“What does that matter, when you’re going back to her?”
He wiped my tears away with his fingers, then kissed my cheeks, my nose, my forehead. His mouth found mine. I knew the kiss would only prolong the torture, but I couldn’t help myself. I kissed back.
“It matters. It means everything. It’s you I love. I hate that we have to be apart,” he said.
“You’re not a prisoner. You could stay here if you wanted to.”
He tangled his hands in my hair, looking at me, deeply, desperately.
“It’s complicated.”
“Complicated. Meaning, that’s a lot of money to walk away from,” I said, my voice raw with hurt.
“No.”
“Why go back if not for the money? If you’re going to tell me she’s unstable—”
“She is unstable. She’s threatened suicide before.”
“That’s not the real reason.”
He sighed and looked away.
“Hey,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Tell me the truth. I can take it. You say our love is so pure, that you’re your best self with me. Well, be yourself. Not some fake version of you. I want the real thing.”
“Even if it’s not pretty? Even if I really haven’t changed that much from when I was afraid to face life without my grandmother’s money?”
“Even that.”
He looked at me for a long time. Then he nodded, his hazel eyes glittering with resolve.
“All right, then. The truth is, there’s a prenup. If Nina divorces me, I get ten million. If I leave her, or if she finds out I’m cheating and kicks me out because of it, I get nothing. Ten million, Tabby, versus nothing.”
That took me aback. I’d never seen an exact estimate of Nina’s wealth. I knew it was vast—so vast that I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Ten million, though—that, I could understand. He was right. Ten million was a lot of money to leave on the table. Still, this didn’t feel right.
“To Nina, ten million’s chump change,” Connor was saying. “She won’t miss it. But I could live on that for the rest of my life. We could. Do you understand? I’m going to leave her. I just need to do it in a way that doesn’t trigger the prenup.”
“Is that even possible?”
“I have to make her think a divorce is her own idea.”
“How?”
“I’ll figure something out. Otherwise, you know what happens? I lose my job at Levitt Global, because she’d never let me keep working there. I signed a noncompete, which means I’d basically be blacklisted, unable to work in that industry. I’d have nothing.”
“I don’t care. I’ll take you flat broke. It’s how I live already.”
“I appreciate that. But wouldn’t you rather have me with ten million?”
That question sounded flip to me. I yanked my hand away. “This just feels wrong.”
“You told me I could say anything.”
“I don’t feel right, being part of that kind of deception.”
“You’re not part of it. This is on me. It’s my marriage. I’m the one who’ll end it. I was going to, anyway. You just made me certain. Besides, it’s not only for the money that I want it to end clean. I don’t want to hurt her the way Edward did.”
“How long will this take?”
“I don’t know. A while.”
“And during that time, we don’t see each other. We don’t talk.”
“Hey,” he said, leaning close, “I’m not okay with not talking to you. As for seeing each other, maybe—”
“No. You don’t want her to know about me. If she has you followed, if she has the passwords to all your accounts, she would find out.”
“Maybe. Yes. Okay, you’re right.”
“We can’t see each other. We can’t talk.”
“You have to believe me, that I want to be with you,” he said, sighing. “It’s just complicated. There’s a lot at stake.”
His phone was buzzing with texts.
I looked away. “Your plane is waiting. You’d better go. So, don’t call me, and I won’t call you, I guess.”
He put his hands on my shoulders and leaned in. “Tabby. Don’t give up on me.”
I tried to look away, but his eyes were mesmerizing.
“Wait for me? Please? I love you. I’m going to get free, and then we’ll be together. It’ll be worth the pain, I promise.”
He wrapped me in his arms. I wanted to believe him. But I didn’t.
“I love you,” I said.
We kissed, and in my mind, I thought we were saying goodbye.
In the days after we parted, I was consumed. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I burned for him. I sleepwalked through my life not seeing what was in front of me, not hearing what people said. My senses were filled with him. His mouth, his hands, his skin, his hair, the way he smelled. It was like a low-level fever that I’d been able to manage until I saw him again in the flesh. Now the disease raged, and it ravaged me. Plus—the guilt, the shame, the humiliation. I’d slept with a married man, and he’d left me to go back to his wife. Grandma Jean didn’t raise a fool, or a home-wrecker, yet there I was, both. I spent my days staring at my phone, willing it to ring, and staring at his number in my contacts, trying not to call. I was lost.
Weeks passed. The weather turned hot, and everywhere I looked, people went about their happy lives. Couples walking hand-in-hand. Moms at the grocery store, pushing chubby toddlers in shopping carts. I’d never know that peace, that contentment. And now I didn’t even want it. I wanted to walk into the fire. After years of feeling numb, I was back where I started—obsessed with Connor, believing he was the one road to nirvana.
I threw myself into my work, looking for a way out. I got a part-time job as a data-entry clerk in the billing department at a local insurance company. But typing payment codes into the computer left my mind free to wander. I sat there reliving every caress, until I could hardly see the screen. I took extra shifts at the restaurant so I wouldn’t be alone in my apartment at night, tossing in my bed, touching myself like he was with me. But every time I passed the table where he’d sat, I stopped in my tracks, like I saw him there.
When I was alone, I gave in to the exquisite torture of searching photos of him online. Connor wasn’t the newsworthy one. Nina was, so every picture of him was of the two of them together. And they were together—still. Connor and Nina at a charity gala in New York, a gorgeous couple in their finery, smiling for the cameras. Or on the terrace of a restaurant in the South of France, eating lunch with a famous film director and his actress wife. Connor in a white shirt and sunglasses, his arm slung casually across the back of Nina’s chair. Frantically, I searched the dates. The photos were new. They didn’t look like a couple headed for divorce. They looked content. Not madly in love, perhaps, but undeniably together. How was that possible, after the time Connor had spent with me? He’d seemed so in love. He said he was. And I’d believed him.
Had it all been a lie? Probably. After all, it’s not like I hadn’t shown poor judgment in men before. Derek. My ex-husband. Can’t get much worse than that.