Page 99 of Heartbroken Husband
I’d hurt him really badly and he hadn’t deserved it. Not even a little.
By the time Amber loaded the car, it was late, pitch black outside. The girls were subdued in the backseat, exhaustionfinally overtaking them. I stood beside the car for one long moment, staring at the house glowing softly through the trees.
While I knew it wouldn’t happen, there was a part of me that was waiting for him to rush out and stop us from leaving, but the front door remained firmly shut. I didn’t even see a silhouette of him in the window. In the end, I just climbed into the passenger seat and buckled up, and Amber drove us back to Chicago without saying another word.
CHAPTER 37
ZACH
The morning after they left, I was seriously reconsidering every decision I’d ever made in my life, but not in an existential way. It was more that I was standing alone in the massive kitchen, staring at nothing while the silence in the house slowly drove me insane.
No one was arguing over cereal. Jennifer wasn’t narrating her every thought like an enthusiastic podcast host. Lu wasn’t glaring at me from across the island while secretly waiting to see if I’d invite her on another run. Amber wasn’t there to give me shit for absolutely no reason.
And Adeline…
Fuck. I can’t believe I’m back here.But Adeline was gone. Again.
Even Bear was depressed, sprawled near the back door with his head on his paws, sighing every thirty seconds. I knew the feeling.
“Yeah,” I muttered at him. “Join the club.”
I’d slept maybe two hours. If that. Mentally, I was already drafting instructions for Alex to void the marriage contract when a loud engine roared up the driveway. Bear launched upright, barking as he sprinted to the front door.
“What now?” I groaned, moving over to the windows behind the sink and wondering if they had come back.
A second later, however, Theo came ripping up the drive on a black motorcycle. He parked crookedly, killed the engine, and pulled off his helmet with smug satisfaction written all over his features. I groaned and forced myself out the door and onto the porch.
“You’re going to kill yourself on that thing.”
“Nah, I’ll be fine. I’ve decided to enter my rugged biker era. What do you think? Do I look bad ass?”
“You look more like a divorced dad who sells fireworks out of a storage unit than a bad ass.”
He grinned. “Eh, what the hell do you know? I just bought it at an auction nearby and thought I’d come show it off. It needs some work, obviously, but the engine is solid.”
Regardless of the state of the chopper, which he was definitely right about needing work, I didn’t question his assessment of the engine. Theo was weirdly good with mechanical things. He might not look it, but he could rebuild an engine, grill a steak, and flirt with women twice his age all with equal confidence and without skipping a beat.
He was the only one in our family who had any sort of talent for engineering, so if he said the engine was solid, I had to believe him. As he set the helmet down on the seat, his gaze shifted past me toward the house. “Where are the girls?”
“Adeline and I got into it last night and they left.”
He groaned. “Oh no. What did you do?”
“It’s interesting that you automatically assume it was my fault.”
He gave me a flat look. “Zach, come on. You must’ve donesomething.”
I blew out a harsh breath and walked back into the house with him. I explained the highlights, starting with Lu runningaway, Adeline spiraling upon our return, our argument, and finally, their abrupt departure.
Theo sighed. “You didn’t stop them from going?”
I shook my head, but instead of defending myself, I admitted the thing I’d spent years refusing to say out loud. “I’m still in love with her.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “No shit.” I glared at him, but he just shrugged in response. “What? You’ve only been emotionally stunted since she left you at twenty-three.”
“I have not.”
“Dude, you’ve never even looked at another woman for longer than precisely one night. That’s a problem, but it doesn’t explain why you didn’t stop them from leaving. If anything, it tells me you should’ve.”
