“Get the fuck out of this house,” I responded.
Noah and Izzy stood frozen in the living room as she bent down, grabbed her stilettos, and tossed them into her enormous handbag.
“I’ll send you the address where I’m staying so you can send the rest of my things,” she muttered.
I didn’t say anything, just endured the bullshit in the middle of the room trying to not make my two best friends more uncomfortable than they must have already been.
To my horror, Skye opened the door and there was Brock, waiting for my wife like a damn puppy. It took everything in my power to not beat his punk ass, but really, what would have been the point? He grabbed her bag and Skye was out of my life. Just like that, she was really gone.
“Everything good, brother?” Noah called over to me. He knew it wasn’t, but he probably had no idea what else to say. I sure as shit was at a total loss for words.
Without even thinking, I rushed into the master bedroom. I ripped open the door to Skye’s closet to find every hanger bare, every drawer empty. I fell to the floor and screamed. It wasn’t a bad dream, and I hadn’t just hallucinated all that shit—it was real.
“Jack? What’s…” Izzy dropped to the carpeted floor with me, a stunned look taking over her normally bubbly smile.
“Oh, fuck it all to hell!” Noah exclaimed as he joined us. “Shit, man. What do we do?”
“What did I do?” I didn’t know what to say or even think. I didn’t want to force someone to stay with me if that wasn’t what she wanted, but the entire situation was flat-out cruel.
Standing, I ran my fingers through my short hair. Anger boiling up, I looked down at my two friends, who were frozen in place and staring up at me. “I’m changing the damn locks.”
Chapter 1
Just about a year later
Jack
Another day…
Another boring fucking day sitting in front of a computer, coding my life away.
I was good at my job, but there was nothing interesting or exciting about writing software for a jerk boss who didn’t give a rat’s ass about his employees. Paul Alfonsi was a money-hungry slave-driver that cared about his bank account and how good we all made him look for the board of directors, nothing else mattered.
As I stared out the window of the high-rise commercial building, gazing at the bustling city streets of downtown Chicago, a soft tap sounded on the thin glass of my office door.
“Come in,” I called, turning in my rolling chair to see the meek smile of the newest blonde in the office.
“Jack, a courier just dropped this off for you,” Tina muttered as she laid a manila envelope on my desk.
“Thank you.”
“I hope it’s what you have been waiting for,” she giggled.
“I have a feeling that it is.” I shot my assistant a kind smile before she waggled her hips out of my office and shut the door. She was a dime a dozen, the typical corporate sweet-butt my boss had been trying to nail against the copier ever since she started a few months back. Tina knew her looks were the only thing that had gotten her the job, and she used them to her advantage as often as she could.
I gripped the thick package in my hands as an elated smile spread like wildfire across my scruffy face. Mediation had been a long, drawn-out process, most of it consisting of Skye fighting for the house and anything else of value she could get her amoral hands on. It took a while and a lot of maneuvering on my lawyer’s part, but she got jack-shit from me when everything was said and done.
Finally, I had the divorce papers in hand. I ripped open the envelope like a kid on Christmas morning and signed next to each of the yellow arrows as fast as I could. It was the last step. I was fucking free, and I couldn’t have been happier.
Picking up the office phone, I called Noah.
“This is Noah,” he answered.
“It’s done. I just signed the divorce papers.”
“Heck yes! About damn time!” he hollered.
“Drinks to celebrate?”
