The CEO's Ex-Wife

Confused Mind

Chapter 8

Jason

Ever since I saw Jennifer in the hotel lobby, my brain just… broke. Or maybe it finally woke up. I can’t tell. All I know is nothing makes sense anymore.

Work? Pointless. I sat through a merger call yesterday and didn’t hear a word. My CFO had to ask me the same question three times. “You with us, Jason?” he finally said, sounding annoyed. I just muttered something and stared at my own reflection in the darkened computer screen. I looked tired. Haunted.

My assistant, Sarah, has started leaving coffee on my desk without asking if I want any. She gives me this careful, pitying look, like I’m a bomb that might go off. The staff at home are worse. They’ve started whispering in the hallways, stopping the moment I walk by. I caught the new gardener watching me yesterday afternoon. I was just standing by the Koi pond, doing nothing. Thinking about her. Always about her.

It’s the little things that wreck me. I’ll be signing a document and my mind will flash to the way she used to organize my desk, her fingers straightening a stack of papers. I’ll get a whiff of a certain floral cleaner in the hallway and, for a split second, it’s her perfume. Then it’s gone, and the emptiness it leaves behind is worse than before.

James is the only one who knows, and he’s worried. He found me in my study last night, just sitting in the dark. “Sir,” he said, his voice gentle. “Perhaps you should take a short trip. The cabin by the lake is always quiet.”

He meant well. He was offering me an escape. But the idea of being alone with my thoughts in some quiet place sounded like a special kind of torture. “I’m fine, James,” I said, the lie tasting stale. He just nodded, that knowing look in his eyes. He remembers what I was like after she left the first time. This is different, though. This is worse. Because now I know she’s out there, alive and real, and she wants me to be a stranger.

Then there’s Lucy.

God, Lucy. She’s been trying. She really has. At first, it was soft touches, concerned questions over dinner. “You seem so far away, Jason. Is it work?” Her voice was like silk, trying to smooth over the cracks.

I’d just grunt, “Yeah. Long week.” And push my food around the plate. I’ve lost weight. My suits are getting loose.

The questions got more direct. A few nights ago, she put her hand over mine, stopping me from my mindless scrolling on my phone. “Talk to me. Please. What’s happening? Is it… is it us?”

I looked at her then. Really looked. She’s beautiful. She’s been patient. For years, she’s been here, a steady, pleasant presence. A substitute for a feeling I thought was gone forever.

Seeing Jennifer ripped that bandage right off. The wound isn’t healed. It was just hidden.

“It’s not you, Lucy,” I said, and that was the truest thing I’d said in weeks. It wasn’t her. It was never going to be her. My heart, or whatever broken thing is left of it, has always been somewhere else. With someone else.

Last weekend was the final straw. We were at some charity gala, surrounded by people. I was on autopilot, smiling, shaking hands. Lucy was happy in my arm, laughing at the right moments. And all I could think was, Jennifer would hate this song. She’d be tugging at my sleeve by now, asking if we could leave early.

I must have said something to that effect, or maybe my face just gave me away. In the car on the way home, the silence was thick. Then she asked, her voice small in the dark backseat, “Do you love me, Jason?”

The question hit me like a physical blow. I stared out the window at the passing streetlights. “Of course I do,” I said. The words felt like ash in my mouth.

She didn’t say anything else. She just turned and looked out her own window. She knew. We both did. The lie was too big, too obvious. You can’t build a life on, “of course I do.” You need “I love you,” and you need to mean it.

She’s stopped trying now. She moves through the house like a ghost herself, careful not to disturb me. We’re two ghosts, haunting the same spaces, unable to touch each other. The worst part is, I think she’s relieved. I think she’s as tired of the pretending as I am.

My days have become a blur of restless energy and crushing fatigue. I pace. I start projects I can’t finish. I pulled out an old photo album last night, one I hadn’t touched in years. There she was, in a picture from a company picnic. She was squinting against the sun, caught mid-laugh, holding a paper plate. She looked happy. I tried to remember if I was the one who made her laugh. I can’t recall.

I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I lie in our, my bed, in this too-big, too-quiet room, and the darkness feels like it’s pressing down on me. I think about where she is. Is she in this city? Is she sleeping? Is she thinking about that moment in the lobby? Does it bother her at all?

This isn’t living. This is just waiting. I’m a shell, going through the motions, while my whole mind is trapped in a loop of the past. Of her cold eyes. Of the little boy’s hand in hers. Who was that boy? The question gnaws at me, a constant, sickening itch I can’t scratch. James hasn’t found a thing. It’s like she’s a professional at disappearing.

I’m drowning in it. In the memory of a love I was too stupid and proud to hold onto. In the regret of every cruel word I said the day I let her go. I told myself I was justified. I told myself she was guilty. Now, I’m not sure of anything except the ache in my chest.

Something’s got to give. I can’t keep walking through my life like this, a shadow of myself. This obsession, this need to see her again, to hear her voice, to understand, it's eating me alive. But the idea of letting it go, of going back to the numb existence I had before I saw her… that feels like a death sentence.

So I’m stuck. Trapped between a past I ruined and a future I can’t seem to want. The only clear thought I have is a desperate, simple one: I need to find her. Not to get her back I’m not that much of a fool to think it’s that easy. I just need… answers. I need to look her in the eye one more time, explain to me what happened to grandpa and see something, anything, besides that coldness. Maybe then these questions in my head will quiet. Maybe then I can breathe again.

Until then, I guess I’ll just keep drifting and continue being a ghost in my own life, haunted by the one person who ever made me feel real.