Don't Marry the Ex: A Sweet Romance (The Debutante Rules Book 3)

by Emily Childs

  I’m going to fix all of it.

  Chapter 13

  Dot

  Note to self: stop crying before roaring down the highway, could be unsafe when everything looks like it’s an abstract watercolor canvas.

  I drag the heel of my palm under my eyes again, wiping away a new wave of tears, and turn off the main road to the long, long private drive that’ll lead to the house my parents live in half the year. The other half they head up north to Raleigh. Lucky me, they’re here for the next two months. It’d be wise to wait until morning to have this conversation, but things such as this shouldn’t wait in my opinion. Besides, I wouldn’t be able to sleep, even if I tried.

  My phone is going crazy on the passenger seat. Calls, texts. I left a message for Olive that was admittedly vague and cryptic. Maybe some calls are from Sawyer. I do have the brains not to look at my screen when I’m whizzing to the private gate.

  I sniffle and press the button to open the wrought iron. After a soft buzz, the groan of iron, I’m shooting up to the front wrap-around drive.

  My folks live in an old colonial with a wide front porch and three levels. It’s lovely. Lined in tall oaks with moss hanging on the branches like ghosts. The private lake behind the house leaves a hint of damp and soil in the air. No time to bask in the ambiance of the gilded lanterns lighting the drive, though. There are things to say.

  I burst through the front door. The knob crashes into the wall, startling Grace, one of my parents’ housekeepers.

  “Miss Dottie,” she says. “Are you all right?”

  “I need to speak to Mr. Gardener,” I say as one breathless word.

  “Uh, he’s in his office.”

  “Thank you.”

  This house does not normally take winded, frazzled people. No, only the poised and composed visit these walls. I can understand Grace’s disquiet watching me fumble down the narrow hallway, tripping once on the woven runner over the polished wood floors. The study is closed, as usual. I knock briskly, wait maybe half a second, then shove inside.

  My daddy is behind his desk, mouth half open, as if he were about to give the reply to my knock. One brow raises. “Dorothy-Ann? What’s all this about? I’m about to get on a phone call.”

  “It can wait,” I say through my teeth.

  “Come again, girl?”

  “It can wait.” I stomp over to his desk and lean into my palms. “Answer me truthfully. Did you tell Sawyer to leave me alone until he made more money?”

  He scoffs. Doesn’t even flinch. Not a lick of worry on his handsome face. “Would you expect a father to say anything less?”

  I clench my fists and free a grunt of frustration. “Did it ever occur to you that money wasn’t why I wanted to be with him?”

  My father stands. His broad body imposing, but I don’t back down. Not tonight. “I think I was within my rights entirely. Especially since you failed to mention you were planning to marry the boy. Elope. Really? Do you know the sort of embarrassment that’d cause your mama? The hurt?”

  “We wanted to get married for us!” I cry. “We would’ve had a ceremony with everyone after, but no, not even that was good enough for you. I thought you’d want a good man for me, a kind one. But you’d rather see me with some arrogant, pompous man who totes me around like a trophy.”

  “Nothing wrong with wanting security for your daughter.”

  “I see. This might come as a surprise to you, Daddy, but us women—we can make it in the world without a man’s wallet! Men aren’t made in negotiations. They’re made in gentle kisses, in safe, kind arms. A real man is one who respects, cherishes, and values his love.”

  My dad rolls his eyes. “I don’t have time for this. If your feelings were hurt, I apologize. But don’t forget—the boy had a choice and he made it.”

  I grit my teeth, hating that my father isn’t wrong. Sawyer had many choices and whatever he was thinking back then, he made all the wrong ones.

  “Dorothy-Ann? What is all this?”

  I glance at the doorway where my slender mother stands with her hair pinned in curlers, and a satin nightgown already wrapped around her body. A glass tumbler with amber liquor in hand.

  “Mama, you and Daddy ran Sawyer off, and I’m having my say about it.”

  She blows out her lips and floats into the room, sitting in one of the armed chairs with a sigh as if she’s been running for miles. “Please, Dot. A little dramatic, don’t you think? From what you told me back then, the boy lost his ever-loving mind and was considering walking away from what he was building. Your father gave him the nudge he needed to keep his momentum, is all.”

  “Is that what you call it?” I glare at my father. “You told him he was nothing. You threatened to take the clinic from me if he married me. Tell me that isn’t true.”

  Daddy’s lips pinch tightly. “Y’all were making rash decisions. Forgive me if I didn’t want the clinic at risk being led by you when you weren’t thinking right.”

  I chuckle bitterly. “That’s the worst answer I’ve ever heard.”

  “That’s enough,” Mama says. “Why bring all this up? Mr. Lanford is respected, he’s certainly impressive enough for your father to bring him on board now. No need to wallow in something you can’t change.”

  “I can’t believe you two can’t see how much you’ve hurt me. It wasn’t your place to meddle in my life!”

  “The bottom line is, the boy wasn’t up to my expectations a year ago,” Daddy says dismissively. “He looks different now. If you want my approval, you have it.”

  “I don’t want your approval. I don’t need it.”

  Daddy scoffs and shakes his head as he returns to his plush seat. “Believe what you want, Dorothy-Ann. Now, if you’ll excuse me—”

  “Tell me about the pictures, Daddy.”

  That brings him to a pause. A shadow passes over his eyes. “Pictures?”

  I lower my voice. “The altered picture of me and Sawyer. Tell me what purpose it served to convince my fiancé I’d stepped out on him? Don’t deny that you sent them.”

  “I don’t deny anything.”

  Admittedly, the truth hurts more than I thought. I knew it was him in my gut, but hearing it out loud makes me ill. “Why would you do it? Not only did you break us up, but you undermined my character.”

  He laughs and shakes his head. “Oh, Dorothy-Ann, how naïve you are. As your mother said, I was lighting a bit of fire under the boy. Giving him a look at what he stood to lose if he kept going on with his crazy ideas.”

  “What’s she talking about, Rob?” Mama asks.

  “Oh, didn’t he tell you, Mama? He made sure salacious photos were sent to Sawyer. Altered photos so he’d think I was stepping out on him.”

  For a split second, my mother burns her fury at my father. “A little over the line, Robert.”

  “Look, bemoan my methods all you want. That boy didn’t have his head on right. He was throwing away potential—”

  “For you or him? After all this insistence that we partner with their firm, I imagine you saw a benefit for you if he kept building his company,” I say.

  My father frowns. “What’s done is done. I did what I did for the good of my daughter. Believe it or not. But I can’t take all the credit. His business partner and I agreed you would be the best motivator to keep him going, and regarding your character—”

  “Stop.” I hold up a hand. So my suspicions were right. Liam was desperate enough to keep Sawyer on the letterhead that he’d stoop to these levels. I could accept Liam, hate him for his meddling, but my father? It’s almost as bad as Sawyer not trusting me all this time.

  “I’m disappointed in you, Dot,” Daddy says. “Encouraging the boy to leave his position.”

  My breath catches. I had encouraged Sawyer to leave his fast-track to success when he’d mentioned his desire to finish his computer science degree. He had such a love for programing, it was a no-brainer. The real reason I’d been surprised he pressed on with L & H. Sawyer wa
nted to build games. Not run companies. Not drive fancy cars and survive in boardrooms like my daddy. When I found out about HealthyRx, I was mighty proud. I thought he might’ve found a way to have it all.

  “Encouraging people to do what they love is what someone does when they believe in the ones they love,” I say.

  “Sentimentality doesn’t live long in the business world, baby. Maybe Mr. Hewitt’s idea was a little unorthodox, but no one else was ever going to see the images. No harm done.”

  I’m as stone. Cold, hard, empty. Each word carves jagged, unforgettable scars in my skin. My voice comes out hoarse, broken. “No harm? You broke apart the best thing in my life because of your pretentious, arrogant, chauvinistic expectations!”

  “Dorothy-Ann,” Mama gasps.

  My father’s face is ruddy with anger. Not one ounce of me cares. I spin on my heel and rush to the door.

  “What are you doing?” Daddy shouts.

  “Leaving!” I retort. “Oh, and I’m turning in my thirty-day notice for the beach house. I don’t want a single thread of my life connected to any part of you.”

  “You watch your mouth!”

  “No,” I shout. “I don’t answer to you, I don’t listen to you, and I don’t respect you.” With my mother aghast, my father beet red, I turn to leave, but say over my shoulder, “And by the way, his name is not boy. It’s Sawyer, and you’d do well to respect him for what he’s doing now to save your sorry behind when you did nothing to deserve it.”

  ***

  There is something peaceful about the waves on the sand. The night is dark, and I can’t see more than a few feet beyond the surf, but I close my eyes and soak up the crash of breakers rolling in one after another.

  In my head, I make a checklist of everything I know:

  1) Sawyer believed others over me

  2) My father sabotaged my relationship

  3) I don’t trust the man I once loved

  4) I have no idea what to do now.

  How to move forward is nothing but a black smudge in my head. Did I miss such blatant manipulation in my childhood that I couldn’t see this behavior coming a mile away? I think of Olive. She married Rafe, who has less than Sawyer, her family has more than mine, yet Rafe and Olive’s wedding was one of the biggest parties I’ve been to in a long time. They’re at the Big House (as we affectionately call Olive’s childhood home) constantly and it’s a battle between Rafe’s mama and Olive’s over who wants to see a little grandbaby more.

  I guess I expected much the same from my parents when I brought home the man I planned to love forever.

  This is entirely archaic.

  “Hey, Dottie,” Jace’s voice comes from behind.

  I smile and peek over my shoulder. “Thanks for coming.” I didn’t want to be alone, and somehow I felt like Jace might be the best to talk with tonight.

  Jace hands me a smoothie, pulls her pale hair into a top knot, and settles next to me on the damp sand. “No sense sugar-coating, tell me everything.”

  Over the next ten minutes, I blubber through the entire ordeal. We reminisce on the day Sawyer ended things with me for good—the night I met Jace—and the anguish I felt. Like a molten nail carving a mosaic design on my heart, knowing the pain had been for nothing is almost unbearable. By the time I finish spewing all the juicy details, Jace has an arm around my shoulders.

  “I think the most important thing to figure out now is what you want,” she says.

  “I’ve always wanted Sawyer,” I admit. “Heaven knows how I tried to let the man go, but unloving him has been one epic failure.”

  “Okay,” Jace says slowly. “Then what do you want to do with that?”

  “I’ve never stopped loving him, but I don’t trust him.”

  “Understandable.”

  “How could he do it, Jay? I mean, how could he just drop me without telling me all this so I could at least have a chance to refute it?”

  “From what you told me it sounds like he’s owning his mistake.”

  I give her a pinched look.

  “Hey,” she says with a laugh. “I’m not saying personal insight means forgetting the stupidity of it all, just something to take into consideration.”

  “Fine, he gets half a point.” I bury my face in my hands. “What do I do, Jace?”

  She lets out a long sigh. “I think you need to give yourself some time to process, do some soul searching, then decide what you want. Can you trust him again, do you want to? Then, once you’ve made a few personal decisions, I think you should talk to him again with all this new information out there in the open.”

  “I have a better idea. How about you do all that for me?”

  She laughs and lets me rest my head on her shoulder. “Nope. I’m here for moral support. But whatever you decide, we’ve got your back.”

  “Well,” I start with a smile, “that’s the best thing I could ask for.”

  Chapter 14

  Sawyer

  “Another day of doing nothing, then?” Kyler’s voice snaps me out of my endless staring.

  All I do is shrug. I’ve been treating the open windows facing the shore like a TV screen for the last two days. Kyler is adjusting his tie as he saunters into the kitchen. Maddie joins him a half breath later, dressed in a skirt and high heels. She’s starting to smile more, but I think it’s because for once in his life, her stupid (soon-to-be) ex-husband isn’t dragging his toes and is giving her the divorce without incident. We keep crossing our fingers it stays that way.

  “You sick?” she asks as she pours a bowl of cereal. “You’re all pale and gross.”

  “He’s not sick,” Kyler says. “Come on, man. Monday! We’ve got places to be.”

  The Gardener Clinic, that’s where we need to be. I’ll need to face Dot. Since Saturday morning I’ve tried to reach out to her, but with each unreturned text, phone call, voicemail, I’ve sunk deeper into this pit in my head and now I can’t quite escape it.

  But how does anyone escape the knowledge that they ruined the best thing that ever happened to them? Regret cuts to the bone.

  “You know the training inside and out,” I grumble.

  “Nope,” Kyler says with a huff. “I’m good, but I’m the sales guy who convinces everyone to drink our Kool-Aid. You’re the teacher/expert.”

  “Then have Mr. Hewitt do it.”

  “You’re calling him Mr. Hewitt now?” Kyler chases the space between us, leans down, and sniffs me. “Are you drunk?”

  Again, I answer without an answer and look away instead. I broke my cardinal rule and brought a drink in the house last night. Tack it onto my list of mistakes. I close my eyes. Breathe. Calm down, idiot.

  “Sawyer, you’ve got to move,” Maddie tries. “I know this is hard.”

  “I’ve been wrong about everything,” I snap. “Wasted all this time being angry when . . .” I don’t finish. They know. Every seedy detail came flowing out once I got home on Saturday.

  Kyler hasn’t said I told you so, not once. He could, since my brother has been telling me it was impossible that Dot stepped out from the moment I told him about the pictures a year ago. No one else knows Dot and I ended because I thought she cheated. It would’ve broken my mom’s heart for one thing. She loved Dot. Could’ve had her girl days still if the woman hadn’t raised such a dense son.

  Kyler lets me brood for a few minutes before he rests a hand on my shoulder. “Sawyer, get your head on.”

  “I can’t,” I admit, pathetically. “I need you to tell me I did not break things off over a trick, Ky. That’s what I need you to tell me.”

  Kyler says nothing.

  I curse at the ceiling. “Was everyone so desperate to get me away from her?”

  “Sawyer,” Kyler says. “It’s shady, no doubt. This whole thing has my blood boiling.”

  “Really? Because you look pretty calm.”

  He chuckles. “Because you’re losing it just fine for the both of us.”

  “You were dealt a bad t
hing,” Maddie adds.

  “Yeah, and I made it worse.”

  She can’t argue because she agrees with me. Maddie and Kyler have both given me those looks, the kind of disappointed expression that reaffirms I should’ve handled the entire thing differently.

  “What am I going to do? How am I supposed to make up for this?” I groan behind my hands.

  “You apologize,” Kyler says.

  “Then grovel,” says Maddie.

  Kyler nods. “I think you need to decide what you want.”

  I wipe away a hot tear. I’m not much of a crier, but I can’t remember a time when I spun into this type of chaos, this crushing kind of despair. Tears spring up almost involuntarily now. I clear my throat. “I’ve never not wanted her.”

  Kyler smiles sadly and grips my shoulder, giving me a little shake. “I know, man. It’s been a long time, though, and knowing Dottie, she’s going to be fuming for a while.”

  “Seesaw, try to see this from her perspective,” Maddie says. “Will might have hinted that she has really struggled because she’s been thinking all this time she did something wrong. You never gave her closure. She’s got to be mourning her mourning.”

  “First things first,” Kyler begins, “Will?”

  “Stop,” she says, face flushed. “We just had coffee. It wasn’t a date—I’m still married, you know. He’s just . . . easy to talk to.”

  “We’ll round back to this later,” Kyler says. “Explain your little play on words—mourning her mourning.”

  “All I’m saying is she’s been heartbroken, now all that pain has been for a misunderstanding. If I were her, I’d feel like I went through agony for nothing. I’d mourn my wasted time, you know? Sort of like you’re doing now, Saw.”

  So many thoughts pound inside my skull. Each one reminding me how ignorant, cowardly, how stupid I was when this all blew up. If I could go back and simply tell her, as she said, and confronted the situation then . . . well, I’d be married to her. No question.

  “I honestly don’t know how to do this,” I whisper.