“Good. Then come to the office tomorrow. It’s time we moved forward.”
“I will,” Grace agreed.
She hung up and sat back on the couch. Her heart ached, and her throat felt tight, but at least now she knew where she stood. As Patrick had said, it was time to move forward—and not just with the lawsuit. Grace needed to move forward with her life as a soon-to-be single mom. She had to move past Alex, once and for all.
If only it were easier to move on.
CHAPTER 22
ALEX
Alex dove into work with such single-minded focus that he barely noticed time passing. Hours turned into days. He stared at the lines of code until his eyes blurred, typed until his hands cramped, and refused to talk to anyone. He even skipped meetings, not wanting to see the seat where Grace used to sit. He kept MatchupNow moving forward, but he himself was stuck.
When more papers about the lawsuit came, he handed them to his lawyers without reading them.
He couldn’t bear to think about Grace. And yet, he thought of almost nothing and no one else. No matter how much he tried to lose himself in work, he couldn’t stop thinking about her. He could work through hunger, exhaustion, frustration, and setbacks, but he struggled to work through missing her.
Alex knew he’d messed up. That was already clear, and it hadn’t even been a week since he’d left her apartment. Yet even though he struggled to enjoy his work as much as he used to, he still knew he couldn’t sabotage his company for her, either. Notwhen she’d already tried to ruin his company once. It was an impossible situation, and he couldn’t find any hope of a solution.
“Mr. Medson?”
Alex blinked exhaustion out of his eyes and focused on the doorway. Louisa stood there in a pink-and-white dress, her blond hair covering her bare shoulders.
“Yes, Louisa?”
“I have the afternoon off for a doctor’s appointment, so I’m heading out,” she said. “Can I get you anything before I go?”
“No.” Alex waved a hand, already looking at his screen again. “Thank you. Have a nice weekend.”
“It’s Tuesday,” Louisa said, sounding nonplussed. “But, um, okay.”
Then she was gone. Alex dove back into his work with a vengeance, not letting himself think about the fact that there was a doctor’s appointment in a few days that he’d wanted to go to—Grace’s next checkup. He wasn’t invited anymore. He wouldn’t be there when she gave birth. He wouldn’t be there to hold her hand or cradle their newborn children.
He wouldn’t get to be there for anything.
Alex tried to focus on his computer to no avail. His work blurred in front of his eyes, and he made a few very obvious mistakes that he then had to spend a long time correcting. A few hours later, there was another knock on the door.
“Alex?”
“Yes?” He looked up, and this time, it was Autumn standing in the doorway.
“We finished the last of the missing sections. Can I compile it onto your laptop now?”
“Of course.” Alex handed over his laptop and sat back, rubbing his eyes.
He wasn’t sure when he’d last slept more than four hours or taken a screen break. He was running on black coffee alone. He knew he should take a break—grab some food, maybe rest his eyes—but as soon as he was away from his laptop, thoughts of Grace floated back to him, stronger than ever. He remembered the tears in her eyes when she’d told him he had one last chance to be in or out. He remembered her smile when he’d kissed her. He remembered her laugh when he’d put a dollop of yellow paint on her nose in the nursery. He remembered his hopes for a future with her.
Alex got to his feet abruptly. Autumn had taken the laptop back to the dev-ops room, so he was alone with no distractions. He couldn’t just sit here. He needed to work, needed it more than sleep or sustenance. Since Louisa had left for the afternoon, he went and took her laptop, bringing it back to his desk.
Alex didn’t know her password, but a few guesses got him in. As soon as he was on the computer, he realized his mistake. Without his laptop, he didn’t have any code to work on. And most of the missing pieces had already been patched up.
Sighing, Alex flicked through a few open tabs, hoping to find something he could work on. Maybe he could optimize his schedule for the next week or sift through the mountain of emails that were always waiting for him. He was close to just starting a new project to pass the time when he flicked past Louisa’s email tab, and something caught his eye.
Right near the top, there was a thread between his assistant and Patrick Hale.
His brow furrowing, Alex clicked on it. He knew he shouldn’t snoop into Louisa’s emails, but this was her work account, and this was very suspicious. What was Louisa doing emailing with Patrick?
The first email was from Patrick to Louisa, dated more than six months ago. The heading read:
