Chapter Twenty-Six

Zack

“Denise,” I say to the closed door, listening to her getting sick on the other side. I’ve never felt rage like this. Not even when I caught my wife in bed with my best friend did I feel this type of rage. “Baby, please,” I say to the door, trying to keep my voice down so Jack doesn’t hear the fucking explosion.

The door unlocks, and she comes out. Her face is white, and I take her in my arms as she cries in my chest. “I’m so sorry,” I tell her as she hugs me.

“Is Dr. Denise not feeling well?” Jack asks from behind us, his face creased with worry. She walks away from me and hugs him.

“I’m okay, buddy. Did you eat?” she asks him, and the doorbell rings. I walk past them and look outside, seeing that it’s Olivier. I open the door, and Olivier walks in followed by Steve.

“Today was my day off,” he says to me, and I take in his outfit. It may not be a suit, but he still looks like he walked off the runway.

“I just called Liliane, and she is on her way,” Olivier says and then spots Denise and Jack in the back of me. “Are you okay?” he asks, and Steve walks to her and hugs her from the side. Jack is in her arms with his head on her shoulder.

“It’s going to be okay,” he tells her quietly, and I see her lower lip quiver.

The doorbell rings again followed by pounding. “What in the name?” I say, going to the door and opening it to see a pissed-off Max.

“Where is she?” He pushes me aside, walking in with Michael following him and Allison in the back of them with a screaming Alex. “Dada, dada dada.”

“I couldn’t keep him away.” Allison looks at me. “Sorry.”

I close the door and then walk into the living room where Max is now holding Denise as she sobs in his arms. My chest gets tight, and I look around to see that Jack hasn’t stepped away from her as he stands next to her, holding her hand in his. “Before we say things we are going to regret,” Allison starts and then looks at Max. “We need to hear what happened.”

“We all know what happened,” Max starts talking, but his voice gets loud. “It’s all over the f-” he says, stopping himself then continuing, “internet.”

“I’m sorry, Max,” I start to say, and he glares at me.

“I had a feeling that things were not okay,” he says, looking at me while he rubs his sister’s back.

“Oh, please,” Allison says while Alex still cries for her father. “I had to pick your mouth up off the floor in American Girl.” She rolls her eyes at him.

“The press is going to eat her alive, and everything she has worked for is going to be put under a microscope and examined. She’ll be the laughing stock …” He puts his head back. “She’s worked too hard for this.”

I look at him, and I’m about to agree with him. My heart is shattered just looking at her, and then he looks down at her. “We need to go,” he whispers to her, and then I’ve about had enough.

“She isn’t leaving,” I say, speaking up, and Max’s head flies up, and he looks at me.

“You’re the reason she’s like this.”

“He isn’t the reason,” Denise tries to tell him, but Max shakes his head.

“You don’t think I don’t know how the press works? You don’t think I don’t know how bad this could be for you and your career?”

“We are going to put a statement out,” Olivier says, and Max rolls his eyes.

“A statement? Please,” Max says, rolling his eyes.

“Max,” Allison says quietly, trying to calm Alex.

“No!” he roars, pointing at me. Jack and Michael startle beside Denise. “You need to fix this.”

“I love her!” I shout back and see Denise’s eyes go big while Steve goes to Olivier and gives him a high-five. “I love her, and I’m going to fix this.”

“I love her too,” Jack says, whispering beside her.

“Oh, god,” Allison says, going to grab Jack and putting her hand out. “Come on, honey, let’s go get a snack.”

“I don’t want to leave Denise,” he says, and Max looks down at him.

“It’s okay, buddy. Your dad is going to take care of her,” Max says, looking at him, and then he leaves to go with Allison who turns and looks at her husband.

“You need to remember what it felt like when the whole world found out we were married.” She looks at him and walks out with Alex now lying on her mother’s shoulder.

My eyes never leave Denise’s as she leaves her brother and comes over to me. “Can we have a minute?” I look at her, seeing if she will follow me. Hoping like fuck she will follow me.

I grab her hand and walk up the stairs. Entering my bedroom, I see her things on the floor mixed with mine. I close the door and walk to the bed. Sitting down, I watch as she pulls her hand from mine as she stands in front of me. She walks into my open legs and sits down on my lap, putting an arm around my shoulder. I look down and finally let the past thirty minutes catch up with me as my arms wrap around her waist. A tear escapes and runs down my cheek. “I’m so, so sorry,” I whisper to her. “I never …”

She puts her fingers on my lips. “I love you too,” she says, and my heart finally settles. “I wanted to tell you before when you came in and gave me flowers,” she says, putting her hand on my cheek, “but I didn’t want you to think I was doing it just because of Chantal.”

“I love you,” I tell her again, and she leans forward, kissing my lips softly. “I love you enough to understand if you want to take a break.” My throat tightens when I say the words while she looks at me. “You’ve worked your whole life to get out from under the cloud, and you did it with beauty and grace, and I refuse to be the one to tarnish it.”

“Funny thing about this thing called love is when you do it, you do it with your whole heart, and you stick together through the hard times.” She tries to get closer to me.

I shake my head. “This is a clusterfuck,” I tell her. “She ...” I shake my head.

“She’s a bitch,” she finally says. “If she wants to fight, we fight.”

“What about your patients?” I ask her.

“I work on Tuesday, and I’m going to go in, and if my patients aren’t comfortable with me, then I have no problem switching them out,” she says. “I’m a good doctor.”

“No,” I interrupt her, “you’re a great doctor.”

She smiles at me. “You already got me.”

“Yeah, and I’m not giving you back.” I lean in and kiss her and hear a soft knock on the door. “Come in.”

Max opens the door and pops his head in. I sit up straight this time, and Denise must feel me get tense. “Your lawyer is here. So is the lawyer and the PR for the hospital.”

“Fuck.” I close my eyes.

“So are Matthew and Karrie, and Doug is on his way with his lawyer.”

“Where is Jack?” Denise asks.

“He’s downstairs,” he says. “He said he wanted to put his hat on in case his mom came back.” He shakes his head and looks down. “He didn’t want her to be mad at Denise.”

“That’s it,” Denise says. “She doesn’t get to make him feel like that.”

“Baby,” I say quietly when she gets up and walks out of the room, leaving Max and me by ourselves.

I get up, looking at him. “You love her?” he asks me.

“Two people in this world I would die for and she’s one of them,”

I tell him, and he laughs a bit.

“I said the same thing to my mother-in-law when she found out about us.” He puts his hands in his back pockets. “The difference was I knew I wasn’t good enough for her. I knew she deserved so much more than me.” I don’t say anything. “That’s the difference between us, because she deserves you. She deserves to have the love that Jack gives her, the love that you are going to give her.”

“I don’t know if I can ever make this up to her,” I say honestly.

“You will,” he says, and he is going to continue, but we hear frantic footsteps coming upstairs.

“Okay, there are a shit ton of people here,” Allison says. “Matthew just ordered pizza, and Denise is on a rampage about shaving her head.”

“What?” I say, walking past both of them and running down the steps. She wasn’t kidding when she said there were a shit ton of people here. I look in the living room and see that the lawyers have started on whatever they are looking at.

I walk into the kitchen and see Jack is running after Denise as she goes to the bathroom. “By any chance, do you have clippers?”

“Umm, no,” I say and then Jack pulls her shirt.

“I don’t want you to,” he says quietly, and the three of us squeeze into the little bathroom.

She sits on the toilet bowl and opens her hands to get Jack to sit on her lap. He reaches out to grab a strand of her hair. “I like your hair,” he says, twirling it. “It’s so soft.”

“Would you love me less if I didn’t have hair?” she asks him, and he shakes his head. “Would you want me to wear a hat all the time?” And he shakes his head. “So how about we do this. I won’t shave my head, and you stop wearing the hats when you don’t want to.”

“But ...” he says, looking at her. Her hair still in his hands.

“But nothing,” she says. “I love you from the top of your head to the bottom of your toes,” she tells him. “Hat, no hat, hair, no hair, blue eyes, brown eyes ... I love you.”

“Okay, no hats,” he says, looking at her. “And you don’t cut your hair.”

“Deal,” she says, smiling and bringing him to her chest. “Now, I need you to take Michael up to your room and show him all the cool things that you have while your dad and I talk to all these people.”

“Okay,” he says softly, climbing off her lap. I open the door, and we walk back into the kitchen. There are about ten large pies on the counters.

“Is this a party?” Jack asks, and Max answers him.

“Yeah, buddy,” he says. “It sure is.”

He just shrugs and calls for Michael, who comes running into the room. “Want to see my dinosaurs?” he asks him, and Michael nods his head, and they turn and run up to his room.

“Let’s get this over with,” Denise says, and the six of us walk out of the kitchen and into the living room.

Doug gets up and comes to Denise. “We are going to fix this,” he says to her, and she just nods her head.

“What do we got?” I ask them, and Liliane is the first to speak.

“We got an NDA. That is what we got,” she says, smiling.

“Apparently, she just called people to see if they wanted an exclusive interview with her,” Olivier says. “Luckily, I called them first.”

“ZMT just broke another story that you shut her out as soon as they confirmed your son had cancer.” Doug looks at his phone. “There is a picture,” he says, turning his phone, and a picture of Jack in his hat is splashed across the screen.

“I want to get on the record that she was fucking Colton.” I turn to look at Olivier. “I want to scream it from the rooftops.”

“Zack,” Denise says, coming to me, and I shake my head.

“I have proof that she never attended one doctor appointment,” I say. “I made a record of it, and the doctor signed a letter when I knew we were getting divorced. I also have proof she and Colton continued after I left.”

“What?” Liliane asks.

“My father hired a private investigator, and well, I have a forty-five page report on when it started, where it started, right down to how many times a week they were having sex while we were still married. I want to leak it to the press.”

“Zack,” she says, and now someone I don’t know says something.

“The hospital stands behind Denise,” he says. “We just put out a press statement showing that his doctor isn’t Denise, and that what she does on her private time is her own.”

“Thank you, Ralph,” Denise says.

“We play Arizona on Monday,” Matthew says from the door. “We have to win.”

We all laugh at him. “What?” he says. “We can’t let her do this and then have her boyfriend win.”

“It’s a good thing you have your eye on the ball,” Karrie says, going over to him and hugging his waist.

“We play as a team; we fight as a team,” he says, looking at me. “Whatever you want to do, we do.”

“I just got an email that Jack’s blood work is coming back on Wednesday, so we start his treatment on Thursday.”

“Perfect,” Doug says. “You play Monday and then you’re off for two weeks.” I just nod my head. There is no way I would be able to play anyway.

“So what do we do now?” Denise asks, intertwining her fingers with mine.

Liliane leans back in the couch. “Now we go and grab a slice of pizza and wait for her to bury herself even more.” She looks at Denise and then back at me. “Putting an NDA in your prenup was genius. Not many people do it.”

“My parents were the ones who added that,” I tell them.

“Well, I’m going to send her lawyer a copy in case she didn’t bring him up to speed.”

“Do we need to tell her about Jack’s treatment?” Denise asks, and we both hold our breaths.

“Nope,” she says. “The funny thing is she just lost everything that she asked for. It’s almost like it becomes null and void, and you don’t have to give her a damn thing.”

“Will she fight me for Jack?”

“I want to say no, but chances are, she might try just to get some money out of you.”

Denise shakes her head. “Incredible,” she says, and for the rest of the talk, I listen while watching Denise.

The lawyers take their slices of pizza and leave, and it’s just the six of us sitting around the living room. “Well, so much for easing into this thing,” I tell Denise.

“You should have seen Max’s face,” Allison finally says, laughing as she looks over at her husband as he sits with his daughter sleeping on his chest.

“What were you guys doing in the city?” Denise finally asks them.

“Max thought Alex would like to visit American Girl.” She gives him the side-eye. “My car is filled with dolls that she will never play with and more clothes than even I own.”

“She’s not even two,” Karrie says, and Allison just shakes her head.

“You had to see her smile,” Max says. “She loved it.”

“She would love a paper bag and a plastic spoon,” Matthew says.

“You’re one to talk,” Max says. “Don’t you have your manicures done?” He laughs. “Weekly.”

“Okay, you two,” Karrie says, getting up. “We have to get going.”

“I’m exhausted,” Allison says, getting up and going to walk up the steps to get Michael.

“This house has to have a potion on it,” Karrie says. “Everyone who moves into it falls in love.”

“Vivienne should move in here,” Denise says.

“Are you kidding? She would burn this place down,” Karrie says.

Allison comes down and tells us that the two of them are sleeping. “Leave him here,” I say. “I can drive him back home tomorrow.”

“I’m going to the game,” Allison says, “so bring him there.”

“I’m coming also,” Karrie says, and I just look at them. “Us Stingers ladies stick together.”

I nod at her and get up, walking everyone to the door. When it’s just the two of us, I look at her. “Did you want to go home?”

“Are you kicking me out?” She smiles at me.

“Never,” I say, walking to her. “But I also know that today was big, and I’m okay if you want alone time to get your head together.”

“If I leave, it’s like she wins,” she says. “She doesn’t get to determine if I come and go.”

“Well, if that’s the case, you should move in tomorrow.” I smile at her and kiss her neck. We turn and walk in the house, turning off the lights and falling into bed together.