I left Laurel at her mother’s house at a few minutes past eight a.m. and went straight to the gym. Despite the possibility of injury, I finished off my ten-mile run with one full hour of power cleans. The satisfaction of lifting more weight than was probably safe and letting it drop was fucking satisfying.

Every time I squared off my hips, bent my knees and engaged all my chest and upper body strength to lift that bar, I felt as if I was lifting the weight of my world: Laurel, our marriage, the investigation, Laurel’s safety, the business. All of it resting on my shoulders. Then, I’d drop it onto the floor, watch the bar and the weights bounce, imagining all of it, everything I carried on my back, shattering into a million pieces.

I was going to be sore tomorrow.

As I left the gym, I texted my best friend Nate, suggesting we get some beers later. At the house, I took a screaming-hot shower, though I didn’t want to wash Laurel’s scent off my skin. But I knew if I was already missing her, she was missing me just as much. Especially since Laurel had never lived alone in her life.

When I met her our senior year at OSU, she was living with the same roommate she’d moved in with her freshman year; a girl named Priti who had no interest in being Laurel’s friend because, according to her and her parents, partying and school did not mix.

This was fine with Laurel, who had no problems making friends on campus. According to my pixie, she spent most of her freshman and sophomore year partying, and most of her junior and senior year catching up.

By the time I met her, her partying days were over, replaced by a 3.7 grade point average and a very serious work ethic. I was more than willing to help her loosen up a little.

Laurel was a lot different now.

Nowadays, she never got out of bed before nine a.m. And she jumped at her own shadow and broke into tears randomly.

But despite her sudden need to run away from our problems, underneath that fragile exterior, Laurel was strong. When she decided on a goal, she saw it through to completion. Where most people would give up, she toughened up. It was one of the things I loved the most about her.

Like the time she suspected one of her professors of grading her unfairly after she didn’t return his flirtation. Laurel refused to back down when the dean of academics asked her to drop the complaint. In the end, the professor was suspended for one year — with reduced pay — on grounds of “moral turpitude.”

The phrase “moral turpitude” was one of our many inside jokes now.

Laurel’s toughness. Her need to fight back. That was why I wasn’t surprised that she left. It was also why I knew I couldn’t convince her to come back by simply promising to go to counseling. She was stubborn and she was going to hold me to my promise.

I just hoped this separation wouldn’t be our undoing.

As I came out of the bathroom, I emptied the pockets of my gym shorts onto the dresser in my bedroom so I could throw them in the hamper. I shook my head when I saw Laurel’s ring. I’d forgotten to give it back to her. Maybe that was a sign.

As I showered, I mentally went over the topics we were preparing to discuss at today’s question and answer session in the Justice for Jack Stratton Jr. Facebook group. We would be discussing a possible break in the case, the same one I’d mentioned to Laurel last night over pizza. Then, I tried to think of ways I could make this separation easier.

I could offer to spend the weekends with Laurel at her mother’s house. But if the point of the separation was to have some time and space to ourselves, that didn’t seem like the right way to go about it.

I could offer to take time off work, but it was a bad time for that. I had an important meeting tomorrow morning with Kent to discuss our plans for opening a Tokyo office. Taking into consideration what Laurel had mentioned about Kent in the letter I burned, I couldn’t piss off the partners by taking more time off.

Shaking my head, I couldn’t help but laugh. Laurel always knew how to get my balls in a death grip. Maybe I would be better off without her.

I shook my head again. I couldn’t even bring myself to wish that were true. Laurel could probably stab me in the heart and twist the knife, and I’d still never be better off without her. She was both my strength and my biggest fucking weakness.

My blonde bombshell. She was strong and sensual and had a smile that could warm a thousand planets. It was going to be a cold month without her.

I loved Laurel so much, sometimes it frightened me. It was the only thing that frightened me anymore, the thought of losing her.

She was certifiably insane if she thought I was going to give up on our marriage.

I finished getting dressed in a suit — had to make the right impression with all the armchair sleuths working on Junior’s case — then I slid into the desk chair in my home office.

I had twenty minutes to kill before the Q&A. Maybe I should call my dad and ask him if he wanted to go out for a late lunch. I could meet up with him before getting a beer with Nate. Maybe he’d have some sound advice for me on how to deal with Laurel.

Then again, my dad had cheated on my mom multiple times over their forty-year marriage. Even if it had been almost a decade since his last philandering episode — that we knew of — he probably wasn’t the best person to seek marital advice from.

As I opened up my Facebook profile on the computer — the profile I used for investigative purposes — I thought of Laurel’s insistence I see a therapist. She knew I’d seen a shrink in high school, after a friend of mine committed suicide, and how much of a shit-show that turned out to be.

I’d probably feel less reluctant to attend therapy if I’d told my parents about how the school psychologist had misinterpreted my allowing her to hug me as permission to unbutton my jeans. But it was too late to get closure for that. Nevertheless, I would never trust a stranger with my darkest secrets again. Not even my “friends” in the Facebook group knew the real me.

As I contemplated checking my forty-two unread Facebook messages, I had a sudden, panicked thought. What if Laurel had started seeing a therapist on her own, spilling my secrets to a complete stranger without my consent? For all I knew, she had been screaming it from the mountaintops, how much I wanted to find Junior’s killer and repay him with a slow, torturous death. No, Laurel would tell me if she was seeing someone.

Then again, she hadn’t confided in me her plans to leave our marriage in the dust.

I slid my phone out of my pocket and dialed Kent. He picked up on the third ring.

“It’s Sunday, Jack. This better be good.”

I hesitated, uncertain if this was really what I wanted to do right now. Laurel always said I was impulsive, but being impulsive was probably the one quality that had worked out the best for me. It brought me to Laurel. It got me into a partnership that resulted in the kind of money I’d never be able to spend in a lifetime. Sometimes, being impulsive was the only thing that made sense.

“Kent, I need your brother’s number.”

Kent was silent for a moment. “What do you need Rob’s number for?”

I sighed. “I’m having some problems with Laurel. I just want to know my options.”

The silence on the other end of the call was disturbingly long and tense. “Jack, this is a bad idea. Whatever you and Laurel are going through, you need to work it out. Trust me on this one, bro. This is not the way to go.”

Anger rumbled inside me like a furious thunderstorm.

First of all, I hated that this fifty-some-year-old man always called me bro. Secondly, he had to be insane if he thought I wanted to be contacting a divorce lawyer. Did he really think, for one fucking second, that I wouldn’t prefer to never make this phone call?

I was eons away from giving up on my marriage, but that didn’t change the fact that I had to be prepared for anything. Once my net worth crossed into the hundreds of millions of dollars, I learned very quickly how important it was to always have insurance.

“I don’t have time to get into this right now,” I replied, clenching my fist to keep from throwing the fucking phone. “Are you going to give me the number or not?”

He let out a heavy sigh that hissed through the phone speaker. “I’ll text it to you.”

I felt an intense need to clarify that I wasn’t giving up on Laurel yet, but I pushed down the urge and said my goodbyes. I knew Kent would probably take this information to the other partners, and they would more than likely discuss the possibility of buying me out.

Despite the fact that there was no one who could do my job the way I did, they’d probably start considering replacing me if I divorced Laurel. They’d witnessed firsthand my rapid descent when I lost Junior. They’d probably assume that losing Laurel would push me over the edge.

They would be right.