Dear Ex-Husband, Watch Me Love Again

Chapter 14

Katherine was halfway through changing when she heard the bedroom door open behind her.

She didn’t turn around. She already knew it was him from the particular way he pushed the door, like he was entering a room that belonged to him.

"We had an agreement," Lucas said.

She pulled her blouse off the hanger and slipped it on, still not turning around. "Did we?"

"Katherine." His voice was tight. "When we got married, you agreed to stay out of the spotlight. You know what people said about me when we first got together. They called me a gold digger. They said I only married you for your family's name." He paused. "You promised me you would stay away from anything that puts you front and center so that I could build my own reputation without people assuming everything came from your family."

Katherine stopped.

She turned around slowly and looked at him standing in the doorway of their bedroom, arms crossed, expression set with the confidence of a man who believed everything he was saying was reasonable.

She stared at him for a long moment.

"Have you lost your mind?" she asked quietly.

"I'm being serious."

"So am I." She set the hanger down on the bed. "Lucas, are you standing there telling me that you have spent years dimming my light so that yours could shine brighter?"

"That's not what I said."

"That is exactly what you said. You just used nicer words." She looked at him, and the disbelief on her face was completely genuine. "You are not ashamed of yourself? Not even a little?"

"I'm trying to protect what we built."

"What you built," she corrected. "On my name. On my family's connections. On me making myself smaller so that nobody would look too closely at how much of your success came from simply being married to me." She shook her head slowly. "I did that, Lucas. For years I did that. And I am not doing it anymore."

He opened his mouth but she kept going.

"I gave up my place in that company for you. I stepped back from my own family's business so you wouldn't feel overshadowed. I turned down opportunities because I didn't want people to look at you and see a man standing in his wife's shadow." Her voice was still controlled but there was an edge underneath it now, something that had been waiting a long time to come out. "And now you are standing here telling me that was the arrangement? That was the deal?"

"I'm not saying it like that."

"Then say it differently," she said. "Because that is what I'm hearing."

Lucas shifted. She could see him recalculating, searching for a different angle. And then he found one.

"You've been different since the cruise," he said, his voice dropping. "I've been telling myself I was imagining it but I'm not. Something changed and I want to know what it is." He looked at her directly. "Is it Zane?"

Katherine went very still. "Excuse me?" She frowned, confused as to where he was going with this.

"I saw how you two were on that ship. Dancing together, talking, the way he looked at you." His jaw tightened. "I want to know if whatever is going on with you has anything to do with him."

She looked at him for a long moment, and what she felt was not the guilt he was looking for. It was anger. Genuine anger.

“A-are you…” she chuckled in disbelief. “Are you accusing me of having an affair with Zane Ashford?” she asked slowly.

"I'm asking a question."

"You are accusing me," she said again. "After everything I have given this marriage, after every single thing I have put aside for you, you are standing in front of me and suggesting that I am doing something wrong with another woman's husband?"

"Katherine—"

"He is a married man," Lucas said. "Whatever you think is happening between you two—"

The slap landed before she had fully decided to do it.

Not hard enough to hurt him seriously. Hard enough that the sound of it filled the room and Lucas's head turned with it.

For a second neither of them moved.

Katherine's hand was still raised. She lowered it slowly.

"Don't you ever," she warned, her voice very quiet now, "accuse me of adultery."

Lucas touched his cheek, more from shock than pain.

She wanted to say it. It was right there, sitting in her throat, every word of it. She knew about Erica. She had known since the cruise. She knew about the hotel, the phone calls, the months of lies dressed up as love. She wanted to put every single piece of it on the table right there in that bedroom and watch his face.

She didn't.

Not yet.

She picked up her bag from the chair and walked past him toward the door.

"I'll be in the guest room," she said without turning around.

"Katherine—"

She pulled the door shut behind her.

***

Lucas was still in a bad mood when morning came. She could tell from the way he moved around the house. There was a stiffness he carried around when he felt wronged but couldn’t say so directly.

Katherine was dressed and ready early, her bag by the front door, her coffee already finished. She had slept better in the guest room than she had in their bed in weeks.

She was heading down the driveway toward her car when she heard the front door open behind her.

"Katherine."

She turned around. Lucas was walking toward her fully dressed.

"What are you doing?" she asked.

"Your father texted me last night," he said, and she could hear the stiffness in his voice.

“He wants me to take you in on your first day. Said it would be good for both of us. A good way to show how supportive I am.” He looked at her, sarcasm dripping from his tone.

Katherine looked at him for a moment. Then she laughed.

She reached into her bag, pulled out her car keys, and tossed them to him.

He caught them out of reflex and then looked down at them in his hand. "Why are you giving me these?"

"Because you're driving," she shrugged, already moving around to the passenger side.

"I thought—"

"Unless," she said, opening the door and glancing back at him over the roof of the car, "you'd prefer I take the wheel. I'm sure my father would find that very interesting. His son-in-law sitting in the passenger seat on his wife's first day." She smiled pleasantly. "Your choice."

Lucas looked at the keys in his hand.

Then he walked around to the driver's side without another word and got in.

Katherine settled into the passenger seat, set her bag on her lap, and looked straight ahead through the windscreen as he started the engine.

“I thought as much.” She whispered as the car pulled out of the driveway, smiling to herself.