Filtering in a harsh breath, I whirl on him. “Me telling you to go away hurt your ego so much that you had to run here to tell my mother?”
He widens his eyes in surprise, but that look doesn’t fool me for a second. Tom knows how conservative my mother is—on the weekend of our wedding four years ago, she had been adamant that he stay in a nearby hotel. I hadn't had the heart to tell her that I hadn't been a virgin since my freshman year of college, so I had forced Tom to comply with her wishes.
When he came here today, he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew how disapproving she would be of my work with Jace, and once again he has screwed me over out of spite.
“Mom,” I whisper, taking a step toward where she’s huddled in one corner of the couch. “I’m sorry.”
She moves her head, then releases a sharp curse in Vietnamese. “I don’t want to hear you say sorry,” she says, the disappointment dripping from her voice. “I want to know why you lied. You can tell me anything, Lucy, you know that.”
Letting out a breath that rips apart my lungs, I drop my eyes to the floor and shake my head. “I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to worry about me. I didn't want you to say that you were disappointed in me. I didn't tell you because—”
Tom’s melodic voice cutting me off snaps my head back up. “She didn't tell you because she’s sleeping with her boss.” He must not have already revealed that to her, because Mom’s head snaps in my direction, and she looks at me like this is the first time she’s ever laid eyes on me.
“I see.” Mom’s hands are shaking as she stands and runs them over the front of her slacks, and the stare she shoots my way makes me wilt even more inside. I’ve spent most of my life being an overachiever, desperate to please my mother and father and, later, Tom. The fact that I’ve managed to shatter Mom’s faith in me in a matter of minutes nearly brings me to my knees.
“I’m so sorry,” I say again, folding my arms tightly over my stomach.
Mom moves from the couch, her shoulders bowed as she heads into the hallway. She doesn’t even look at me when she mutters, “You should have told me the truth, Lucy. I would have gotten over it. And Tom?”
“Yes, Susie?”
“Please leave my home, I think you've done enough damage.”
Then she disappears toward her bedroom without so much as another word, leaving me alone with the man who’s become my biggest regret.
Twenty-Three
Lucy
Although my mother’s wish for Tom to fuck off is apparent, he doesn’t make any effort to leave. He just stays there, on the couch. We stare each other down for a long time. Finally, he offers me a self-indulgent grin, and my face catches fire. “All you had to do was come back to California, and you wouldn't be in this situation,” he says calmly. Standing, he presses his lips together and jerks at the hem of his suit jacket. It's immaculate, like always, and I hate him for the fa?ade. I wish Jace had ruined it when he had the chance earlier today.
And I’m so ashamed of myself for admitting that.
I rush over to him until the toes of my pumps bump against his perfectly polished shoes. “Come back to California?” I demand in a hushed voice. “For what? To work for you? To have your relationship with Shane thrown up in my face every time I stepped into that office with the douchebags you hired? And do you know what they said about me behind my back? Do you know how it made me feel that everyone in that office knew what you were doing but me?”
“How it made you feel?” He cups my face, but none of the warmth that radiates from Jace’s touch is there. Instead, everything is cold, from his eyes to his body language. When I recoil, it doesn’t even seem to bother him. “The Lucy I married cared more about getting things done than feelings.”
Is he kidding me? Does he honestly believe that I was so driven that love and happiness hadn’t mattered to me? Apparently, he does, and it’s tragic that, had I not found out about his affair, I might have spent the rest of my life with a man who thought I valued my career and achievements over the welfare of my heart.
“You’re wrong,” I say shakily. “The Lucy you married thought she was in love. She thought she was in love and then she found out he loved someone else. I don’t know any woman who would be able to get shit done with that kind of clusterfuck happening all around her.”
Bending his head close to mine, he sneers. “You could have at least fulfilled your obligations.”
“No, I couldn’t. And I’m not going to—not when it comes to you. So if you think you're accomplishing something by coming to my job, insulting the people that I work with, and then popping up at to my house to tattle on me to my mother, you're not. All you're doing is making me see how stupid I was for not realizing exactly who you were sooner.” I’m trembling from my head to my feet by the time I finish speaking.
“You belong in San Francisco. I need you to make the company work. We had a deal.”
I clench my hands into fists to ground myself. “I’m not coming back to San Francisco,” I say as slowly as possible. “I'm not helping your company. And if you want to sue me, go right ahead. It’s going to take more money than you can afford and at the end of the day, I'll still have my job here while you make shitty coffee from your apartment.”
His light blue eyes are tight at the edges as he stiffly walks to the front door. He looks over his shoulder, so I meet his glare with my own. “You really are a bitch, Lucy. And a lousy lay which is why I fucked around all those years. If you think a man like your boss is going to stick with you, you have another thing coming.”
A vicious slap of pain rockets through me, but I pretend it doesn’t hurt. I grit my teeth and I bear it. “You're right,” I whisper. “You shouldn’t have married me. Let's just chalk it up to bad life decisions and move on.”
He flashes me an angry smile. The sound of the front door rattling behind him startles my heart, and I stare blankly ahead for a long time before I sag onto the couch. I hold my arms around myself, replaying every detail of our conversation until the sharp pain in my chest overwhelms me. Then, drying my cheeks with the heels of my palms, I take off to my mother’s bedroom to explain myself.
“You know, Williams, I really didn’t expect you to come,” Jace drawls when he opens his front door several hours later. He’s shirtless, with nothing on but a pair of boxer briefs. Before he can get out another question, I press my body up against his and shove him back into the foyer. I kick the door closed behind me, and a dark gleam leaps into his slate blue eyes. “That’s my sweet girl. You want it rough tonight?”