“I want…I want a real marriage,” she said, lifting her chin. “Your mom is gone. She can’t hurt my family anymore. And I want a family. A husband who lives with me. Works with me. Builds a life with me. Loves me.”
He stiffened, unable to process what she was saying. She wanted a family? Kids?
“And that’s never going to happen with you, is it?”
“No,” he answered, and she turned away, staring off at the ocean, her jawline set as hard as he’d ever seen it. The idea of his going back to the ranch was laughable. It would be like signing up to go to hell. His work was on the other side of the world, his life was far away from where he’d been raised and tortured by his parents.
“Why?” he asked, because what she wanted didn’t make sense to him. “My parents had a ‘real’ marriage. I don’t know why you’d want that.”
“My parents had a real marriage too, Jack. And they were very happy,” she said. “Not every relationship is like your folks’.”
He didn’t say anything, because frankly, while he understood her hypothesis, he hadn’t seen enough proof to support it.
“It was always going to end this way,” she said, and he stared at her profile, wondering where this was coming from. “We knew that. It’s not like we were ever going to have...something real.”
“You’re one of the most real things in my life, Mia,” he said, and she closed her eyes, a strange anxiety rolling off her.
“We’ll always be friends,” she finally said. “Divorce, just like the marriage, won’t change that.”
“Okay,” he agreed, because he supposed, logically, she was right.
And there was no arguing with logic.
“We can get a divorce,” he said. “If that’s what you want.”
“That’s what I want,” she said, with a definitive nod. Her mood shifted and she was suddenly cheerful. Totally at odds with the loss he felt. “I’ll put together the paperwork.”
He nodded, numb and off course. He wished he could go back to his work, those charts. Even with the errors, he could read them. They made sense.
“All right then,” she said, pulling him into motion, leading him into the party. “I need a drink.”
Mia’s head buzzed. Her stomach churned. A glass of wine on a belly full of nerves and no food hadn’t been her greatest idea. But she needed something to ease the worst of the pain.
Divorce.
A million times in the years she’d known him, she’d thought about telling him how she felt. That maybe, if he just knew, things would change. But right now, this moment, was why she never had. Because in her heart of hearts she’d always known Jack McKibbon could never return her feelings. Never.
His wounds were too deep, his brain was too big and his heart was just a little too cold.
And she was always going to be little Mia Alatore.
She took another sip from her white wine and tried her best to ignore the whispers that buzzed around her like horseflies.
It wasn’t hard to guess who the dean’s wife was. Mia had money on the tall redhead staring at her from the corner of the room with enough malice to cut steel.
But the rest of the women at the party were staring at Jack, who, even in his ill-fitting suit, was the handsomest man there. Tall and broad, rough around the edges, he was so different from the slick, tame men surrounding him. Like a wild animal surrounded by domesticated cats.
She’d bet that most of the women in the room wouldn’t mind seeing Indiana Jones without the suit.
Herself included.
Maybe she should try to get that wedding night before it was too late.
She snorted into her wine glass.
“Mia?” A vaguely familiar young woman with bright eyes and a slightly plastic smile stepped in front of her. “I’m Claire, Devon Cormick’s wife.”
“Hi.” Mia shook hands with the woman. That’s why she was familiar; they’d met three years ago at her first of these cocktail parties. When she’d actually felt like a wife. When hope had made her excited to be on Jack’s arm.
“Devon’s leaving with Oliver and Jack next month to go back and fix the drill in El Fasher.”
“Next month?” Mia asked, before she could stop herself.
Claire blinked, the plastic fading from her expression. Replaced by a baffled concern that looked, to Mia’s jaded eye, like pity. “You…didn’t know?”
Mia took a deep breath. “No,” she said. “I didn’t.”
She finished the wine in her glass, handed it off to a passing waiter and, without a second thought, picked up another glass.
She was going to get drunk, and right now, the pain lancing her body like a thousand arrows, it seemed like a great idea.
“Mia,” Claire said. “I’m not sure what the situation is between you and Jack and I certainly am not going to speculate—”