CALEB’S IN INDIA, then Peru, pulling together contracts with support-staff temp firms so that he can prove TSG is ready to expand. I start to lose track of the cities he’s in or the reason he’s gone to any of them. We’ve barely spoken since he left, but every time we do, there’s almost always someone in the background, someone urging him to get off the phone, to get in the car, to go somewhere else. I hate how exhausted he sounds all the time. I also hate feeling like an afterthought.
Work is going well—the walking program was so successful that we’re starting another one, and there’s an upcoming TSG Shark Tank event where employees can pitch ideas that everyone’s excited about. I even get a call from a recruiter.
But when I get home at night with the twins and Caleb’s house looms dark and lonely behind us, I have to ask myself what it will be like when he’s gone for good. How often could we possibly see him after the merger happens? I won’t be able to jaunt off to New York, but if Kate finishes rehab and wants him back...she can.
He returns on a Tuesday, a week and a day after he left. I get little done at work but manage to check the progress of his flight approximately a hundred times over the course of the morning.
He texts when he’s on his way to the office.
CALEB
Almost there. Please have that report ready for me when I arrive.
Where should I leave it?
On my desk.
There is no report. I’m grinning like such a fool I’m embarrassed for myself. I walk into his office and shut the door behind me.
“Lock it,” he says. The predatory look in his eyes is all the foreplay I need.
I do as he asks, then lean back against the door. “We need to be quick or Kayleigh’s going to know.”
“Not trying to brag, but I don’t think quick will be a problem,” he replies, stalking toward me.
I meet him in the middle of the room, my hands on the lapels of his jacket. His mouth lands on mine. “I want this too much,” he groans, swallowing as I tug on his belt. “I should—”
I slip a hand inside his waistband.
“Fuck,” he growls. “Get on the floor.”
I drop to my hands and knees. A zipper slides open and then he’s behind me, pushing my skirt up and my thong aside, fingers slipping over me and then inside me. He thrusts in abruptly, without warning, and I bite my lip not to make any noise.
“That’s so good,” he says with a quiet groan.
He reaches around, sliding his hand inside my thong from the front.
The orgasm hits me so fast I can barely warn him. “I’m coming,” I whisper. “Cover my mouth.”
He does it not a moment too soon, because there is no stopping the noises I’m making right now.
“God, that’s hot,” he groans, and his body behind me draws tight and tense as he finishes, muffling his final gasps against my shoulder.
It’s over too quickly. I need more than a few minutes in his office after a week apart. I need to lie on his chest and hear about his week and have him convince me that we’re going to be okay in that way of his...The way in which he never actually says the words.
“When are we seeing you again?” I ask, fixing my skirt while he zips up his pants.
He doesn’t entirely meet my eye. “I fly out in the morning, and I’ve got a lot of shit to deal with here, but I’ll try to get home before the twins go to bed.”
I kiss him goodbye, guilty and dissatisfied at once. I don’t want to add to his plate. But I also don’t like feeling as if I’m begging for scraps.
I take the twins to the beach that evening with my stomach in knots. A part of me is dying to tell Henry that Caleb’s home simply to watch his face light up, but...I don’t actually believe it’s going to work out. Caleb has the very best of intentions, but of a long list of priorities...we are last.
The twins are already in bed by the time he calls, and I guess I suspected it would work out like this.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “Everything ran late and we’re still working. I’m probably going to work through the night and head straight to the airport. I hope Henry wasn’t counting on it.”
“No.” Because I didn’t tell him. Because I didn’t quite count on you myself. “Have a good trip. Don’t forget about next Thursday.”
“Thursday?” he asks, distracted. The noise of the crowd around him gets louder.
“He’s showing the class the robotic arm?”
“Right,” he says. “Sorry. It’s on my calendar—I swear. Nothing will stop me from being there.”
I wish I believed that.
ON WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, I’m showered and ready to see Caleb long before his flight lands. Molly’s going to watch the twins so I can sneak next door for our first overnight since we went to the hotel. I bought the black lace garter thing as a surprise—when you’ve only had quickies for the past month, it warrants a small celebration.
He calls just as we’re sitting down to dinner.
“I’ve got some bad news,” he says, and my teeth clench. It feels like he does nothing but call with bad news of late.
I walk toward the front of the house so the twins won’t overhear. “Is your flight delayed?”
He sighs. “I wish that’s all it was. The COO got held up, so we’re getting together tomorrow instead.”
The disappointment swings into me hard, like an unexpected door. But...you promised. Henry was counting on it. This is the kind of thing Jeremy would do, but you were supposed to be different.
Except he never promised he’d be different. He never said he’d work less. I just wanted to believe he would, given the right circumstances. I wanted to believe that when it really mattered, he’d put us first.
“You can’t meet with him by video?” I ask, though I already know it’s too late.
“Lucie, that’s not how a meeting like this takes place. I’m trying to woo these guys. We’re having lunch, and I’ll catch the five o’clock flight back.”
Unless the meeting goes long. Unless the COO decides you should discuss it over drinks instead. “Well, I’d better let Henry know,” I say.
“I really am sorry, Lucie, but this meeting—”
“Stop,” I snap. “When you say but in a sentence, you invalidate all the words you said before it. So please don’t.”
He sighs again. “I knew this was going to be a problem. I knew my job was going to be an issue eventually.”
I can’t believe he’s using this moment to scold me about my expectations. Jeremy’s words ring in my head, though I wish they wouldn’t: you think I was a disappointment as a father? Wait until you’re depending on someone who isn’t even related to them. “What an excellent time to say I told you so, Caleb. Anything else you want to add before I go talk to Henry?”
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m just tired.”
“Me too,” I reply.
I’m tired, and I’m lonely, and I’m sick of being unsure where we stand and having to keep it all to myself. I’ve spent my entire life coming in a distant second or worse to the people who were supposed to care.
I’m not sure I can keep doing it. And I’m not sure I should be setting my kids up for that kind of life either.
THE NEXT MORNING, I drive the twins to school. Henry refused to carry the robotic arm that Molly helped him complete, as if it’s tainted somehow now that Caleb won’t be there. I take it into the school for him, hoping he changes his mind.
The show is small and informal—the parents take seats along the perimeter of the room while the kids sit cross-legged in a circle on the floor.
Henry’s classmates attempt to juggle, dance or—in Sophie’s case—sing inappropriate pop songs. But when Henry’s name is called, he remains still and silent, refusing to even glance at the project I laid on the display table.