“Gavin? Really?”
“Let me explain.”
I shake my head. “You’re that woman with the wave sculpture. You hated me. You hated me.”
I remember her now. She was…she was awful.
What is this?
Was this all revenge? Some sick joke? A way to pay me back for what she figured I’d done?
I feel a ripping, a tearing in my chest, and then I feel it, my heart, breaking, rending in half. I’m surprised, I’m stunned actually, that no one else seems to notice it happen.
Jamie wipes at her eyes and shakes her head. “I don’t hate you. Please, let me explain. I didn’t mean for it to go like this. I didn’t plan to fall in love. I just…”
I take another step back. “Just what?”
“I just,” she whispers, “wanted you to know what it felt like to have nothing.”
To have nothing, and then have that taken away too, is what she doesn’t say. But the meaning is there.
That’s when I realize that Jamie was never the starlight, she was just another closed door. I never had her. I never had happiness. I never had kids. I never had a family. Just like when I was a kid, imagining my adventures in the woods while I was locked inside a dark closet, this wasn’t real either.
I learned long ago, just because something feels real doesn’t mean it is.
I look toward the kids.
By the guilty expression on Tanner and Elijah’s faces, they knew too.
I never had kids. They were never mine.
I look at Grandma Allwright, at Diedre and Tom. They all knew.
Every single one of them knew.
Burning, flaming anger singes me, and I gladly grab onto it, because anger feels better than a breaking heart.
I turn back to my brother. He’s giving Jamie his “I’m going to crush you in the boardroom and play with the entrails of your decimated business” scowl, and for once, I’m glad that smiling at people isn’t his default.
I nod at him and a look passes between us. He doesn’t know what has happened, but he knows I need him, and I need to get out of here fast.
“Let me just get my—”
I cut off. Get what? There isn’t anything here that belongs to me.
“Never mind. Let’s go.”
I force myself not to look at the kids, not to look at Jamie, not to look at any of them.
None of it was real.
I yank open the backseat door, cold air conditioning and the smell of expensive leather rushes over me.
I hesitate, because dang it, there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to leave. It’s yelling, “Wait, you can’t leave your wife, you can’t just walk out on your kids.” But she isn’t my wife. They aren’t my kids.
I shake it off, shake them off, like smacking dust off a pair of dirty jeans.
The hell with them anyway. I’m Gavin Williams. I have houses around the world, private planes, exotic cars, I could buy this entire mountain in a second, but they had me pumping crap for a living, and sleeping with a mangy dog on a broken down couch. I’m sure…I’m certain they were all getting a good chuckle out of it.