CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Seattle, Washington
Sunday, December 17
After a few idyllic days at our new place in Maui, we squeezed in a quick visit with the new obstetrician before heading back to Seattle. The next time we step foot on the island, we’ll be new residents.
Unfortunately, that means I have a lot of packing up of my penthouse to do in the next week, especially since I’ve decided to sell the place after all. Engaging a good Realtor to list it eight days before Christmas might be less than simple, but I’m determined to get rid of the old baggage and start fresh with Nia.
I’ve just finished sorting out Becca’s half of the closet—finally. I’m giving away all of her clothes and shoes to a local women’s shelter that needs the donations, according to Nia. Becca’s jewelry I’ve consigned with a reputable jeweler. Now that everything is in boxes and I’m staring at the empty racks beside my neatly arranged dress shirts and suits, I feel lighter, as if I’ve lifted a huge weight off my chest.
While I drag the last of the boxes to the foyer, someone knocks on my door.
“You there, bro? Or you busy boinking your bride?”
Bas. I’ve hardly seen him since I returned from Maui. We’ve both been busy as hell, preparing year-end reports, dealing with a new malware designed to take down our security, a particularly insistent hacker, and our respective upcoming moves. I’m glad he stopped in now.
I open the door to find him lounging against the frame. “Hey, man. What are you doing?”
He takes in the boxes I’ve stacked against the wall. “Same as you, culling through crap and trying to decide what to take and what to ditch. I’ve lived in my little place for five years. I didn’t realize how much shit I’ve collected.”
“For real. I’ve barely managed to get through Becca’s closet and it’s taken me all morning.”
He turns quieter. “Was it hard?”
“No.” I thought memories, guilt—something—would nag me, but…nothing.
“So you’re putting her behind you once and for all?”
“It’s time.” Actually beyond, but I don’t say what we both know.
Bas nods, his golden hair gleaming in the sun pouring through the windows. “Good for you. Where’s Nia?”
“Organizing and purging at her place. She’s also got to sell her furniture since she can’t bring it with us and her landlord doesn’t want it.”
Besides, I didn’t want her to have to toil here with me as I finish closing the chapter of my life with another woman. I needed to say my final goodbye to Becca alone.
“Gotcha. So…how’s married life?”
I can’t wipe the stupid smile off my face. “Great.”
“You reconciled to the fact you two are having a baby?”
That’s the one dark spot in my bright pool of joy. “Still working on that.”
Shock and denial still slap me every time I think about it. I don’t know when or how I’m going to embrace pending fatherhood again. Even the thought terrifies me.
“You’ll get there. I’m just glad you’re finally happy. I had a feeling about you and Nia. But your announcement shocked the hell out of everyone at the office.”
“That it did.”
The whispers about us started just before Thanksgiving, but most everyone thought it was a lurid, unsubstantiated rumor—until we came back from Maui married. By mutual agreement, we decided not to say anything publicly about our relationship before we tied the knot. We didn’t want the gossip, and it was none of anyone’s business anyway.
“The employees may not even be your employees for much longer. You still waiting to agree to Lund’s deal until the very last moment?”
I give him a head bob that’s neither yes or no. “That was the plan. But now…I don’t know. The sale is worth a billion dollars, and I stand to make a huge profit. Then I can do anything else I want with my life. I get all of that. The thing is, when I think about it, I realize I’m already doing what I want with my life. I love Stratus.”
“What are you saying?”
Bas raises a brow at me. “Seriously?”
I shrug. I’ve been reluctant to mention this to my best friend, but since he works for me and is one of my chief officers, he needs to know. “So if you were already out job hunting—”
“Hell, no. For selfish reasons, I hoped you’d keep Stratus. I wasn’t going to start looking for another job until I had to. But I’m definitely not working for Lund. He seems like an asshole and that son of his…”
“The douche who couldn’t take his eyes off my wife? Yeah, that’s the other thing. I really don’t want to give Lund or his junior anything they want. It’s spiteful, but they both rubbed me wrong.”
“What about your biological father? Refusing to sell helps him, at least according to your whacked-out half sister.”
I’m not worried about Bethany or Barclay. “That can’t be helped. There’s no perfect solution. But the more I think about the situation, it would be hard to turn over the business I’ve built from the ground up. This year, we have twenty percent market penetration. Next year, we’re projected to top twenty-eight. We could be as high as thirty-four percent in the next three years. I know you’ve done the math on this; it’s your job. That’s a lot of return, especially since we’ve already done the majority of the capital investment. And when I think about keeping what’s mine versus letting an asshole potentially tear it apart… Well, I’ve already got a lot of money and a solid revenue stream. I don’t need his billion dollars.”
That makes Bas smile bigger than I’ve seen in months. He claps me on the back. “Look at you, thinking with something other than your logic.”
He’s right; I am thinking with my heart. “Why not? It seems to be working for me these days.”
“Damn straight. What does Nia think?”
“I asked her this morning. She seems more focused on our future and the baby than business.”
“So…she wants you to go through with the deal?”
I shrug. “She never came out and said that. But I think so. She told me once that she didn’t want things to change around the office for us. They already have. Even if I wanted to, I can’t undo any of that. So I’m not sure what to do.”
“And you’ve got twelve days to make up your mind?”
“Pretty much. Hey, want a beer? Maybe we can talk this out while I declutter my home office.”
“Sure. I’d love to watch you organize your crap while I take a break from jacking with mine.”
Laughing, I fetch us each a pale ale and toss one his way. “So you’re not going to help?”
“Think of me as moral support.” He twists off the cap as we make our way down the hall. “After all, what are friends for?”
“Strangling?”
We both chuckle as I settle behind the big desk, into the leather chair I’ve barely used in months. All of this can be sold off or donated since there’s a great home office with perfectly adequate furniture in the Maui house.
Sipping on my beer, I pull open the drawers on the left, where Becca kept her things. “You mostly packed up?”
“Getting there. Are you spending Christmas in Maui?”
With everything else going on, I’d forgotten about the holidays. Bas sometimes joins me since most of his family lives on the East Coast.
“Yeah. We’re going to spend the twenty-third at a party with some of her friends. Lorenzo and Guilia are hosting it. You’re welcome to join us.”
“Actually, I’m flying to my mom’s house this year, but thanks anyway. So…you finally get to meet Nia’s ex?”
I grit my teeth, then remind myself that I ended up with the woman, not Mateo. “Probably. I’m hoping that if I ignore him, the prick will leave us alone.”
Yeah, it’s probably wishful thinking, but I can’t beat up my hosts’ son for something he did to my wife before I married her. Though that doesn’t stop me from wanting to.
I try to distract myself by sorting through the few papers Becca kept in the desk. Some are invoices for her membership to a yoga studio. Shredder. Reading suggestions from a book club she joined a few years back. Trash. Receipts for the repair to the kitchen sink we needed a few weeks before her death. Keep for next owner. Then I find a file folder with business cards stapled on the inside flap. A hairdresser. A few potential nannies. A painter. I also find fabric swatches and a carpet sample. All can be tossed. Drawer one empty.
“You okay?” Bas asks.
I look up. His expression is tense. Almost…pained. “Fine. Are you?”
“It doesn’t bother you to see her handwriting one more time? To toss away things she collected and valued?”
His question strikes me as odd. “I don’t need them.”
Blowing out a breath, he eases back, staring at a note Becca jotted on the file folder about paint samples and a lead on someone who could create a great mural in the nursery. “Yeah. I guess…I’m just sentimental by nature. It’s still so shocking that she’s gone.”
“It felt that way to me for a while, but I’ve finally admitted that I didn’t love her. I’ve been able to let go of her and my guilt.”
He nods. “And you found someone else to help you with that.”
Why is Becca’s absence impacting Sebastian now? I must be misunderstanding. Surely he isn’t intimating that he needs to find another woman to forget my wife.
Frowning, I turn the exchange over in my head and open the next drawer. Becca’s birth certificate and our marriage license. I set those aside for legal purposes, just in case. More file folders, some with magazines containing articles about romantic dream vacations flagged. I scowl. Becca wasn’t idealistic or starry-eyed. She rarely liked to leave home at all. Odd… I set those aside.
Under that I find a few notebooks. The top three are empty. I’m not surprised. Becca stocked up because she was forever writing notes and keeping lists. Given her OCD, she needed absolute order to function. I understood and often encouraged her. Now that I’ve experienced Nia’s laid-back, more natural organizational style, with a bit of spontaneity thrown in, I prefer it.
The fourth notebook, the one on the bottom, is filled. I scan the first few pages. It’s a journal of sorts. I had no idea she kept one.
On the first page, she wrote about being listless and confused. That entry is dated nearly a two years ago. On another, she mentioned resisting what she knew was wrong. I frown. What does that mean?
“What is it?” Bas asks.
“I’m not even sure. Hang on…”
I flip further into her entries, read a tad more closely. As time passed, she admitted to being unable to not notice “him,” especially since she saw him so often. That spring, she was thinking about him, wondering what he was doing, if he was happy or seeing anyone. By summer, she was fantasizing about him. She wanted him sexually.
I read that again, completely stunned. Becca, who could rarely stand intimacy, wrote that she twisted in her lonely bed with desire for him. She clearly doesn’t mean me.
Who is this guy?
By that fall, she confided to her journal that she was in passionate, undying love with him. She didn’t know how she’d ever fall out. And he had no idea how she felt.
My thoughts race as I try to discern who this mystery man could possibly be. All thoughts lead back to one person.
With numb fingers, I set the notebook down. “Sebastian, were you in love with Becca?”
He stiffens. “Why?”
I notice he didn’t answer the question.
“So, that’s a yes.” I rake my hand through my hair. “Holy shit.”
Suddenly, it’s hard to breathe. Shock does that to me. It mimics a stupor, as if the capabilities of my body are gobbled up by my brain when I have to process something blindsiding.
How did I never see what was right in front of me?
My best friend of nearly a decade holds up his hands as he backs away. “I never touched her. I never told her how I felt. I never gave her any indication… I respected you too much. But I couldn’t help how I felt.” He frowns. “H-how did you guess?”
“The pieces all came together just now. Once, you said you loved a married woman. And Becca’s journal…” I blow out a hard breath, wondering whether the truth will be a curse or a comfort to him. “I think she loved you, too.”
Sebastian pales, looking stunned and heartbroken. “She said that?”
I nod absently. “She didn’t mention you by name, but looking at her words now, it seems obvious.”
Maybe I should be angry or feel betrayed. Most people would, right? But shock still has me reeling, and I don’t see fury charging in to replace it once I’m over the surprise. Instead, the whole situation seems tragic.
If I’d known… If Becca had given me any indication she wanted someone else… I’m not sure what I would have done. I like to think I would have let her go. Why didn’t she ever speak up? If she was so in love with Sebastian, why did she come to me just after the holidays last year and tell me how much she wanted a baby?
“I wasn’t the only one who felt that way? Oh, god…” He sounds devastated as he falls against the wall like he needs the support to remain upright.
In retrospect, he sounded this devastated the day of Becca’s funeral. I thought his grief was for me. But it was for himself. For the loss of what he believed was unrequited love.
“Man, you have to believe me,” Bas implores. “I would have never let anything happen between us. Ever.”
My chest feels tight, my palms sweaty, as I reach for the journal again. I scan page after page, until I come to the answer. “Did you start dating Ashley last winter to distract yourself from Becca?”
He swallows. “Yes. I tried. I tried so hard… I jumped in with her—no safety net. I laid on the PDA so thick last New Year’s Eve at your party. I don’t know if I wanted to prove to myself or to Becca that I wasn’t ridiculously in love with her.”
He did. I remember thinking something was off with them. “Becca told me she wanted a baby two days later.”
Bas groans miserably, and I suspect a baby was my first wife’s way of distracting herself from her heartache over Sebastian.
“When I heard she was pregnant, I pasted on a smile and pretended to be happy for you two. But I was dying inside. I wanted that to be me. To be my baby. Goddamn it.” He pounds a fist against the wall and grits his teeth against tears.
I feel for him. He loved Becca in a way I never did. I blithely spent every day of my life without any clue how much they wanted one another. I’m shocked, yes. But given how much I love Nia and how much I loathe knowing about all her other sexual partners… I can only imagine how deep Sebastian’s pain was to discover the woman he loved was pregnant by his best friend, who didn’t love her at all.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry? I’m the asshole who couldn’t keep my heart in line.” He sighs. “But it’s such a guilty relief that you finally know.”
Oddly, I understand his anguish. After all, I didn’t set out to fall for Nia. It just happened. The way I’m assuming it happened for them.
“What did you love about Becca?”
He pauses. “Everything.”
“She was very quiet.”
“Which made finding a way to coax her to talk interesting.”
“She was OCD.”
A momentary smile breaks up his grief. “She was particular. She wanted things neat and organized. The way her brain worked fascinated me. I loved watching her make tea. A spoonful and a half of sugar. No more, no less. She brought that exacting concentration to everything she did.”
Not with me, but I don’t dwell on that. “She wasn’t a sexual creature.”
Bas drops his gaze to the floor and fresh guilt flashes across his face. “I think you’re wrong. I don’t know for sure. But…she blushed at anything I said to her. Last fall, I remember telling her that I was hanging my coat in the hall closet, and she turned all rosy. So I talked to her about nothing, told her jokes, simply to see her react. I sometimes I thought the way she looked at me meant something, but then she’d clear her throat, tsk at me, and walk away. She never betrayed you, either.”
Logic tells me they pined, and it doesn’t matter that they never consummated their feelings. It’s still a betrayal. But I simply can’t muster anger, only regret. “I must have been too self-absorbed. I never saw how either of you felt.”
I hate that.
With a heavy sigh, I turn to the next page of Becca’s journal, dated January twentieth. Stapled to the page is a business card for a divorce attorney I’ve never heard of. My heart stops.
“What?” Bas asks. “You turned pale as shit.”
“She thought about leaving me for you.”
“What? I never encouraged—”
I hold up a hand and start reading. “‘The most terrible, wonderful thing happened today. A man approached me as I left the yoga studio. I worried at first. This stranger was waiting for me. Apparently, he and his son want to buy Stratus. My stubborn husband won’t agree to their terms, so they hatched a plan to force his hand. They need my help…’”
“Lund?” Bas sounds as alarmed as I feel. “How did Becca think that snake-oil salesman was going to force you to do anything? And why would she go along with it?”
I scan on. The passage is long, but it doesn’t take more than a few seconds to get the gist of her entry.
This is a betrayal I can’t forgive her for. Never. Ever.
“She was going to divorce me. Washington is a community property state. I would have been forced to sell Stratus to buy Becca out. The Lunds were waiting, money in hand. And they promised her fifteen percent of the sale price, in cash. Once the deal closed, she’d have the money to be free and finally be happy. She was going to ask you to run away with her.”
“Oh, jesus.” He looks stricken, as if I punched him. “I had no idea. I swear.”
“I know.” Becca’s journal entries make that clear. But I don’t ask whether he would have left with her if she’d gone through with the plan. I probably don’t want the answer. Hell, he probably doesn’t want to envision what he would have done. “The Lunds referred her to the attorney, apparently.” I flip the page, stunned to find my hand shaking. “She met this shyster the following Monday.” I flip another page. “By Wednesday, she decided to go through with it and they were drawing up papers to serve me. They had it all set up for Monday, the thirtieth.”
Bas closes his eyes. “But she discovered she was pregnant over the weekend. I’ll never forget that Saturday afternoon you called me to tell me. You were so thrilled. I tried to be happy for you. But I knew that was the nail in our coffin.”
I scan a few more pages. “She knew it, too. She dropped all proceedings the day she intended to serve me. And, in her words, she spiraled into depression.”
She wrote no more journal entries after that.
“I knew something was wrong.” Bas sounds tortured.
Really? I didn’t suspect a thing. Did I pay so little attention to my own wife that I never realized the extent of her heartache?
Yep. I feel blind, stupid, double-crossed, and utterly bowled over.
I’m also angry as hell. Yes, at Becca for clamming up and plotting to blindside me, rather than finding the courage to tell me how she felt. But I’m seething in fury at the Lunds for scheming and interfering and having no compunction at all about ripping my life apart for their financial gain.
“I didn’t know how to help her,” Bas goes on miserably. “I didn’t know what was wrong. And I couldn’t step over the line…”
“Thank you for…” Not resenting me when I stood between you and happiness. Being my friend. Staying true, even when it cost you.
He hangs his head. “Please don’t hate me.”
“I can’t. You did everything you could in a shitty situation.”
Bas’s head pops up. As if on autopilot, I stand and round the desk. I’m aware suddenly that in all the years I’ve known Bas, I’ve never hugged him. In the past, I wasn’t a fan of these male expressions of friendly affection. But over the last seven and a half months, everything has become different. I lost my wife, met my siblings, fell in love… My head has changed. My heart has changed.
I back up my words by bringing Sebastian against me and giving him a hearty man-slap on the back. He does the same. I feel him swallow. I sense the sob he holds in. I hurt for him, knowing he’ll never have the lover he pined for.
He backs away, managing to hold himself together. “Thanks…brother.”
“Brother.” I nod. “I hope you fall in love again and that she’s everything you ever wanted or needed. I hope she makes you sublimely happy for the rest of your lives.”
“Thanks. I hope that happens, too. I’m so fucking tired of being alone.”
“I know. Now, if you don’t mind me leaving this brofest, I’m going to kick the Lunds’ asses.”