That weekend was like our honeymoon. We spent hours in the massive bed, piled high with pillows, in a rustic-chic guest room straight out of a magazine. We made love by the glow of the fire in the gas fireplace, getting up occasionally to raid the gleaming Sub-Zero for delicacies or the wine tower for vintage wines. We soaked in the hot tub and watched the sun rise over the mountain from the wraparound deck. We talked of everything under the sun, from the most serious to the most inconsequential. Our families, what we wanted from life. What we’d been like as children. The personalities at the restaurant, the office where he worked, the places he’d traveled. I loved his voice, his sense of humor. I loved his eyes when he laughed and his face when he slept. We hid from reality, and by hiding, let ourselves get entangled, deeply.
But we couldn’t hide forever.
On Tuesday morning, Nina sent the jet to collect him. He dropped me at my car on the way to the airport. In the parking lot, I clung to him, wetting the front of his shirt with tears. He took my face in his hands.
“In our hearts, we’re always together. I need you to remember that,” he said.
“What does that matter, when you’re going back to her?”
He wiped my tears away with his fingers, then kissed my cheeks, my nose, my forehead. His mouth found mine. I knew the kiss would only prolong the torture, but I couldn’t help myself. I kissed back.
“It matters. It means everything. It’s you I love. I hate that we have to be apart,” he said.
“You’re not a prisoner. You could stay here if you wanted to.”
He tangled his hands in my hair, looking at me, deeply, desperately.
“It’s complicated.”
“Complicated. Meaning, that’s a lot of money to walk away from,” I said, my voice raw with hurt.
“No.”
“Why go back if not for the money? If you’re going to tell me she’s unstable—”
“She is unstable. She’s threatened suicide before.”
“That’s not the real reason.”
He sighed and looked away.
“Hey,” I said, grabbing his arm. “Tell me the truth. I can take it. You say our love is so pure, that you’re your best self with me. Well, be yourself. Not some fake version of you. I want the real thing.”
“Even if it’s not pretty? Even if I really haven’t changed that much from when I was afraid to face life without my grandmother’s money?”
“Even that.”
He looked at me for a long time. Then he nodded, his hazel eyes glittering with resolve.
“All right, then. The truth is, there’s a prenup. If Nina divorces me, I get ten million. If I leave her, or if she finds out I’m cheating and kicks me out because of it, I get nothing. Ten million, Tabby, versus nothing.”
That took me aback. I’d never seen an exact estimate of Nina’s wealth. I knew it was vast—so vast that I couldn’t wrap my head around it. Ten million, though—that, I could understand. He was right. Ten million was a lot of money to leave on the table. Still, this didn’t feel right.
“To Nina, ten million’s chump change,” Connor was saying. “She won’t miss it. But I could live on that for the rest of my life. We could. Do you understand? I’m going to leave her. I just need to do it in a way that doesn’t trigger the prenup.”
“Is that even possible?”
“I have to make her think a divorce is her own idea.”
“How?”
“I’ll figure something out. Otherwise, you know what happens? I lose my job at Levitt Global, because she’d never let me keep working there. I signed a noncompete, which means I’d basically be blacklisted, unable to work in that industry. I’d have nothing.”
“I don’t care. I’ll take you flat broke. It’s how I live already.”
“I appreciate that. But wouldn’t you rather have me with ten million?”
That question sounded flip to me. I yanked my hand away. “This just feels wrong.”
“You told me I could say anything.”
“I don’t feel right, being part of that kind of deception.”
“You’re not part of it. This is on me. It’s my marriage. I’m the one who’ll end it. I was going to, anyway. You just made me certain. Besides, it’s not only for the money that I want it to end clean. I don’t want to hurt her the way Edward did.”
“How long will this take?”
“I don’t know. A while.”
“And during that time, we don’t see each other. We don’t talk.”
“Hey,” he said, leaning close, “I’m not okay with not talking to you. As for seeing each other, maybe—”
“No. You don’t want her to know about me. If she has you followed, if she has the passwords to all your accounts, she would find out.”
“Maybe. Yes. Okay, you’re right.”
“We can’t see each other. We can’t talk.”
“You have to believe me, that I want to be with you,” he said, sighing. “It’s just complicated. There’s a lot at stake.”
His phone was buzzing with texts.
I looked away. “Your plane is waiting. You’d better go. So, don’t call me, and I won’t call you, I guess.”
He put his hands on my shoulders and leaned in. “Tabby. Don’t give up on me.”
I tried to look away, but his eyes were mesmerizing.
“Wait for me? Please? I love you. I’m going to get free, and then we’ll be together. It’ll be worth the pain, I promise.”
He wrapped me in his arms. I wanted to believe him. But I didn’t.
“I love you,” I said.
We kissed, and in my mind, I thought we were saying goodbye.
In the days after we parted, I was consumed. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I burned for him. I sleepwalked through my life not seeing what was in front of me, not hearing what people said. My senses were filled with him. His mouth, his hands, his skin, his hair, the way he smelled. It was like a low-level fever that I’d been able to manage until I saw him again in the flesh. Now the disease raged, and it ravaged me. Plus—the guilt, the shame, the humiliation. I’d slept with a married man, and he’d left me to go back to his wife. Grandma Jean didn’t raise a fool, or a home-wrecker, yet there I was, both. I spent my days staring at my phone, willing it to ring, and staring at his number in my contacts, trying not to call. I was lost.
Weeks passed. The weather turned hot, and everywhere I looked, people went about their happy lives. Couples walking hand in hand. Moms at the grocery store, pushing chubby toddlers in shopping carts. I’d never known that peace, that contentment. And now I didn’t even want it. I wanted to walk into the fire. After years of feeling numb, I was back where I started—obsessed with Connor, believing he was the one road to nirvana.
I threw myself into my work, looking for a distraction. I got a part-time job as a data-entry clerk in the billing department at a local insurance company. But typing payment codes into the computer left my mind free to wander. I sat there reliving every caress, until I could hardly see the screen. I took extra shifts at the restaurant so I wouldn’t be alone in my apartment at night, tossing in my bed, touching myself like he was with me. But every time I passed the table where he’d sat, I stopped in my tracks, like I saw him there.
When I was alone, I gave in to the exquisite torture of searching photos of him online. Connor wasn’t the newsworthy one. Nina was, so every picture of him was of the two of them together. And they were together—still. Connor and Nina at a charity gala in New York, a gorgeous couple in their finery, smiling for the cameras. Or on the terrace of a restaurant in the South of France, eating lunch with a famous film director and his actress wife. Connor in a white shirt and sunglasses, his arm slung casually across the back of Nina’s chair. Frantically, I searched the dates. The photos were new. They didn’t look like a couple headed for divorce. They looked content. Not madly in love, perhaps, but undeniably together. How was that possible, after the time Connor had spent with me? He’d seemed so in love. He said he was. And I’d believed him.
Had it all been a lie? Probably. After all, it’s not like I hadn’t shown poor judgment in men before. Derek. My ex-husband. Can’t get much worse than that.
Derek Cassidy was a mechanic at the auto repair shop where I got my car serviced. He had clear blue eyes, amazing biceps, a leather jacket, a motorcycle, and a pickup truck. He was ex-military like my dad. His bad-boy aura should’ve been a warning, but we met not long after Grandma died, and I was feeling too alone in the world to listen to the voice of reason. All I saw were good looks, a steady paycheck, and the fact that he’d chosen me.
It was only after we were married that things got rocky. He was secretive. He had a temper. I’d threaten to leave, he’d promise to do better. And it would get better, for a while. Then, one night on a dark road, the cops pulled us over. And I learned that Derek had been dealing pills out of his truck. There was a hidden compartment underneath the floorboards. I knew nothing about it, but I was in the passenger seat, so they arrested me anyway. I could’ve had the charges dropped if I gave information. But Derek threatened me, and I knew him well enough by then to take him at his word. I pled guilty to a misdemeanor possession charge with a guarantee of no jail time because my lawyer said it was the best I could do. I got five years’ probation and fired from my good job at the hospital because they couldn’t have someone with drugs on her record.
That black mark is there to this day, holding me back from better things. Derek, on the other hand, I did manage to shake. He went away for five years, and I divorced him while he was in jail. He wasn’t too happy about that.
Once burned, twice shy. I dated here and there after Derek, but I was always leery of getting serious. Nobody got through my armor until Connor came back. And he’d left me dragging through my days, feeling like the hollowness inside would never go away. That’s why, after several weeks passed with no word from Connor, I let Hayley at the restaurant shame me into going on Tinder. She’d just gotten engaged to a guy she met on there. A nice guy, who owned a lawn-care company and went to church with her on Sundays. When I told her one time too many that I had no weekend plans, she grabbed my phone out of my hand and insisted on making me a profile. I don’t know if I was reckless, or stupid, or just desperate. But I let her do it, figuring it couldn’t do any harm. Wrong.
At home that night in the privacy of my apartment, out of curiosity I opened Tinder and started browsing eligible men in my geographical area. None of them could hold a candle to Connor, and I was about to give up when I found myself staring at a photo of my ex-husband. I couldn’t believe it. What the hell was Derek doing on there? I’d set Tinder to show me profiles within a twenty-mile radius. He’d gotten out of jail a year ago and moved to Florida. I’d heard that from enough people to accept it as fact. Whenever I woke from a bad dream about Derek, the thought that he was a thousand miles away always comforted me. But if Tinder was showing me his profile, that could only mean one thing.
He was back.
If I’d seen his profile, had he seen mine? If he had, would he come looking for me? I jumped up and drew the blinds. I double-locked the door, looked in both closets, and pulled my shower curtain aside. Then I sat back down on the sofa, my breath coming in fast spurts. After he went to jail, I’d moved from the small house we’d rented together into this ground-floor studio in an apartment complex. My address was not listed anywhere online that I was aware of. On the other hand, Derek and I knew people in common who knew where I lived. My apartment faced the parking lot and had two large windows with flimsy locks. I knew my neighbors well enough to smile and exchange pleasantries, but none were friends I could turn to in a moment of need. If I screamed loudly, I was pretty sure they’d call 911, but that was small comfort. I took a butcher knife to bed with me that night, and barely slept.
The next day at the restaurant, I was constantly looking over my shoulder. I told everyone to be on the lookout for him, and even pulled up an old photo on my phone and showed it around. Matt tried to reassure me that, since I hadn’t swiped right on Derek’s profile, we hadn’t matched, so it was unlikely that he’d seen mine. For all I knew, Derek had been back in this area for months without getting in touch, so maybe I had nothing to fear. Still, to be safe, I had Matt walk me to my car that night, and for several nights after.
A week passed with no sign of Derek. I let my guard down.
It was a Tuesday night. My shift had just ended at the restaurant and I was walking to my car through the dark parking lot when Derek came up from behind. I saw him from the corner of my eye, and the look of him shocked me. He’d always been a big guy, a gym rat, built. I’d liked that at first, until it scared me. Now he looked heavier, and not in a good way—puffy, unhealthy, with pasty skin. His hair was different, too, shaved into a fade that screamed jailhouse. I backed away, my chest tight with fear.
“Not so fast. Where do you think you’re going?” he said.
“I don’t want any trouble. Leave me alone.”
“Why should I? You’re my wife.”
“Not anymore.”
“Because of some bullshit piece of paper? I know you’re mad over the drugs, but come on—divorce? I was just try’na make a buck for us, babe.”
“Don’t blame me for your arrest. I never asked you to break the law.”
“Oh, right. You just wanted shit. A house, a new car—”
“I never said that. You decided to deal, without telling me.”
“Whatever. I apologize, okay. Now, cut the bullshit, and come home to me. I see you on Tinder, giving yourself to strangers. I’m right here. I miss you.”
He stepped toward me, into the light, and I got a look at his eyes. The pupils were pinpricks in the light-blue irises. He was on something. I started walking. He grabbed my arm. I screamed, and he clamped his hand over my mouth.
“Shut up, you’ll get me in trouble.”
My whole body was shaking. Derek had never physically hurt me before, but he’d punched walls and broken things. When he got the divorce papers in the mail, he called from prison and said I’d regret it and I shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking we were done.
I bit his hand. He yelped and let go.
“What the fuck.”
A rowdy group of customers exited the restaurant, shouting and laughing. Using them for cover, I ran for the door. He didn’t follow. Inside, I told Matt in a trembling voice what had happened. He insisted on calling the police. By the time the officer showed up and searched the parking lot, Derek had gone. There was a piece of paper stuck under the windshield wiper of my car—a flyer from a pizza place with Derek’s handwriting on the back.
“Nice to see you too,” the note read, and I heard the words in Derek’s bitter voice. “You dump me when I’m down & then your on Tinder looking all happy. You owe it to me to meet up. Call me.” And he left his number.
The officer was an old guy with gray hair and a beer belly who refused to take the situation seriously.
“He’s not here. Call if you see him again,” he said.
“That might be too late. He’s hostile. He’s stalking me.”
“He says right here, nice to see you.”
“That’s him being sarcastic. He grabbed me, I’m telling you.”
“Any witnesses to that?”
“No.”
“Then it’s he said, she said, and you won’t get far in court. If he was still loitering, I could do something, but.”
“I thought the police were supposed to protect people from criminals. My ex-husband has a criminal record. He’s on probation.”
“There’s your recourse, then. Call his parole officer and complain.”
“What’s the parole officer going to do?”
“With a domestic complaint like this—”
“It’s not domestic. We’re not married, not anymore.”
“He can sit him down and give him a talking-to.”
“Talk?”
“Yes.”
Which would achieve nothing except to piss Derek off.
I spent the next two nights tossing and turning on Matt’s couch. He and his husband, Justin, told me to stay as long as I liked. But they lived in a tiny house with one bathroom and two enormous rescue dogs. A third person in that space was a lot, and I couldn’t impose forever.
I went back to my place. I wasn’t sleeping much. I was thinking about buying a gun to protect myself. On top of everything, I seemed to have picked up some weird stomach bug that left me feeling queasy. I hated my life and couldn’t imagine a scenario in which things would get better.
That’s the frame of mind I was in when Connor finally called.