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To deny him.
She wanted him so badly, that killed her, too.
She was crying before he’d shut the door behind him. Great wracking sobs. She didn’t even try to stop them. She just let them flow.
Five days of worry, of sometimes debilitating fear, of loneliness poured out of her.
What a cruel twist of fate that the love of her life would be a man who wasn’t right for her. A man she wasn’t right for.
It was worse than starting life with a prostitute mother. Much worse. Her mother had loved her enough to get her out of that life.
And while she’d never had a family of her own, she’d had a foster mother who’d loved her. Who’d kept her, helped her get to college.
She was healthy. Had a successful business she loved. Friends.
And now she was having healthy, identical-twin girls.
Still, she cried.
Because she couldn’t imagine her life without Braden in it.
Sometime later she got up, took another bath, turned on the television and climbed into bed.
She’d survive.
She always did.
She had babies to provide for. Children of her own who were going to need everything she had to give. Children who didn’t deserve a ripped-apart family and a torn-up mother. Which was exactly what would happen if she and Braden married and divorced again.
She couldn’t do that to them.
Or to Braden or to herself, either.
As much as she hated it, she knew she’d finally grown up.
* * *
Braden left San Diego that night. He didn’t make it all the way back to L.A. Instead, he found a hotel half an hour from the city and sat in the bar, watching a rerun of a baseball game and drinking beer.
The next morning, he was at his desk by six, sending texts to change the morning meetings in San Diego, making those he could video meets, and threw himself into each and every one.
He worked hard the rest of the week and into the next. It was what he did. What he knew.
When a decent amount of time had passed—meaning, enough for him to be right with himself—he called Mallory.
It had been almost two weeks since he’d seen her.
“I’ll be in town tomorrow,” he said. He had a meeting Wednesday morning with his staff and then a full day of appointments. “How about a quick lunch?”
He was going to tell her about William taking over the San Diego office for him, check in with how she was doing and then head back to L.A. that evening.
He might or might not tell her that he was no longer seeing Anna.
He’d broken it off with the woman when he’d returned from San Diego. He hadn’t seen much point in continuing to see her. Clearly he wasn’t into her enough if he’d practically begged his ex-wife to marry him while he’d been dating Anna.
“I don’t think lunch is a good idea, Bray.”
