My Unexpected Vow: California Billionaires Book 2 by Harlow James (children's ebooks free online TXT) 📗

“Don’t, Waverly. I can fix this …”

Her shoulders fall as she tosses her hands to the side. “Why fix something so broken? We’re a mess right now, Hayes. I can’t even look at you without crying. I need space. I need to figure out what I want, and right now, I need to get out of your house.”

“It’s our house, Wave. It’s not home without you.”

“But you’re never there anymore, Hayes. It’s not home without you too, but you’re never there…” She crumbles in the corner, struggling to cover up the heaves of her chest, and then struggles through her tears to speak. “You made me feel needed and wanted for the first time in my life. I never knew how monumental that feeling could be until you pushed me away just as fast. I knew it was a risk letting you in, letting myself fall in love with you. But now… this pain?” She places her palm over her heart, clutching her shirt. “This is just a reminder of why I’ve kept people out, why I invest my time in strangers because at least when they leave, it doesn’t hurt this bad.”

She steps around me toward the door, but I stop her once more. “Please don’t leave, Waverly. We can fix this.”

“Do you know what happened Wednesday night, Hayes?” she asks, her eyes full of tears.

My mind is spinning with what I’m missing. Wednesday was a long day. I don’t think I got home until almost midnight that night. “Wednesday night?”

“It was the spaghetti dinner at the shelter,” she explains, shaking her head while looking down at the floor. “And you weren’t there.”

Oh, fuck.

“Waverly …”

She holds her hand up. “No. I don’t want to hear your apologies. I don’t want to hear your excuses. I don’t want to feel like second best. That’s how I’ve felt my entire life, Hayes—from my parents, from every guy I’ve dated, especially Brett—and I never thought you’d make me feel that way. But you did, and I can’t accept it. You need to let me go, please.”

“This isn’t over,” I declare as she shakes her head again.

“Yes, it is. I’ll have my lawyer send over the divorce papers,” she says, and then yanks the door open, running down the hall, leaving my heart splattered on the floor.

Chapter 19

Hayes

I stare at the self-closing hinges for the cupboards in my house that we bought on our first date, flipping the metal over in my hands, studying yet another reminder of where I’ve fallen short. I promised Waverly I would install these and never did. Life got away from me. Responsibility got in the way, ambition took over, and I lost sight of what really matters.

It’s the Tuesday after the opening of Midnight Cowboy, and just as Waverly said, she moved back in with Emma yesterday. But she didn’t take all of her stuff. I went through her room and noticed a lot of her clothes and products from the bathroom were gone, but her big items are still here, like her desk and her collections of books. I don’t want to remain hopeful and take that as a good sign, because the reality is she probably just needs time and help to move them back out.

I wasn’t home when she left. She never returned to the house while I was there, which means she must have come by while I was at work yesterday.

Work. I fucking hate it. How did my father enjoy this life? I’m always on the phone, someone always needs something from me, I’m barely home, and I’m tired all the damn time. It’s not like managing my clubs has been—joyful or fulfilling. It’s just a job—a job that has cost me the love of my life.

I don’t discount the sacrifices that my father has put in to build Weston Investments into a billion-dollar company, but I never recall him being gone all the time like I have been. I know that making money keeps the doors open, people employed, and food on the table, and the goal is always to do more, build more, accomplish more—but it’s not everything. I’ve quickly realized that. Being the boss isn’t going to let me keep my wife, and that’s the only thing that matters to me now.

But she was in such a hurry to push me away. She wouldn’t try to hash out our argument, she wouldn’t listen to what I wanted to say to her—and that hurt me too. I know I messed up, but she’s not innocent in this shit-show either. We’ve both made mistakes here. We’ve both jumped to conclusions, and we both need to decide the future of our marriage together.

I can still smell her, the faint scent of her body wash on my sheets and the couch. I’ve found pieces of her hair in my bed and the shower, and all over the bathroom sink—a detail that used to drive me nuts. But now? I’d give anything to think there was a spider crawling on me just to remind me that she was near.

And I want to call her so badly, but I don’t know what to say. She said she was filing for divorce, and regardless of whether that’s what I want or not or what we had agreed upon initially in this arrangement, part of me doesn’t want to hold her back if that’s what she needs to move on with her life, one without me in it.

She’s right though about one thing. As soon as shit got tough, as soon as I had the opportunity to clinch the title I was working so hard for, I cast her feelings aside, and I made her feel like shit in the process. I distanced her from that part of my life, and that’s not what marriage is about. I can’t keep my wife in the dark because I think she doesn’t