’d had his heart torn out in the first place. I couldn’t put that on him. Not now and not like this. No matter how much it weighed on me.
Zach leaned back in his chair and nodded, turning his head and staring out the window. We lapsed into silence then for a long time, just sitting there together without saying a word. There was almost a decade of things left unsaid brewing between us, but in the end, neither of us took the plunge.
“Alright, then,” he said when he finally spoke again, sliding his wallet out of his pocket and leaving a few bills on the table between us. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do for you in the interim, but for now, I should get back to work. Duty calls.”
CHAPTER 11
ZACH
Saturday mornings had been simple for me for a long time. Golfing with Colin was a tradition that was only about a year old, but before that, I’d often hit the course with one of my brothers or I’d gone on long runs, sometimes driving out to the trails outside of the city.
Today, however, I was standing on the third tee wishing I was twenty miles into a run. God knew, golf just didn’t have the same ability to clear my head. I lined up my shot, adjusted my grip on my club, then swung much harder than I actually had to.
The crack of the club against the ball echoed sharply across the quiet green and Colin frowned. “Well, that felt aggressive. Does that ball owe you money?”
I watched the ball soar through the air and land far, far away from where I’d been aiming. “I was compensating for the wind.”
Colin glanced around like he was double-checking himself, pointedly jerking his head toward the dead-still trees. “There is no wind.”
“Yeah, okay. I miscalculated.”
“Mm,” he hummed, clearly knowing I was being cagey. We gathered our things and started down the fairway. He finally glanced at me about a full minute later. “What’s up with you?”
“Nothing.”
He pointed vaguely in the direction of where my ball had disappeared. “Thatwas not nothing.”
I’d spent the whole week ruminating on the entire asinine situation. For just a moment, I considered brushing him off, but instead, I told him everything.Fucking everything.
“Dad and Clark Morris, Sr. have decided that putting me and Adeline together will solve several problems for the both of them.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Adeline. As in?—”
“Yes.”
“YourAdeline?”
“She’s notmyanything, but yes. The one and only.”
He let out a low whistle, his eyes wide as they held mine. “That’s bold. Given your history?—”
“Exactly. Our history, which they’re now using as some kind of selling point, and I hate it. I hate that they’re trying to use our past relationship as if it’s sweetening the deal, but I also hate that they’re right. This match will solve all those problems they think it will.”
Colin hesitated for a beat. “Okay, it sounds like there’s a lot of hating going on, which is understandable, but just don’t hate me for this. It kind of sounds like a win-win situation for everyone involved.”
I stopped walking and turned to look at him properly. “Do you think she wants this? They think it makes things easier because we used to be together, but all they’re doing is putting her right back into the same position she just got out of.”
