Chapter 19

After dinner was done, Jasper leaned against the same railing, this time with a draft beer in his hand and an uncomfortable pit in his stomach.

Daniel came through the French doors and lifted his mug toward Jasper’s. “Cheers?”

“Cheers.” Jasper lifted his as well. “All the animals in the county healthy tonight? Kind of rare to see both you and Hayley in the same place these days.”

Daniel tapped on the table. “Knock on wood. Why the somber face? Things not as good as they look?”

“Not sure what you mean.”

“Oh, I don’t know—I guess I mean the way you can pretty much see the electricity zapping between you and Emma? That?” Daniel raised an eyebrow, taking a drink.

Jasper didn’t answer, because there was a hell of a lot more than electricity zapping between the two of them. If that damn storm hadn’t rolled through, he wasn’t sure they’d even be at this dinner.

But that was latent hormones talking—ones he’d tried to forget even existed—not some sort of ridiculous insta-love thing. It had been a long damn time, and his body knew it, whether his brain was in agreement or not.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably. “She’s—just temporary. Here for ten more weeks, at the most.”

Daniel laughed. “Gotcha.”

“What’s funny about that?”

“What’s funny is the fact that half of the women living out here now only intended to stay for two weeks.”

Jasper smiled. “True.”

“But?”

“We’re just—friends. I barely know her.”

“Well, good news—you’ve got ten more weeks to get to know her.”

Jasper sighed. “I know. Just wish I could figure out whether that’s a good thing.”

“Yep.” Daniel nodded. “Tough spot to be in.”

“Not helpful, man.”

“Sorry.” Daniel sat down in one of the Adirondack chairs. “I pretty much suck at giving advice, since before I met Hayley, I was so bad at taking it.”

Jasper sighed. He knew—everybody out here knew—that Daniel had lost his wife to cancer before he’d moved here. With two little girls and a life in pieces, he’d left Denver and ended up settling here in Carefree.

“You know,” Daniel said, “I never thought I’d get married again. Hell, I never thought I’d even want to be with another woman again.”

Jasper knew the feeling. “And then Hayley set her sights on you and you were a goner?”

“Hell, no. Hayley practically fled the country.” He laughed ruefully. “But she came back when she was ready. And the funny thing was, I was ready long before she was.”

“And happily-ever-after. Got it.”

Daniel was quiet for a minute, then shrugged. “Everybody deserves one. Some of us just get lucky enough to get a second chance when the first one doesn’t work out.”

“Maybe.” Jasper felt his entire rib cage suck inward. “Our situations aren’t really the same, though.”

“I lost my wife. You lost yours. How different could they possibly be?”

Jasper took a deep breath, closing his eyes.

Oh, they were hellishly different.

“How could you possibly miss this dinner, Jasper?” Bridget’s eyes were red-rimmed, and mascara streaks ran down her cheeks. “Again?”

“I’m sorry. I got tied up. You know I don’t have a choice about these things, baby.” Wow, she was pissed. He was using his best soothing voice—the one that always worked.

But this time it didn’t.

“Don’t ‘baby’ me. I can’t believe you did this again, after you promised—you promised—to make a better effort.”

“I tried. I did. And I cut out as early as I could.”

“From what, exactly?”

Shit.

“It was just a drinks thing. With Sinclair. You know how that goes.”

“Yeah, I do. He says, ‘Jump!’ and you say, ‘How high?’ ”

“That’s not fair.”

“No, Jasper. What’s not fair is that I had to make excuses for you again. I always have to make excuses for you.”

“I’m sorry, okay? I have a job! I have responsibilities. And I’m sorry I missed some stupid little dinner, but Jesus. Give me a break. It’s Friday night, I put in sixty-plus hours this week, and I just wanted to come home and have a nice evening with my wife, not get met at the door with a list of my most recent transgressions.”

“ ‘Stupid little dinner’?” Her sculpted eyebrows arched high.

“We can see Luke and Hannah anytime.”

“Luke and Hannah are moving to Boston, Jasper. But that wasn’t enough of a reason to tell your clients you were too busy tonight?”

“I—shit.” How had he forgotten they were moving? He scanned conversations from the past week, trying to remember when they’d last talked about it. Had he known, even?

“Yes.” She crossed her arms. “But hey, don’t worry. You have the flu. They understood.”

“I’m sorry, baby. Really. I just—I forgot.”

“I know. But I bet if I asked you the name of your third-biggest client’s grandson right now, you could rattle it off in a second.”

Micah. Seven years old. Good at baseball and hockey, not so good at math.

“No, I couldn’t. That’s not fair.”

“What’s not fair is this, Jasper.” She pointed at her dress. “I sat here waiting for you, after you promised—promised—that this time you’d make it. I’ve made excuses to our best friends, to my parents, to my sister and brothers, to everyone in our lives.”

“I didn’t have a choice. You know that.”

“No,” she said. “That’s bullshit. You have choices. You’re making choices.”

“My choices are for us, Bridget. I’m almost there. By this time next year, I’ll be a partner, and then we’ll move up the hill. We’ll go to Cozumel. We’ll take a nice, long vacation by the ocean, and we’ll toast to all of these hours that got us here.”

She shook her head slowly, like she was studying him and suddenly finding him lacking—so, so lacking.

“I don’t think so.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean—I’m not even sure what I mean. But how long are you going to keep saying ‘by this time next year’ before you realize that we never, ever get where you say you want to be? When…when will it be enough?”

“It is enough. We’re happy, we have a beautiful house, our friends are here. This is the life we dreamed of back in college. We’re living it.”

She shook her head again. “I’m not.”

His gut squeezed. Something in her eyes wasn’t right. Something in her spine was steelier than he’d seen before. Something in her jaw—something was so, so wrong.

“Come on, baby.” He stepped forward, tried to pull her close, but she put up her hands and backed out of reach.

Shit.

“What’s wrong? Why is this suddenly such a big deal?”

“It’s not sudden, Jasper. Do you have any idea how many times I’ve had to make apologies for us when you couldn’t get home to do whatever?”

“I’m an attorney, Bridget. I have clients. It’s my job to be available for them when they need me.”

“Well, guess what? I’m your wife, Jasper. And I thought it was your job to be available for me.”

“Bridget, honey. What’s really going on? This isn’t you.”

She studied his face again in that same analytical, disappointed way. “I’m…tired, Jasper. I’m lonely. I’m—I’m just…done.”

“Bridget.” He felt the actual prick of tears as his stomach did 360s. What the hell was going on here? “Come on. We can fix this. We can—I can do better.”

She shook her head miserably, and his chest hurt as tears fell down her cheeks. “I don’t believe that anymore.”

“Honey, please.”

“No.” She crossed her arms more tightly. “Just…no.”

Oh, hell. She was serious. She was really, really serious. She’d had fits before, she’d been jealous before that in her mind, his clients came first, but this felt different. She was mad, but she was also…defeated.

Time to pull out the big guns.

“Hey, you know what I’ve been thinking about lately? Why don’t we start trying? For a baby.”

Desperate times, desperate measures, right? He wasn’t ready to be a father yet—he knew that—but if it would make her stay…

But instead of seeing a little light return to her eyes…instead of seeing a glimmer of possibility in her face…all he saw was abject misery.

“That’s rich, Jasper. Really rich.”

“I mean it.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t mean it any more than you meant it when you agreed to dinner tonight. You don’t mean it any more than you meant it when you said yes to Aspen with my parents last Christmas. You don’t mean it any more than you meant it when you promised to be home at least one fucking weekend a month.”

Her use of the F-bomb hit him like a butcher’s knife to the ribs. Bridget never swore. Ever.

“I’m leaving you,” she whispered, her voice catching on the last word.

“Ah, hell, Bridget. No. Where would you go?”

“To my parents’ house. For now. I don’t know, after that.”

He closed his eyes. Okay, maybe a little cooling-off would be good. Maybe a couple of days with her folks would have her patched up a little and willing to talk. He shouldn’t argue.

“Okay.”

“Okay?” She looked up, angry-surprised.

“Okay about taking a couple of days at your parents. Not okay about—the rest.”

“Well, here’s the thing, Jasper. You don’t get to decide.”

Her back straightened, and she pulled a tissue out of the box on the counter, wiping her cheeks.

“I—what’s that about? I’ve never made your decisions for you.”

“You decided this life for us.”

“You wanted this life. Have you forgotten that?”

“I didn’t. I didn’t want this one. I wanted to be your wife. I wanted to have babies with you. I wanted to live happily-ever-after in a nice Victorian house on a nice, safe street. With you. I didn’t want to live in a big, empty house by myself, with a husband who couldn’t be bothered to give me a tenth of the time he gives his clients. I didn’t sign up for that.”

“You can’t get where we want to be without putting in the time at the front end. That’s what I’ve been trying to do! I’m trying to give us the life we dreamed of, Bridget.”

“Well, guess what? You can continue to do so, but I’m out. This isn’t my dream. And honestly? Here’s what’s killing me right now.” She paused, trying to steady her shaking chin with her fingers. “You’re not my dream anymore, Jasper. I—I don’t even know you.”

An hour after she left the house—an hour after he’d begged and pleaded and reached after her to grab only air—the doorbell rang, and he set down his whiskey glass in relief. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and went to the door, never stopping to question why she wasn’t just coming in through the garage, like usual.

“Mr. Stone?” A police officer stood on the wide porch, and in the ten seconds it took Jasper to nod in shock, the entire frigging world tipped over.

Days later, he sat alone in the darkened living room, not having bothered to turn on the lights since Bridget had left. He’d read the coroner’s report that sat on the floor beside him a thousand times, but he picked it up again.

One word hit him like a battering ram to the gut. Hit him every time he read it, so he kept reading it, because maybe that ram would finally kill him, too. And that would be the only fair thing about this whole situation.