Maybe I should’ve waited another year before I got her that thing.
Either way, however, she had it now and she’d literally run into the very worst person possible. It took another beat, but I finally managed to convince myself to look at him again, trying for an apologetic smile, but I felt it fall flat before it had even fully formed.
“I’m so sorry about that. Lauren is…” I trailed off for a beat, momentarily too distracted by those deep green eyes to think straight. “She’s a lot. I know I shouldn’t make excuses for her, but she hasn’t had the easiest year.”
Zach nodded. His gaze was intent on mine but also unemotional, which I wasn’t sure I had ever seen from him so completely before. Either he really had gotten harder with age or he was just deliberately closing himself off from me.
Both possibilities were equally as likely, I supposed.
“I heard about…” He stopped, then waved a hand out to his side. “Everything.”
My stomach squeezed. He was still so darn gorgeous, so steady and calm. Actually, he was just still everything I’d ever wanted. The same guy I still dreamed about, if I was being honest, which was why seeing him again was such a punch to the gut.
“I’m sure you have,” I said quietly, but I had no idea what to say after that or how to even begin. “It’s, uh, been all over.”
The last time we’d spoken, not counting those few words over lunch with my uncle, had been when I’d told him it was over. It had been the most difficult conversation I’d ever had, but I haddone my best to try to convince myself I was making the right decision.
As if I had options. Like I wasn’t painfully in love with my boyfriend, this man right in front of me, but forced to break up with him because my fate on the marriage market was already sealed.
It had been the worst night of my life.
The guilt I’d felt that night had stuck around, clinging to me like a second skin even now, eight years later. It was crazy. At the time, I’d thought it would go away eventually, but that never happened. Not when I’d gotten married, or while I’d been pregnant, or even when life as I’d been trying to build it had blown up so spectacularly.
If anything, it was only getting more intense with time.Maybe that’s why this is happening now.It’s karma coming back to get me.
If it was, she certainly had a reason.
“Lu is yours, then?” he asked, his voice devoid of even the faintest trace of emotion.
Those broad shoulders I used to love rubbing just as an excuse to feel him up, even before we’d been together, were so tense, it looked like his bones might crack if he twitched.God, I hate this.
“Yeah, she’s mine. Lu. Lauren, I mean, just turned five, and Jennifer is seven.”
Just saying those words to him hurt. Not because there was anything wrong with the age of seven, but because she wasalreadyseven and we’d been together only eight years ago, which meant he would know now for a fact how little time there was between our breakup and her conception. I almost winced as I said it, but somehow, I managed to keep a straight face.
I loved my Jennifer to bits. Truly. I would lay down my life for her three times over if I could. She’d made me a mom, the so-calledhoneymoonbaby everyone had thought would be a boy.
A boy whose name would’ve been Louis Weatherby IV.But she’s also the baby I was much too young for.
I was only twenty-three when she’d been born, and it had been just over a year after I’d lost the love of my life to my own family’s archaic expectations. I did my best to be the mother she deserved, but sometimes, I felt like she carried the scars of my own inexperience.
Zach just nodded, though, and stared into the distance like he was emotionally not only uninterested in this conversation but also very much disengaged. Until I followed his gaze. He was looking at Lu railing on Amber, our live-in nanny who was also helping to home school them until the new school year started.
She was just smirking down at the little tyrant, mercifully well versed in handling her temper, while Jennifer hopped around on one leg with a spool of cotton candy in her hand. I sighed, finally looking back at him and moving my hands to my hips.
“Look, I’m only back in Chicago because I got a job here.”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me,” he said, but the words were like ice.
I swallowed hard, past new pain and old, and then I stared at him for another beat. Those features had definitely sharpened with age. That part hadn’t just been my imagination or shock the other day. He was still completely clean shaven as well, the strong lines of his jaw so familiar that my fingertips ached to brush across them.
Ultimately, however, I didn’t know this man. Not anymore. And judging by how completely aloof he was acting, he had no intention of changing that.
So I turned around and then decided to just… walk away. God knew, I didn’t need another man making my life difficult. Between my asshole husband, my uncles who meant well but were controlling as hell, and my grandfather, I had more than enough of that as it was.
Still, it irked me that he didn’t call me back or try to stop me in any way. In fact, when I risked a glance over my shoulder to see if he’d even noticed that I’d walked away, he wasn’t even there anymore, his spine still completely rigid as he disappeared into the crowd.
I shook my head and admonished my stupid, traitorous heart for being a touch hurt by this. Zach and I were over and we had been for a long time. I’d lived a whole lifetime in the past eight years and I was sure he’d done the same.
