She got into her car and he stood there like a fool, watching her pull out of the lot while having this urge to chase after her car like their old dog Mutt used to do when they were kids.
When he got back to Roan’s car, his brother didn’t say a word, but shot him a look in the rearview mirror.
“You okay?” Reese asked Jason, turning to look at him.
“I don’t know,” Jason said honestly. “I don’t know if I ever will be again.”
“Mauve has that effect on a person,” Reese said. “You two better be careful or you’ll fall in love and change your whole lives just to be together.”
3
MAUVE
She woke the next morning to a text from Jason.
Jason
The first day of Christmas. A tree for Mauve. #ThirtyDaysOfChristmasMagic
She sat staring at it for a moment. On the one hand, the thought of only thirty days before he had to leave broke her heart. Their love affair would end before it barely began. Thirty days would go fast. She couldn’t waste a single day. Thirty days that would have to last a lifetime.
Mauve
I don’t do trees.
Jason
What?!
Mauve
Not since the divorce.
Jason
We’re getting a tree.
Mauve
Fine. Pick me up in an hour?
Jason
I’ll be there.
She set aside her phone and took a shower. As she scrubbed her hair, thoughts traveled from Sugarville Grove to Manhattan. The last Christmas with Chris. Or, the Christmas that never happened because he was a lying, cheating heartbreaker dressed in a three-piece suit.
While he was at work, she’d spent two days decorating for the holidays in their penthouse apartment. Her mother-in-law had told her about a Christmas shop in the city that had been a family tradition of theirs. Which loosely translated in rich-woman speak meant: all ornaments must be purchased there.
Dutifully, because that’s who she had been before his cheating changed everything, she’d gone to the shop and picked out dozens of gorgeous, albeit overpriced ornaments. She’d just hung the last one when her phone buzzed. It was a photo from an unknown number.
I’m sorry, but you have the right to know.
It was a photo of Chris on his desk at the office, with a girl wrapped around him.
To this day she had no idea who had sent it, but she suspected it was Chris’s secretary. Regardless, it did its job. She’d run to the bathroom and vomited, then sat on the bathroom floor sobbing, as the truth embedded itself in her heart. Her marriage was over.
And her dreams of being a mother with it.
