“She dumped me.”
“What did you do?” Of course his sister blamed it on him. She was so far up her own ass about her breakup with Chris that even her own brother wouldn’t get the benefit of the doubt. Not that he deserved it.
And he didn’t know exactly how to explain what had gone down with Hannah. Sure, she’d gotten the last word and broken up with him. The fact that she’d threatened him with an ice pick indicated that there’d been some feelings on her end. But she’d used him, too.
When her boss had gotten him a towel, she’d said, “I’m sorry you got pulled into this. I was merely being facetious when I suggested that she find a boyfriend if she wanted to plan weddings.”
Even after the very public dumping, hearing that her boss had made a joke at Hannah’s expense pissed him off. It pissed him off now, even in the very sober aftermath. In a stroke of amazing timing, the waitress came to take their drink orders.
His sister and mother ordered bottomless mimosas, the better to grill him with, he guessed. And he decided to join them in their inevitable afternoon hangover. “Me too.”
“It must be bad if you’re forgoing the Bloody Mary.”
“She dumped me.”
“We know that,” his mother said. “The question is, what did you do?”
“I was using her for an article about how to lose a girl like all my idiot friends do, and she found out.”
“You what?” His female relatives shrieked in unison, turning every head in the restaurant their way. He was apparently destined to be a spectacle this weekend.
“Yeah, I know it’s stupid.”
Bridget snorted. “I mean, at least you sped things up this time.”
“What do you mean?” Jack had always been the perfect boyfriend. None of his previous breakups had ever been even a little bit his fault.
“You usually just smother a woman with your shtick until she gets sick of it.”
“That’s not fair.”
His mother piped in. “You are—kind of aggressive in your affections.”
“So, paying attention and doing what my lady likes is a bad thing now?”
Bridget rolled her eyes. “So defensive, big brother.”
“I’m not being defensive.” He definitely sounded defensive. “Mom, wouldn’t you have stayed with Dad had he paid attention to you? If he had known you wanted to go back to school and offered to make that work?”
His mother sighed deeply and looked down at the table. “Is that what you think?”
“Yeah.” They hadn’t ever really talked about their reasons for getting a divorce. It had kind of just happened and then his mom wasn’t around after school anymore.
“That’s not what happened at all.” His mother looked gutted. For once, Jack didn’t have the energy to manage her emotions.
“News to me.” Bridget took a swig of her newly delivered beverage.
“Your father and I . . . we just . . . didn’t work anymore.”
“That’s because you stopped working.” Jack had no idea where that angry declaration had come from. “Relationships are work. You left Dad because the only thing he had time to put work into was his business.”
“I married your father when I was eighteen years old.” She shook her head with a faint smile on her face. “We were so in love, but we didn’t know what we were doing . . . what we really wanted out of life. And after the three of you were born in four years and were such holy terrors, it just got so hard. We forgot that we were in love with each other.”
“But why did you leave us with Dad?” This had been a source of pain for Bridget for a long time. As the only girl, she’d often felt isolated and especially affected by their mother’s absence.
“Your father could provide you with a stable home, and he didn’t have the need to get out.” She made a circular motion with her hands. “Sean never wanted to see the world the way that I did. Not back then.”
“It’s still selfish.” Jack had never said that out loud, but he’d thought it for a long time, wondered if that was why he was hopelessly attracted to women who would leave him without looking back. “You had kids. You don’t get to travel the world when you have kids.”
“Not unless they have a father like Sean.” He’d never heard his mother talk this way about his father. Almost as though she—admired him. “I mean, if you’re honest with yourselves, who is the more nurturing one of the two of us?”
His father had always done most of the cooking, the cleaning, and the school drops—even before his mom had left. She was always ready after school with art projects and unique and sometimes not-kid-friendly snacks she’d picked up at some international grocery store after school, but his mother had never been like the other moms. She hadn’t noticed when piles of laundry collected in their rooms. She’d always been off in her little dream world.
If he was truly honest with himself, it had been sort of a relief when she’d left. His life had become much more predictable.
“And I stayed in touch. Saw you all every week.”
“But that’s not parenting.”
“For men it is. Why should it have been any different for me?” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand that made Bridget roll her eyes.
“Because you’re our mother.” Jack felt himself getting angry, but he didn’t know what for. They hadn’t had this argument before, and for some reason it felt important to have it now.
“Yes, and your father was a better mother than I ever was.”
Bridget’s gaze narrowed on their mother. “You sound like you’re still in love with him.”
“We’ve been seeing each other again.” His mother just dropped that on the brunch table as though it was her AmEx card to pay the check. Without a thought or hesitation.
Jack wished he could have prepared himself for that, because it shook him to his very core. Everything he knew about his bitterly divorced parents falling apart around his ears. On the one hand, it made more sense that they were talking on the phone again. On the other hand, they’d been apart so long that it was kind of gross. For the past fifteen years, his parents had acted like they hated each other. And now they were dating? Yuck!
“You’re dating Dad!” Bridget was clearly as perturbed by this as Jack was. But where he was speechless, Bridget was livid. “How? Why?”
“Since my divorce was finalized. And I wouldn’t call it dating, dear.” Their mother smoothed her gray hair out over one ear. “We’re too old to call what we’re doing dating.”
“So you have, like, an arrangement?” Jack finally found his words. He didn’t want to know this. He really didn’t want to know this.
“Yes. For years. We’re not a good married couple, but we’re still good when it’s just us.”
“Shit, that’s gross, Mom.” Bridget rarely called their mother “Mom,” so she must really be upset.
“Language, Bridget.”
“You know I lived alone with Sean Nolan and his two spawn for over a decade. So you know what kind of language I was exposed to.” Bridget was starting to yell, and Jack should probably intervene and smooth things over, but he was too rocked by this new information to do anything.
“Well, not everything is about you, Bridget.”
“She knows that—” Jack’s interjection was weak. “This is a lot of information for brunch, and I thought we were here to talk about my problems.”
“You know how to solve your problem, Jack.”
“No, I don’t.” Jack had no idea how to get Hannah back. She’d probably visit mayhem upon him if he showed up at her house with roses. And she would definitely eviscerate him if he tried some grand public gesture.
“Yes, you do.” His mother seemed insistent that he was smarter than he actually was.
“I actually agree with her.” At least Bridget wasn’t yelling anymore.<
br />
Jack shot his sister an Et tu, Brute? look.
“You said it before. You paid attention to her for almost a month. More than any other man she’s dated, probably.” His mother gave him a pointed look. “You know her because you made it your business to know her. How would she want you to fix this?”
“She’d want me to drop dead about now.”
“So she has a quick temper. Does it last?”
He thought back to how she’d rolled with everything he’d done to try to lose her—except the lying. One thing he knew for sure about Hannah was that she valued honesty and integrity above all else. The one unforgivable thing he’d ever done to her was lie about the story. If he’d told her flat out about the assignment, she probably would have gone along with it and even upped the production value. He smiled to himself.
There wasn’t going to be some rush-to-the-airport scene where he could declare how much he loved her and ask her for a second chance. Even if there was, Hannah would run him the hell over with her car before stopping to hear him out.
“I need to give her some time to cool off?”
“She might just use that time to plot different ways to kill you.” Bridge had a point. “Maybe you should get in there right away.”
“If she needs time, she needs time.” His mother would certainly know something about that, Jack thought, wincing anew at the morning’s other revelation.
“She liked hanging out with Dad, Michael, and Bridget,” Jack said. “I think it made her feel like I was thinking about a future with her. And her jackhole ex-boyfriend never made her feel like that.”
“I think she enjoyed herself at the gallery opening.” His mother was right. Until he’d tried to make her jealous by flirting with another woman in front of her, she and his mother got on like gangbusters.
Now that he thought about it, when neither of those things fazed her, that might have been the precise moment he fell in love with her.
An idea began to form in his head for how he might approach getting her back without sustaining grievous bodily injury. It would take the cooperation of his mutant-version-of-the-Brady-Bunch family, but it all started with finishing the article about how to lose Hannah and sending it to just one person.
He finished his second mimosa in one swallow and motioned for another. This was going to be painful.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
HANNAH WALKED INTO ANNALISE’S office fully prepared to be fired. And to be yelled at, which she hated even more than the idea of being out of a job. That was because she had a plan for what she would do if she got fired: find another job or hang out her own shingle. Her only plan if Annalise started yelling was to try not to cry and probably fail. Her hard-ass-bitch shell had cracked, and she was at a loss for what—if anything—to do about it.
She’d always liked to cry in secret, but she could feel that a bout of yelling would get those juices flowing. Ironic given her penchant for breathing fire at vendors who refused to bend to her will. Just remembering that gave her spine some steel. At this moment, she was too raw from realizing that she was in love with Jack, and that he’d been using her and lying, to keep her emotions in check. The pain of realizing that he was closer to being the perfect guy that she’d met at a stupid, pretentious bar than to the cad he’d turned himself into for profit was stabby and vicious. And she needed to rechannel that pain into what her whole fling with Jack had originally been about: saving her career.
The first step—getting fired like she had the goddamn ovaries to take whatever Annalise threw at her. She was definitely, probably going to lose her job, but she wasn’t going to break down in front of someone she’d looked up to until recently.
After her conversation with Sasha, she’d really thought about what Annalise had asked of her. It was clear that she’d never intended to promote her—and likely that she looked down on her for her confirmed bachelorettehood. She’d probably told her that boyfriend equaled promotion just to exert control over her, and that was pretty disgusting.
She’d worn her chicest black dress that morning and didn’t even stop at her desk to drop her purse. If this went how she thought it would, she wouldn’t be there for very long anyway.
After multiple mimosas, she and Sasha had come up with a plan for how to play this. Although she’d tried to convince her best friend that at least one of them should keep her very good job, Sasha would not be dissuaded. Sasha had been on the “screw Annalise” train long before Hannah had boarded sometime after mimosa number three. Heartbreak over losing Jack seemed to have softened her edges—the really weird thing was that Hannah didn’t hate it.
Still, she needed to pretend to have her sharp corners and brass knuckles to deal with this meeting.
She didn’t knock, just slid in the glass door while her boss stared at her screen.
“Good morning.”
“Is it?” Hannah hadn’t been expecting sarcasm, but okay.
“No, it’s actually a pretty rough morning.” That wasn’t a lie. She was terribly hungover.
Annalise motioned to the chair across from her desk. Apparently, this wasn’t going to be a short conversation. Hannah sat down and felt her boss’s disdain settle like a blanket over her.
They stared at each other in silence for a long beat, and Hannah fought not to shift around in her chair.
“You have nothing to say for yourself.”
“Not really. I think threatening my ex-boyfriend with an ice pick at an event I’d planned really spoke for itself.”
“You’re definitely fired.”
“I figured that.” She went to pick up her bag in a move that Viola Davis would be proud of, when Annalise held up a staying hand.
“Your ex-boyfriend?”
This bitch was really going to insert herself into the situation again. “I think you’ve meddled in my love life enough, Annalise.”
“I never thought you’d actually find a boyfriend.”
“And you never intended to promote me.” Hannah didn’t need to question it.
Annalise took her dark, thick-rimmed glasses off and sat back in her chair. For the first time, Hannah noticed how brittle her boss seemed. Sort of like a de-winged hummingbird that couldn’t stop moving even though she couldn’t get anywhere.
“You were good at planning parties for professional sports teams. And they liked to look at your tits.” She shrugged one of her shoulders. “And you’re a smart girl. I thought you would fail and realize that you were really doing what you were meant to do.”
She shouldn’t have asked the next question, which she definitely asked. “And what was I meant to do?”
Her former boss made a pfft sound. “Look pretty. Do the dirty work.”
Two weeks ago, Hannah would have believed that was all she was good for. In that moment, confronted with someone who saw her the way she’d seen herself for years, something had changed. She knew that she was meant for more than looking pretty and doing someone else’s dirty work. She no longer doubted her own ambition.
And she wasn’t crying. She’d probably cry later when trying to figure out how to pay her student loans on time while she and Sasha were getting their ideas off the ground, but not as she made her very Viola-like exit.
* * *
—
AS SHE WALKED OUT of the office, she flipped off Giselle, who blanched at the rude gesture. Then she winced again when Hannah mouthed the c-word in her direction. This reaction filled Hannah with so much satisfaction that she ran into Noah’s tall frame as he exited the elevator.
“Are you okay?” He grabbed her arm, and Hannah waited for her body to react to him now that she wasn’t wrapped up in an oxytocin overdose named Jack Nolan. Still, there was nothing except a hint of irritation that he’d ruined her perfectly good exit.
“I’m fine. Except for the fact that I just got fired, I’m fine.”
>
He laughed, and it was the annoying sound he always made when he thought she was being cute. “Lucky you didn’t get arrested.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.” She looked up at him and noticed that his smile was strained. Funny, knowing someone that well. “What are you doing here? Shouldn’t you be seeing about bailing your boss out? And wouldn’t he have fired us even if he hadn’t gotten hauled away in a paddy wagon?”
He looked back toward Annalise’s office for a beat and then back down at her. Grabbing her arm and steering her toward the elevator before she could extricate herself, he said, “Let me take you for coffee.”
They were both silent on the elevator. She didn’t know what Noah was thinking about, but Hannah was hoping that he wasn’t here to give her a list of reasons why the party sucked before the Post story dropped and the senator got arrested. She didn’t think her ex was that much of a jerk, but she hadn’t thought that Jack would lie to her repeatedly throughout their entire relationship, either.
Once they exited the building and Noah led her toward a coffee shop, she breathed easy. He cared too much about what people thought of him to get really mean in public. But he still kept her in suspense while he ordered her coffee for her.
“I might have changed my order.” She hadn’t, but still.
Noah shook his head. “Always difficult.”
“This is well-trod ground.” She knew she was difficult, and she wasn’t about to change that—not with her ex and not right now.
Noah ignored her and smiled at the barista who handed over their drinks. Then he pointed at a table in the corner with her cold brew.
When they were both seated, he said, “I’m going to marry Madison.”
She wouldn’t have been more surprised if he’d told her that he was joining a Catholic monastery. “Madison Chapin?”
He smiled again, but this time it wasn’t the smile that he’d indulged her with when he’d thought she was being ridiculous. It was damned close to the smile that Jack had laid on her after the first time they’d done sex things. Holy shit.
Not the Girl You Marry Page 24