I looked up at her, startled by the shift. “What?”
She sighed, sitting down across from me with her frail, thin fingers wrapped around a mug of her own. “Darling, you’ve been carrying this entire family on your back for years. The company. Your brothers. Me. Doesn’t part of you just want a break?”
I thought of the article. Of Mallory’s smile and her hand on Alex’s arm, caught in a single frozen moment that didn’t tell the whole story but certainly told enough to hurt. Then I thought about Alex, of how fiercely he’d defended me since the moment we’d met and how he talked about my future at Thayer like it was non-negotiable.
But doubt had a way of worming into the smallest cracks.
Everything had been falling into place and now I couldn’t tell if I was standing on solid ground or if I was right at an edge that was about to give way. I wasn’t in my right mind, hearing myself when I answered her without even thinking about the question.
“Yeah,” I heard my own voice in my ears. “A break would be nice.”
To my mind, a break meant exactly that—a break. A pause. A few days where my phone didn’t buzz every five minutes with emails, updates from the lawyers, or Mallory’s shadow looming over everything like the scent of a decaying carcass.
A break from the bullshit. From the anxiety. From the constant vigilance.
It did not mean a break from my life in general. It didn’t mean stepping away from the company I’d spent years preparing myself to run, or quietly handing the reins to someone else just because I’d married well, but Nora smiled like I’d just confirmed something she’d already decided was true.
“See?” she said warmly. “That’s exactly what I mean. You’ve been under so much stress for so long, my baby.” She leaned forward, excitement brimming in her eyes as she launched into a speech I barely heard, my brain just glitching. “Do you know how lucky you are to have a husband like that? Someone dependable and successful, who wants to take care of you. You should be spending more time with him instead of worrying about Thayer all day and night. Let him handle things. That’s what partnerships are for.”
She kept going, droning on about how nice it must be to rely on a man like Alex, how freeing it would be to let go a little, and how proud she was that I’d married someone like him. Her words blurred together, a low hum in the background until my phone buzzed against the counter.
I glanced down, my heart almost seizing when I saw Alex’s name on the screen. I didn’t pick up right away, waiting for my mom to stop talking with my thumb hovering over the screen.
“You’ve done enough, Jane,” she said softly, apparently still oblivious that I was waiting for her to finish before I took the call. “It’s time to let someone else take care of you.”
The phone rang again, and this time, I stood up with it in my hand and waved it at her. “I need to take this.”
She smiled. “Of course, darling. Tell him I said hello.”
As I was about to swipe up to answer, Wyatt walked in, home from school with his backpack still slung over his shoulder. He stopped short when he saw me, a wary expression flickering over his features that made me forget all about my phone.
He glanced toward the window, like he half expected Alex to be out there, but then he looked back at me. Hostility rolled off him in waves, more familiar now, but still exhausting.
Suddenly I couldn’t take it anymore. Couldn’t stand this tension between us on top of everything else. At least this was within my control. I could fix this with him, whatever it was. The rest of it…
“Hey,” I said carefully.
He didn’t respond, just dropping his bag by the stairs and lifting his foot to the first one.
“Wyatt,” I said, my tone sharper than it’d probably ever been with him. “Can we talk?”
His shoulders hunched, defensive as he spun to look at me. “About what?”
“About whatever this is,” I said firmly. “Enough is enough, and I’ve had enough.”
He hesitated, his eyes flicking toward the stairs that would provide an escape. For a second, I thought he was going to bolt again, but then he let out a long, dramatic sigh and gave a small nod.
“Fine,” he said, clearly irritated. “Make it quick.”
CHAPTER 40
ALEX
I’d already sliced my lawyers on the editor. Not the publication, buthim. Personally. The man who’d thought it was a good idea to run a grainy photo with a headline that implied I was screwing a woman I’d explicitly warned to stay the hell away from my wife.
Our team was promising me that they’d get a retraction within twenty-four hours and aclarificationsooner than that, but I didn’t actually care. They could print whatever they wanted about me. I just needed to know how Jane was taking it.
“We’re positioning it as a misleading image taken out of context,” the Westwood PR lead was saying in my ear. “No comment on the record. Just a firm denial, emphasize your marriage?—”
