AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He had been coming home late. Twice she’d awoken to find him gone from bed, at his desk. Laptop lid gently closed as she entered his office. There had been phone calls that he’d taken, leaving the table, or the living room.
Hannah wasn’t the jealous type. And her husband was loving and devoted, a wonderful father.
But.
She heard him come back inside and her attention returned to her lightly sleeping daughter, who turned over onto her side.
Hannah and Gigi had fallen into one of those bad nighttime rituals that pediatricians and parenting books were always going on about. It had started with a storm last month, a violent shaking thunder and lightning show that rocked the house. Bruce had been out of town and Gigi had been wailing.
Hannah stayed on the floor until the storm passed, and the baby had finally drifted off, too.
Stay, Mommy, Gigi begged the next night.
Of course then it was the next night, and the one after. It was a habit now, one that would have to be broken. Every parent knew the epic amount of energy it took to change a bad habit. Energy that Hannah did not have. Easier sometimes to just do the thing.
And anyway—whocared?
Was it the worst thing in the world to lie on the ground while your tiny daughter pinned you with her gaze, eyelids fluttering, closing, then opening to make sure you were still there? Who else ever loved you that much? And how long before her daughter didn’t even want Hannah in the room anymore? The space, dim, with glittering stars and the face of her baby, and the shelves of toys and books, and walls she and Bruce had painted themselves. It was, truly, one of her favorite places in the world.
Her husband’s voice again, this time louder. His tonewasoff. Not his usual professional cadence.
She was ashamed to admit that recently, when he got in the shower, she’d checked his work phone. He had two phones—the life phone as they called it, which was always lying around not password protected, an open book. And his work phone; it was a known but unspoken thing that she should not look at it. He had clients—military, government, security contractors—whose business was classified. And never before had she even thought to breach that boundary.
He had a habit of deleting all his texts immediately, a fan of the whole inbox zero thing. So there was nothing there. But in the chain of mostly unfamiliar but some known contacts—the office, Mako, Bruce’s virtual assistant—in his recent calls, there had been three from someone named only UNKNOWN. No number. No way to call back. She almost asked him about it, prepared to admit that she’d been snooping. But she knew what he’d say. What he always said: “Difficult client.”
Many of his clients he couldn’t discuss, and it probablywasthat.
But.
Hannah was trying to bekind to herself—the way you were supposed to be now, self-care and self-compassion and all of that—but she was not in love with her post-baby body. (In fact, she had not been in love with herpre-babybody.) And sometimes she was in her pajamas when Bruce left for work, and still in thesamepajamas when he came home. The sex was always good—but it was hurried, rushed, lately, prone to interruption from Gigi, both of them overworked in different ways, exhausted, passing out right after.
Maybe there was some hot young thing at one of his clients’ offices.
Someone not wearing pajamas.
Someone who had a daily shower.
Her husband—simply put—was a hottie. Broad, tall at six feet, he towered over her brother. Chiseled jaw and bedroom eyes, which gleamed with intelligence and warmth. He could be a bit brooding, a bit severe maybe. But he was in great shape from running, and always well put together, groomed. He was a catch.
She’d knownthatthe night they met. Even though Hannah had been rebounding from an ugly breakup, she knew it right away. Bruce was at one of Mako’s epic, pre-Liza blowouts at a hot new Saint Petersburg restaurant he’d invested in. In fact it had been Mako who’d introduced them. “This is my sister, who also happens to be my best friend,” said Mako, dropping a protective arm around her. “And Bruce—well, he might just be the smartest guy I know. And the most honest.”
He’s safe, that’s what Hannah remembered thinking when they shook hands, Bruce’s grip warm and firm, but not too tight like some men who seemed to view the handshake as a statement piece. She was still reeling from the cheating, borderline verbally abusive man she’d just dumped. He’d been calling all night—leaving messages that alternated between desperate and nasty. Chad. Another friend of her brother’s—though not anymore after the way he’d treated Hannah. FOMs—Friends of Mako’s, as her best friend, Cricket, liked to call them. All smart, successful leaders in their field, but many of them also entitled assholes. That particular trait seemed to come with power, didn’t it?
But this one seemed different. A measured coolness to him, an elegance.
And those eyes. He’d worn an understated watch, analog with a blue face and silver dials. It caught the lights overhead and glinted. She liked it because it wasn’t the usual Rolex that most men wore to telegraph their wealth. Bruce, she’d learn later, had a love of watches, precision machines with only one function—to mark the passage of time. A funny passion for a tech guy.
They’d started talking and didn’t stop, drifting from the party and out to the deck into the cool night. The bay glittered and across Beach Drive, the small Museum of Fine Arts sat white and glowing.
“You can’t be related to Mako,” he said after a while.
“No?”
“You’re too—real.”
She didn’t ask him what he meant. She knew. The Mako Show. It was always running.
That night, Hannah had been threaded, manicured, waxed, and coiffed. When she met her husband, all her assets were well managed. She’d been working for Mako—event planning, client schmoozing, booking corporate retreats, researching all the best hotels and restaurants wherever Mako traveled, making reservations. It wasn’t what she ever planned to do with her life. But.
