Married To Her Ex (a standalone novel)

by Kat Cantrell

  “What does that mean? How does it work? How does a broken condom make you react like that, like you can’t even stand? Just stop worrying about it.”

  Well, that was a moronic thing to say. If she could, most likely she would. But you dealt with stuff head on, or it swallowed you. Couldn’t she see that?

  “Of course you’d say that. That’s exactly why I wasn’t going to tell you,” she muttered.

  That set him back. She’d been trying to keep it a secret, and the idea infuriated him. Like she didn’t need or want his help. “Why? Because I’m asking a couple of questions?”

  “No, because I don’t enjoy the reminder that I’m not as strong as you. I can’t just stop. Panic attacks are real and scary,” she told him and closed her eyes, pulling into a tighter ball in his lap. “Not that you’d know anything about fear.”

  Two deep breaths later, his temper receded enough to allow him to speak. He’d given her a night-light, after all. Did she think him completely heartless? Obviously she did—to the point where she hid things.

  She shuddered, long and hard, and his stomach turned over. This was real, to her anyway, whether it was all in her head or not.

  He swept whiskey-colored locks away from her face with a thumb. “I’m afraid sometimes,” he admitted, almost strangling on it.

  With a snort, she wiggled out of his arms, and sat up. “I don’t mean the second between when you register being startled and the next, when you morph into Superman, able to handle everything in a single bound and eating bullets for breakfast. I’m talking about a bone-deep fear nothing will ever be right again, you won’t be okay, and you have no hope anyone can fix it. Sheer terror is foreign to you.”

  No, it wasn’t. Watching her drift away after the miscarriage, unable to help. Unable to talk to her. Terror was just the tip of a wild tangle of emotions attached to that period before he’d left, bent on figuring out a way to take a deep breath again.

  It seemed as if she was struggling with something similar.

  He leaned back against the wall and stuck his bare feet out. He’d taken time to yank on his jeans, but they weren’t buttoned and gaped as he shifted to get comfortable on the hard tile floor. Filtering through the information, he worked to put it into some semblance of logic. “So you get these attacks because you’re depressed?”

  “I get panic attacks when I’m closed in or in the dark with the illusion of being closed in. The depression happened when you left me.”

  That one stupid decision to walk out still haunted him. But oddly enough, it had gotten them here. They were finally talking, weren’t they? The fact that neither of them liked the subject material was inconsequential—no matter how difficult, they had to work through this stuff.

  He fixated on the sink for a minute before speaking. “I left because you left me. You weren’t there anymore, and I had no idea where you went. You cried all the time. All the time. I tried to get you some help. I tried leaving you alone. Tried calling Shannon, your mom. I ran out of things to try. I hadn’t tried leaving yet.”

  It had been a mistake, a snap decision born out of frustration and hurt and genuine uncertainty in how to get past the rut in their relationship. He hadn’t meant for the separation to last forever.

  He swiped the crook of an elbow over his forehead. She’d been honest about the panic attacks. He’d return the favor though admitting failure chafed so much it hurt. “I screwed up. We both did. Let’s move on and be together again.”

  “I’m not the one who screwed up,” she countered hotly. “I cried because I was in mourning and you were never there. Outlaw saw more of you than I ever did. And on the rare occasions you graced me with your presence, you refused to let me mourn.”

  “What are you talking about? I never said you weren’t allowed to mourn.”

  “Don’t you remember telling me I wasn’t allowed to cry in front of you?”

  The memory of it floated back, bit by bit. “Yeah.”

  How could he possibly explain how it hollowed him out to watch her hurting right in front of him and being powerless to make it go away? He couldn’t explain it to himself, let alone out loud to Alexia.

  He sighed. “I didn’t mean you couldn’t ever cry again for the rest of your life. Sometimes I lose my temper and say things I shouldn’t, especially when I can’t fix the problem.”

  “Nobody asked you to fix it, Jesse. I wanted you to be there! Not at work. I needed your support.” Tears welled and caught on her eyelashes, but she dashed them away. A pulse point hammered in his temple as he realized why she didn’t let the tears fall. “Instead, I got a stupid phobia about small places.”

  For his honesty and his trouble, he got more accusations. More things he had no clue how to correct. “So these panic attacks are my fault?”

  “I never said the panic attacks were your fault. You conveniently skipped over the part about you being gone all the time. Outlaw is the problem. If you wanted to fix things, you should have stayed home.” She pressed her palms to her shut eyelids. “This is why I stopped talking to you. Conversations are a never-ending circle, and nothing is ever resolved.”

  Her stubborn head was as hard as the marble tile under his butt. Was it really such a mystery why he buried himself in Outlaw when she shoved him away time and time again? “And you refuse to give me any credit. I left work early today. Does that count for nothing? I don’t know how to give you what you want. I don’t know what you want. Do you?”

  “I know exactly what I want.” Any progress vanished as her expression hardened. “The patent.”

  Jaw clenched, he bit out, “Great. Then we’re on the right track. Only two and a half more months, seven dates a week, and it’s yours.”

  Then she would leave again. Until then, this was his only chance to put his life back together with everything in the right place. To atone for the mistake he’d made. Success lay in breaking down these barriers Alexia kept throwing up.

  Not breaking them down. Wearing them down, one date at a time. She belonged by his side, and he’d convince her of it whether she liked it or not. He couldn’t go through another separation. Just thinking about it hurt his chest.

  Guitars jangled from his back pocket, setting off the spasm in his temple again. A call at this hour meant nothing but trouble. He pulled the phone from his pocket. Ben’s name flashed across the screen. “Yeah.”

  “Sattlewhite’s asked to meet with you in person. Monday morning,” Ben said brightly. “This is the final step. We’ll fly out tomorrow and lock down the proposal beforehand.”

  Jesse’s lungs froze. “Tomorrow? I can’t go to Boston tomorrow.”

  Alexia coughed and heaved a huge sigh. He was losing her, one complication at a time.

  “Yes, you can,” Ben said. “He invited you and Holloway to the meeting to present your plans for the company, how you’ll integrate, what your intentions are toward personnel. He’ll decide at the end of the session who he’ll sell to, then work through the offer over the next couple of days.” Ben cleared his throat. “You can close this deal and send Holloway Industries packing. I’ve never met anyone you couldn’t work.”

  There was one person. With a glance at Alexia, he said, “Let me call you back.”

  “Is everything all right? This deal is all we’ve been working on, and I gave you the best news possible. Why aren’t you jumping up and down?” Ben asked, his concern evident. “I know I should have called earlier, but Deb—”

  “It’s fine. It’s just complicated. Give me an hour.” Jesse ended the call and shut his eyes.

  Outlaw or Alexia? Why did it have to come down to a choice between the two? If he went to Boston mere hours after being hit over the head with how he’d abandoned her after the miscarriage, it would only result in more barriers.

  The math wasn’t difficult. Her hostility toward Outlaw had been born out of that pain.

  Maybe he could convince Alexia to go to Boston with him. She could hang out while he sat in meetings fo
r hours and hours. Brilliant plan, moron. Oh, but first he’d have to tell her about the acquisition. Somehow he didn’t think that mentioning he’d been planning to buy a new company would go over so well. She’d know instantly that meant more trips to Boston, more work, more hours.

  Acid burned up his esophagus. Asking Alexia to come to Boston didn’t come close to the kind of change his gut said would be necessary to about-face his relationship with her.

  He was going to have to make a huge sacrifice.

  Alexia slept late the next morning—in her own bed, with the door closed and locked. When she woke, she stared at the ceiling for a long time, loath to face the morning.

  Last night had been a disaster. And then it had gotten worse.

  As if the condom breaking hadn’t been bad enough. Then, as soon as the phone had rung, Jesse had disappeared into the factory as surely as if he’d walked through the entryway. Jesse and Outlaw were intertwined, just as she and Jesse were. How long were they destined to struggle in this unbreakable triangle?

  If she wanted the patent, her only choice was to stay and suck it up. The patent was the sole thing she’d get out of this deal, apparently. Reconciliation wasn’t Jesse’s real goal. It couldn’t be, not when he’d failed the test on the very first night. He’d been late coming home, which she’d forgiven without even mentioning it, and then he’d tried—really tried—to listen, but he still didn’t get it. She didn’t care if he went to Boston or stayed in Dallas. He was emotionally inaccessible regardless of his physical proximity. Only Outlaw got his time and energy.

  It hadn’t always been that way, but after the honeymoon, Jesse’s ninety-hour-a-week, workaholic nature reared its ugly head. She’d been patient. Accepting.

  Their second anniversary brought an opportunity to connect like they hadn’t in a long time. Since she hadn’t been trying to get pregnant, she’d been six weeks along before realizing what the crippling exhaustion and aversion to all food except meat signaled. Two pink lines explained it, and in an instant, she had a way to fill the gaping void where her husband was supposed to be. A substitute for Jesse.

  Forty-five days later, the hemorrhaging started. She sped to the hospital and sat frozen in her own blood while waiting for the doctor to confirm what she already knew. The pregnancy had terminated.

  She rushed home to grieve in her husband’s arms, but the relief plastered across his expression doubled the devastation. She’d known he didn’t want kids almost from the very beginning, and she’d been okay with that. Until the pregnancy, and then she wasn’t. It had been her one chance, a divine gift, and it had been cruelly ripped away.

  Days passed, but the grief didn’t. For that brief, shining bit of time, she’d been a mom. How could she have predicted she’d want that so much? Or be so devastated when it was too late? She huddled in the bathroom for hours on end, hiding the perpetual tears, fighting to process the emotions on top of her body’s haywire hormonal swings.

  Then, right before Christmas, she emerged from the bathroom to find Jesse standing in the hallway with two bags. I’m staying with Danny for a couple of days, he’d said. I can’t stand watching you slip away and not even trying to help yourself.

  Ironically, that was the event that finally shocked her out it. She was well and truly alone and had to fix her life. Only to wind up back in her husband’s arms without a peep the night before. Madness.

  Alexia shook off the morbid memories and rolled out of bed to get dressed, then drove the truck into town where she bought four pregnancy tests. Even now, a new life might be growing in her womb. How could she wait the interminably long two weeks before the tests would yield accurate results?

  First thing Monday, she’d make an appointment to get on birth control pills. Just in case. Oh, she wasn’t planning on taking another ride on the Crazy Express anytime soon, but obviously she had no control, and even less intelligence, when it came to Jesse. And she wasn’t doing another unplanned pregnancy ever again.

  She returned to Tres Lagos with a knot in her stomach that wouldn’t go away, so she didn’t bother to eat. Instead, she took her laptop to the small courtyard in the center of the house and sat on a pretty wrought iron bench by the central fountain. The fountain burbled cheerfully, and the temperature hadn’t shot into the triple digits yet, so she tried to enjoy the flowers and pretty stonework artfully strewn about the courtyard.

  Thoughts of conception and pregnancy consumed her and set off jumpy nerves.

  At the end of the day, it didn’t matter whether Jesse made an effort to work less. The threat of another pregnancy—and the resulting relationship carnage—would always prevent her from fully engaging her heart again. It wasn’t worth it to even try a real reconciliation.

  The patent was the only positive thing she’d get out of this mess.

  She couldn’t keep dwelling on any of this. To occupy her brain with something other than Jesse and babies, she checked a couple of employment websites in case something new had come up.

  Still nothing in marketing for someone without an MBA. She wasn’t proud. She’d take anything, but not one of the entry-level jobs she’d applied for had netted so much as an interview.

  Their loss. She would show them all how a company should be run as soon as this nightmare of Jesse’s came to an end.

  She checked her e-mail and saw the monthly statement from her brokerage firm. Eagerly, she opened it. Nothing thrilled her more than seeing all the lovely money socked away for the Thigh Thing. Being laid off had the singular perk of a nice lump sum severance, and she’d rolled the amount into a small-cap fund that had better-than-average returns.

  Like a neon sign, the balance jumped off the screen. Two hundred dollars. The laptop nearly crashed to the terra-cotta tile, but she caught it just in time.

  What was this madness? Hands trembling, she skimmed the statement, eyes darting to each line, but it still said the same thing.

  Nearly thirty thousand dollars. Gone.

  She dialed customer service at her broker.

  Fifteen frustrating, discouraging, and baffling minutes later, mild alarm exploded into full-blown panic. All the money was gone. After explaining one of the major sectors invested in the fund had been caught up in an unfortunate scandal, which had in turn sent the stocks into a tailspin, the representative asked her if she’d like to sell when the market opened on Monday.

  The word “sell” echoed in her brain long after she said no. The representative hung up, but her fingers were locked in a frozen claw around the phone’s slim plastic case. This was a really bad time to recall her dad’s advice about a stop-loss.

  The Thigh Thing dream vaporized and blew away. A pittance remained in her checking account, not nearly enough to stake a startup company. It was over.

  No. I’m not giving up. Shannon. Her sister had money. Except a lecture wasn’t very appealing right this minute. Shannon had never lost as much as a penny on the sidewalk in her entire life. Her dad was out too. He’d told Alexia in no uncertain terms that she was welcome in his home but not his checkbook. Three loans in three years was apparently the limit, at least until she paid back all the money she owed her parents.

  This was supposed to be her chance to do that. Not only could she make enough money on the Thigh Thing to prove she’d grown up, she could pay off her debts. Yeah, she’d proven all of that in spades, all right.

  The real kicker was that Jesse would have given her the money without blinking an eye. But she wanted to be successful on her own, not because her wildly prosperous husband bankrolled his wife’s little hobby. Neither did she have a desire to owe him anything.

  So she’d figure it out. For an hour, she racked her brain and came up with exactly zilch.

  Setback after setback, and she had conquered them all—until today, and this might be the one to break her. Obviously, she had no business starting a company if she couldn’t invest money without losing it all. Or coming up with an alternate approach.

  She was less th
an two weeks into her obligation to Jesse, and being in the same house with him frayed her nerves. How would she survive till the end? If, by some miracle, she scrounged up enough courage and will to actually stay until the end of the deal, she would be broke at the end, with a patent, and no way to get it to market.

  And in all honesty, she’d probably walk away with her heart in tatters again. Her stomach churned.

  Might as well have a big, flashing sign in front of her. Bridge out ahead. Turn back now.

  The loss of her money was discouraging enough. Combined with fresh scars from last night, the nightmare of the situation crashed down on her. The time had come to give up.

  Jesse could keep the patent. He didn’t have to be told why. He would never be anyone other than Jesse James Hennessy who saw nothing wrong with pushing his wife away, who would never say yes to having a baby. Work would always come first, before her, before a family. There was nothing left to stay for.

  She had to leave. Now. There wasn’t another way out of this, not if she hoped to keep her sanity, integrity, and soul intact.

  Leave. The concept took root. It was right. Start over somewhere else, without bartering her soul. And this time, she’d file the divorce papers.

  Chapter 9

  Since she had brought almost nothing, packing took little time. Once finished, she called Shannon and stumbled through directions to Tres Lagos. She waited in the formal living room, where the view of the gravel driveway was the best, though it would take her sister at least an hour to arrive.

  The spray of gravel came much too soon, and a silver Vette rolled up instead of Shannon’s Lexus.

  Moki. That double-crosser. He’d warned Jesse she was leaving.

  Jesse vaulted out of the car without unlatching the door and strode inside. He halted in the foyer and glanced around. When he saw her sitting in the living room, he blew in, his dark hair naturally tousled into a style most men paid hundreds of dollars for, and stopped short of the couch.