Chapter 17

(Julian's POV)

My office phone had been ringing nonstop all morning. I stopped answering three days ago.

My assistant kept leaving messages about board meetings I was missing. About investor presentations, and business reports that needed my signature. But I deleted them without listening past the first few seconds.

None of it mattered. The company could as well burn to ashes for all I cared. Finding Evelyn was the only thing that mattered.

I'd been staring at my laptop screen for so long my eyes hurt. Bank statements, phone records, anything that might give me a clue about where she'd gone. But there was nothing, just empty accounts and disconnected numbers. She wouldn't even respond on all the burner lines I used.

The door to my office opened without warning.

"I said no interruptions." I yelled, without looking up.

"Yeah, well, I don't work for you."

My head snapped up immediately at the voice. Daniel stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, looking at me with a horrified look. I look like shit, yeah I know.

"What are you doing here?"

"Mom's worried. You haven't answered her calls in over a week." He walked in and closed the door behind him. "You look like hell, by the way."

"Thanks for the observation. Now get out."

"Not until you tell me what's going on." He moved closer, taking in the disaster that was my office. "Jesus, Julian. What are you doing?"

"Finding my wife."

"What wife?” Daniel picked up one of the coffee cups, made a face, set it back down. "You mean Evelyn?”

“Yes.”

“What's wrong?” He stopped and turned to me. “Isn't she home or at one of her book events?”

I shook my head miserably. “No. She's gone. She left me.”

“Did you hit your head somewhere? What are you talking about?”

“She divorced me and disappeared! I can't reach her!”

Daniel stared at me for a long moment, like I'd grown horns. Then he walked over to my laptop and looked at what I had pulled up. Credit card statements . Travel records, and security footage requests filled the screen. 

"You're tracking her."

"I'm trying to—"

“What happened, Julian? Because none of these makes sense.” He gestured at me, at the office, at everything. "This."

I leaned back into my chair, looking at my hands. "I cheated on her."

Silence. When I finally looked up, Daniel's face had gone completely blank.

"You what?"

"I had an affair. For eighteen months. She found out and she left."

"Eighteen months." Daniel said it slowly, like he was trying to make sense of the words. "You cheated on Evelyn for a year and a half?"

"Yes."

"With who?"

I didn't answer.

"With who, Julian?"

"Serena."

His mouth fell open. "Serena? Her Serena? Her best friend Serena? From College? The I*******m influencer?"

"Yes."

"You—" He stepped back like I'd hit him. "What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"It was a mistake."

"A mistake?" His voice rose higher. "A mistake is forgetting an anniversary. A mistake is saying the wrong thing at dinner. Fucking your wife's best friend for eighteen months is not a mistake, it's a choice. Multiple choices."

"I know that."

"Do you?" He moved closer again. "Because you're sitting here trying to track her down like some stalker instead of accepting that you destroyed your marriage."

"I love her."

"You have a funny way of showing it."

I stood up again, getting in his face. "You don't understand. I made a mistake and I'm trying to fix it."

"You can't fix this. She's gone, Julian. She left. She doesn't want to be found, and honestly, I can't blame her."

"She's confused. She's hurt. She doesn't know what she wants."

Daniel stared at me like he'd never seen me before. "Does Mom know?"

I shook my head.

"Good." He backed away. "Because if she knew you turned into Dad, it would kill her."

The words hit me harder than anything else he'd said and I sank back into my chair in a daze.

Dad. The man who'd cheated on Mom for years. The man I'd sworn I'd never become.

"I'm not like Dad."

"Aren't you?" Daniel's voice was cold. "You cheated on your wife. You lied about it. You destroyed your family. How is that different?"

I didn't have an answer.

Daniel walked to the door, then stopped with his hand on the handle. "I'm going to ask you something and I want the truth."

"Fine."

"Do you love Evelyn, or do you just hate losing?"

"What kind of question is that?"

"Answer it."

I opened my mouth. I closed it and tried to find the words.

"I love her. I do."

"Then prove it." He turned to face me. "Let her go. Let her heal. Let her build a life without you."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"Because I need her."

He looked at me with something like pity. Or maybe disgust. I couldn't tell anymore.

"Then you never loved her at all."

He left, slamming the door hard enough to disturb the windows.

I sat there alone with my laptop and the truth I didn't want to face.

My phone buzzed with a text from a number I didn't recognize.

“Are you coming over? I made dinner. The baby kicked today. I wish you were here to feel it.”

Serena. She'd gotten another new number. I immediately blocked it without responding.

The bottle of scotch in my desk drawer was half empty. I pulled it out, poured some into one of the dirty coffee cups and drank it in one swallow.

Then I opened my laptop again, not to the bank statements or phone records, but to the folder where I'd saved screenshots of Evelyn's I*******m before she deleted everything.

I scrolled through them slowly, to our wedding day. Her in that white dress, me in my tux, both of us grinning like idiots. A vacation in Hawaii where we'd spent a week doing nothing but lying on the beach. Christmas morning two years ago, her laughing at something stupid I'd said while opening presents.

In every photo, she looked happy and radiant.

I kept scrolling and saw more recent pictures. Last year's company gala. A random Sunday afternoon where she'd posted a selfie of us on the couch.

Something was different in those photos. I zoomed in on her face. Her smile looked right and her makeup was perfect. Everything looked normal.

But her eyes were wrong. The happiness didn't reach them anymore. It was like someone had turned down the brightness on her from the inside.

When did that start?

I scrolled back through the photos, looking for the moment it changed.

There. I found it. Eighteen months ago.

 A picture from a work event. She was smiling at the camera, my arm around her waist. But her eyes were flat and empty.

The same time the affair started and I started to make her feel insecure and paranoid for always asking about my late nights out and feminine perfumes on me that weren't hers.

 I'd stolen her light and hadn't even noticed.

I closed the laptop because I couldn't look anymore and see what I'd done to her played out in photographs over months and months.

My phone rang, and this time I picked it up because it's the private investigator I hired.

"Mr. Hart." He didn't wait for me to speak. "I found something. I can track her down. Give me twenty-four hours and I'll have her exact address."

My breathing quickened. All I had to do was say yes. Twenty-four hours and I'd know where she was. I could fly there, show up at her door, make her listen. Make her come back.

Daniel's voice echoed in my head. “Then you never loved her at all.”

I closed my eyes. Took a dbreath.

"No.”