I went wrong and I’ve learned. I learned way more than I wanted to. We can put it back together.”
“No,” she said. “We can’t.”
“I realize it could take time...”
“It would take a miracle,” she said. “You said you didn’t love me anymore. After my heart stopped ripping apart, I stopped loving you. You took what you wanted and rented a fancy house to live in with a woman who hadn’t given you years, sacrificed for your marriage, helped raise your children, trusted you and—” She paused and sipped her wine. “Let me ask you something. You want your marriage back?”
“If humanly possible.”
“Why?”
“Because I can see now that I was confused! Wrong! Misled and used! You were right and I was crazy! Call it a midlife crisis, but in a way it illuminated all the things I took for granted. We deserve a second chance. We had a good marriage.”
“Everything you took in that settlement,” she said. “Are you prepared to return it to our joint retirement and savings accounts?”
He dropped his chin and looked down into his beer. “Just give me a chance and I’ll make it up to you,” he said. And he said it quietly.
“She got it, didn’t she?” Justine said. “How’d she get it?”
“She didn’t exactly get it,” he said.
“Yet you don’t have it,” Justine said. “She tricked you.”
“She misled me. We were going to be partners. Now I have no money and a failing business. I thought we were going to be partners. I thought I was going to save the business for her, help her out. I thought she’d be grateful, but—” He cleared his throat. “She was very convincing.”
“Until she coldcocked you,” Justine said.
He didn’t respond. He did wince, and she thought the scar on his forehead got whiter.
“I told you that was going to happen,” she said.
“Because I’m so completely undesirable? Because who, besides you, could possibly want me? Because I’m nothing?”
“No! Because she played to your ego and won! You weren’t nothing. You were everything to your wife and daughters! But you walked away from the real thing—loyalty and love and commitment—for a chance to be a big shot! She played you! What made her finally leave? Did you run out of money?”
“No. I told her I would never marry again!”
She leaned away from him, actually surprised that he said that. She thought he was a goner, that he’d fall for anything. She wanted to know how much she’d gotten out of him for that kayak shack, but on the other hand, she’d rather not know. Besides, she could find out. Anything that involved a sale and a filed document could be traced.
“What about you, Justine? Are you into this Logan all the way? Serious?”
“Oh, I’m serious about Logan. I’m not seeing anyone else. We don’t have any plans. It’s new.”
“Then there’s still hope for me,” he said, his face brightening just the smallest bit.
Here she was, about nine months since catching Scott in an affair. She knew women who caught their husbands’ cheating more than once, yet kept their marriage intact and even seemed content. Justine couldn’t do that. As she looked at Scott now, after what he’d done, she wondered why she’d loved him at all. He’d always wanted as much as he could get with as little effort as possible.
And then he blamed her for working such long hours. Blamed the failure of their marriage on her not being perpetually available to stroke his ego.
All this talk of second chances and regrets—Justine was much too cynical for that. He’d probably be back with his other woman by the end of the week.
“No, Scott. I’m not at all open to the idea of reconciling. Not remotely. In fact, I’m not sure we’ll even be friends.”
“How can you say that? After thirty years together?”
She shook her head, and remarkably, she felt the sting of tears. She’d felt for a long time if she could only break down and give out a big, sobbing cry it would release