Misconception

by Christy Hayes

  She stepped into the steaming hot shower and let the water ease the knots from her shoulders. Her father’s affairs and her mother’s unbendable pride had driven her parents to divorce and her mother into a lifelong affair with alcohol. So Tori had sucked it up when Colin first slipped, tried to avoid her own free-fall into depression, and shielded Pace from the humiliation of divorce and a divided family. She’d never been close with her own father, not with his second and third wives and the multitude of half-siblings left in his wake. She knew she’d done the right thing, keeping their family together, but why did it eat at her so? And why now, of all times, when they should have been enjoying their life together, traveling, spending time relaxing, did his betrayal feel so heartrending? She’d deluded herself all these years into thinking it didn’t matter, that he loved her more than he needed the other women. She was running out of fight and yet she felt too old to move on. Tori looked down at her body. Her skin was never firm, despite her strict diet and exercise routine. There wouldn’t be any exercise on this day, she thought as she leaned over and felt her head sway.

  The housemaid had made the bed while she’d showered and had left coffee and the newspaper on the ottoman’s tray. She took a tentative sip and flipped through the paper. When she saw herself, smiling and confident, looking out at her from the lifestyle section, she pulled it from the rest and eased into the chair. Would anyone know how broken she was inside from the carefree look on her face? She pushed the paper away and stared outside at the gray day.

  She wondered what she was more afraid of—what she thought of leaving Colin or what other people would think of her. Either way it would kill his campaign and the thought of it gave Tori a tingle in her belly. He’d probably make something up, blame her for leaving, avoid all mention of his adultery. She had evidence on her side, lots of it, but was she strong enough to use it? She’d never considered herself vicious or retaliatory, but she had to admit it would feel good to destroy something he wanted so badly. But would leaving him destroy her as well?

  * * *

  Pace was gone for hours. Jason spent most of the night pacing the floor of their den after finally getting the kids to bed. He’d put together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for them and pieced together a story about why Mommy wasn’t around for dinner and bedtime. When they wouldn’t drop it after he’d said she had to go out and she’d be back later, he flat out lied and told them she went to the movies with a girlfriend. With everything their family had been through in the last month, and considering he’d been an absolute mess since she’d walked out of the house, he didn’t think they believed him. He sure as hell couldn’t blame them.

  Jason didn’t know how to feel. Should he be mad at her for walking out without an explanation? Should he be worried she’d gone to Trey or her father? He felt a little of both. But more than anything, he was pissed off at Trey. As soon as Pace got back and the sun came up, he planned to pound his fist into whatever body part of Trey’s he could reach. Just as he imagined Trey’s head snapping back under the weight of his knuckles, Jason heard the garage door open and saw the flash of Pace’s headlights in the front windows. His stomach plunged to his knees.

  She dropped her purse on the counter after coming inside, threw her keys in the drawer, and looked up at him with tired, red-rimmed eyes.

  “I’m surprised you’re still up,” she said.

  He followed her to the base of the stairs and watched her begin to climb. “Where are you going?”

  She didn’t stop. “To bed. I’m tired.”

  Jason scrambled up after her and stayed two steps behind as she poked her head into each of the boys’ rooms. “They’ve been out since eight-thirty. I told them you went to the movies.”

  She closed Mitchell’s door and went into their room, straight into the closet and began to unbutton her blouse. He waited for her to say something, tell him something about where she’d been, what she’d decided to do about everything she’d discovered that day, but she seemed content to undress and get ready for bed like it was a normal night. When she scooted past him into the bathroom he said, “Pace, we need to talk about this.”

  Her answer was to stick her toothbrush in her mouth and stare at him in the mirror. She spit into the sink, wiped her mouth, and gargled with mouthwash before responding. “Not now we don’t.” She slipped into bed and turned out her bedside lamp.

  “Pace.” He was pissed off at her for going to bed when he’d been waiting for hours to hash this out.

  She sighed, but didn’t sit up. “Jason, I can’t do this right now. I need to go to sleep; I need to have some time to let things sit for awhile.” She sounded as defeated as he’d ever heard her. “I know that’s not what you want to hear, but it’s the best I can give you right now.” She rolled to her side as if the discussion were over.

  Damn it. How in the hell was he supposed to sleep? How was he supposed to just go to bed with all the questions bouncing around his head? He watched her until her breathing sounded deep and slow. He undressed and slipped into bed beside her, wrapping his body around her if only to reassure himself she was there and to let her know he wasn’t going away. He tried to feel grateful she was home, but he hated not knowing what to expect in the morning.

  He didn’t rush off to work the next day, but waited for Pace to come back from the bus stop. She’d slept like a baby while he’d tossed and turned all night. Surely she could talk to him after such a restful night’s sleep.

  “Jason?” She came in the door and saw him sitting at the kitchen table. “I thought you’d be gone by now.”

  “We need to talk about this, Pace. I need to know what you’re thinking, what you’re planning to do.”

  She draped her coat over the kitchen chair, walked to the coffee pot, filled her cup, and brought it over to the table where he sat. She slowly pulled out a chair and joined him at the table, tapping her fingers on the side of the mug. If he didn’t know her better, he’d think he was keeping her from something. When they’d first started dating and they’d try to study together, she’d unconsciously tap her pencil against her book until he couldn’t take it any longer and he’d reach over and pull the pencil from her hand. He was afraid of what she’d do now if he tried to reach over and still her fingers.

  “I think we need to go back to Dr. Falcon.”

  “What?” Jason pushed away the newspaper he wasn’t reading and glared at her. “I’m not really sure how he helped the last time.”

  “You didn’t exactly try very hard last time.” She waited for him to rise to her bait, but he didn’t. Yelling at her wasn’t going to get them anywhere. “Things are different now, Jason. There are things we need to work out. We’ve both made mistakes this time.”

  “Pace, I’ve explained about the private detective, I’ve apologized.”

  She took a deep breath, stared into her coffee before lifting her eyes to his. “I’m not sure I can forgive you without some help. If you agree to see Dr. Falcon with me, it would be…like a vow, a commitment to making this work.”

  “That sounds like a threat. See Dr. Falcon or we get divorced. Is that what you want?”

  “It’s not an ultimatum, Jason, it’s a request. Frankly, it’s the least you can do.”

  The idea of hashing it out with Dr. Falcon again made him want to scream. Why did it always come back to counseling? “I’ll tell you what I can do. I can remind you that I don’t need a damn shrink to mediate what we need to say to each other.” Her expression hardened and he realized he was going about patching up their relationship the wrong way. He couldn’t yell at her and get her to see his side of things. He was still in the dog house and probably would be for some time. He softened his voice and reached out to touch her arm. “I love you, Pace. I’m sorry I had you followed, I’m sorry it brought up all this stuff about your father, but I don’t need Dr. Falcon to tell me what I want. I want you. I want our family. I thought that’s what you wanted too.”

  Her face crumbled an
d a tear streaked down her cheek. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

  Christ, he had no defense against her crying. He never had. But he wouldn’t agree to see Falcon just because she was vulnerable. “If you need to see Dr. Falcon, that’s fine with me. But I won’t go through all that again. I don’t need it. I already know what I want.”

  She used one of the kids’ napkins to blow her nose and pulled herself back together. “I don’t want you throwing the expense of it in my face every time I turn around. If I have to, I can pay for it with my own earnings in January.”

  “I just said I don’t care if you see him.” Jason reached out and put her cold hand in his. She looked across the table at him with tear filled eyes. “If he can help you get past everything that’s happened…” maybe convince you it never happened “…it’ll be money well spent.”

  Trey wasn’t at his office when Jason arrived around nine. He’d driven through the parking garage three times and still hadn’t seen his sporty red Porsche with his stupid vanity plates. He finally secured a spot near the entrance of the lot and waited for him to come in. He was answering an email on his Blackberry when he heard the purr of an engine and glanced up to see Trey’s cocky blonde head behind the wheel before he did a quick hair pin turn around the corner. Jason started his engine and followed.

  He’d just blocked Trey’s car in his space and gotten out of his sedan as Trey folded himself out of the matchbox car. He seemed prepared to yell at a stranger when he recognized Jason and his face turned to stone.

  “Kelly. What the hell are you doing?”

  Before Trey could react or think or dodge, Jason punched him in the nose and watched with immense satisfaction as a trickle of blood dripped onto the collar of his shirt. Trey swiped his nose with the back of his hand, his eyes wide with shock.

  Jason grabbed the lapel of his suit and tossed him back against the Porsche. “You sent those pictures to my wife, you son of a bitch.”

  “I could have you arrested for assault!” His lip was swelling and he acted like a scared little boy without the senator as backup. He knew Trey had never started a fight without a wingman.

  “I haven’t even gotten started.” Jason shoved him back and waited for him to retaliate, but Trey just touched his lip with his tongue and straightened his suit.

  “You’re a fucking idiot. You have Pace followed, you put Colin’s future on the line, and you think punching me is going to get you anywhere but put in jail?”

  “She knows you sent the pictures. She knows about her father.”

  He laughed and shook his head. “She knows nothing except for the fact that you had her followed. I told her last night I don’t know anything about pictures and she believed me.”

  Jason felt momentarily stunned. He told her last night? She went to him? “I know you did it. You’re the only one who had reason to.”

  He righted his tie and cocked a brow. “Prove it.” He dabbed his nose with a handkerchief he’d pulled from his suit pocket. “Your days are numbered, Kelly. Colin wants you out of the family. Pace sure as hell isn’t some delicate wallflower who’ll stand by you after you had her tracked like a dog. If I were you, I’d get myself a real good lawyer because by the time I’m done with you, you’ll be asking my permission to speak to Pace.” He tucked the hanky back in his pocket. “And if you’re lucky, I might occasionally let you see your kids.”

  Trey’s stupid, pathetic words were all talk and just as effective, more really, than a strong right hook. Jason lunged for him, but this time he’d set his feet and squared off. They both landed a punch. Jason delivered a direct hit to Trey’s gut and had him doubling over; Trey caught Jason’s jaw in what felt like a mosquito bite. “Pussy fights like a girl,” he thought. Just as he reached for Trey to lift him up for another punch, a security guard rounded the corner and they both paused as his brakes screeched on the concrete. Jason dropped his hands and Trey pushed himself up by the knees. Breathing heavily, they watched the security guard approach.

  “Everything okay here, Mr. Conway?” Trey looked at Jason and seemed to weigh his options. The senator’s campaign manager would have a hell of a time explaining a fist fight with his boss’s son-in-law.

  “Yeah, Steve. Everything’s fine.”

  The guard examined Jason warily. “You’re going to have to move your car, Sir. Can’t have you blocking other vehicles.”

  “No problem.” Jason stared at Trey. Blood smeared his face and collar and his shirt was untucked. He couldn’t tell in the dim light, but he hoped like hell he’d broken Trey’s nose. One thing was for sure, his pretty little face wasn’t so pretty anymore. “I’m done here, anyway.”

  As Jason drove to work, his jaw beginning to throb, he thanked God for the security guard’s interference. He would have killed Trey, he was all but sure of it. He couldn’t believe Pace had gone to Trey last night. Damn it, the whole situation got worse by the second.

  Chapter 25

  Pace managed to shower and dress and she even applied some makeup. What did it say about her that she was trying to put on a good front for her therapist?

  After she’d brought him up to speed with the goings on of her roller coaster marriage and Jason’s accusations about her father, he asked how she felt. “I feel like an explorer who just found out the world is round. It just changes your perception of everything. I can’t quite seem to wrap my mind around any of it.”

  “Pace.” Dr. Falcon sat up in his chair and pushed his glasses back up his nose. He never seemed surprised when he saw her again or when she told him about Jason. She assumed he’d heard worse, but just then she couldn’t imagine. “Are you depressed?”

  “Depressed?” She let the word sink into her brain, absorb into her blood and flow through her veins. Could one word adequately describe the state she was in, the free-falling without a net to catch her state? “Probably.”

  “I can prescribe something to help you.”

  “No. I don’t want anything to dull my senses.” She rubbed her eyes and then remembered she had on mascara. Great. “I need to work through this.”

  He jotted something on his pad and stared thoughtfully over her shoulder before he asked, “So now Jason wants to move past this and you can’t?”

  “I want things back the way they were before, when we were a team, when we trusted each other implicitly. It won’t ever be like that again and I don’t know if I want to live with anything less.”

  Dr. Falcon stared at her without blinking. He did this, she now knew, when he tried to figure out what to say, how to proceed. It always made her feel uncomfortable.

  “Are you thinking of leaving him?”

  “No. I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

  “You have to be willing to work at this, Pace. He can’t do it all.”

  She pushed away from the couch because she couldn’t stand the condescension in his voice. “I just found out he had me followed by a private investigator and that my father is probably cheating on my mother. Jason won’t even consider more therapy. Aren’t I allowed some time to wallow?” She walked to his bookshelf and picked up a glass figurine in the shape of an angel or maybe a bird. It felt cool to the touch and heavier than it looked. If she threw it at him, she wondered if it would knock him out or just irritate him. “I don’t know how to work at it.” She put it back on the shelf when the thought of chucking it through the window held an almost unstoppable appeal. She sat back down again, deflated, weary.

  “Maybe you and Jason should try to get away together, just the two of you. You’re letting the days pass, letting life get in the way of dealing with your emotions. It can’t go on forever before one or both of you breaks.”

  She started shaking her head even before he’d finished his point. “Can’t. Jason’s too busy with work.” Hopefully all he was busy with was work. “I’m in no position to take off right now.”

  Dr. Falcon leaned forward with his ankle resting on his knee. She saw the argyle socks he wore und
er his corduroy pants. “Do you still want to be married to Jason? Do you still want to spend the rest of your life with him?”

  Being without Jason would be like cutting off her air supply or severing a limb on purpose. How could this man who’d lost his wife ask her such a question? “I want to be married to Jason, I am married to him and I don’t want to stop. I love him, Dr. Falcon. I just don’t like him a whole lot right now.

  “What about your father?”

  “What about him? He did it. I don’t necessarily trust Jason all that much right now, but I know he wouldn’t have lied to me about that. And Trey all but confirmed it.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  She picked at the dog hair on her pants. “I think I have to tell my mother.”

  “Pace…” He put both feet on the floor and leaned toward her. “You need to give it a little time and think about whether or not that’s the best thing to do.”

  “You think I should just pretend like I don’t know? I don’t think I can do that.”

  “This is your mother’s life you’re talking about. It’s not about what you can or can’t do. It’s about what’s best for her.”

  “You think it’s best if she doesn’t know?”

  He sat back in his seat and tapped his pen against the yellow pad. “What if she already knows?”

  A bubble of laughter spewed out of her mouth. She slapped her hand over her lips. “Oh, God, I didn’t think I could laugh about any of this.” She took a deep breath and tried to answer him seriously. “I’m sorry, Dr. Falcon, but that’s the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever said. My mother is the strongest, most fearsome woman in the world. If she knew my father was having an affair, she’d have cut his balls off—if she let him live.”

  * * *

  Tori was on the phone arguing with the caterer about her Holiday Tea when Pace unexpectedly walked in her study. Tori usually looked forward to hosting the annual event, but this year she couldn’t seem to muster much enthusiasm. She raised her hand at Pace, silently asking her to wait while she instructed the baker to make all the petit fours look like presents. Last year they’d done a mixture—trees, reindeer, and such, but the presents went first so she wanted them all alike. She expected her highest turnout this year and the kids loved the petit fours.