Page 78 of Heartless

“Is she the reason you changed your mind about having kids?”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind, MJ!”

“No, I’m not! You wouldn’t get tested to find out what was wrong with us. Did you ever want to have a family with me, O?”

“You know that I did, MJ. I just didn’t want it to make or break us. It couldn’t be our only focus day in and day out. If we never have a child, that won’t stop me from loving you, but I needed to know that you feel the same.”

“Did I really have to express that to you?”

“Yes. Things were good for us.”

“No, they weren’t. There was always the issue of conception between us.”

“Something we were working through. But after the assault, you began to make me feel inadequate because I couldn’t impregnate you. And you were always telling me to leave you, that you didn’t need or want me. That, paired with your demand for us to get tested, only compounded the feelings of inadequacies. I didn’t think we needed to bring a child into our current environment filled with hostility, anger, and depression.”

“Why? Because then everything wouldn’t be about you? Were you scared that you’d have to compete with a child for my attention?”

“Of course not. You’re it for me.”

“Really? You dare to say that knowing that you were with another woman?”

“I’m not with another woman!”

“You were!”

“One time, MJ! I fucked up!”

“I don’t believe that you would have told me. My daddy was right. All rich men aren’t to be trusted, hiding shit from their partners and others to sway the narrative in their direction! You couldn’t even speak up and tell me you didn’t want a kid! You hid that from me.”

“I don’t hide shit from you! I told you that after what you’d been through, it wasn’t the right time. You didn’t accept that.”

“What I believe is that if that woman hadn’t entered your life again, you wouldn’t have been so quick to dismiss our efforts to start a family. I think that she’s the reason behind everything that you have been doing lately. I think that you wanted to be like all the other rich men out there, including your father at some point I’m sure, and have a wife and a mistress.”

“Fuck your daddy and fuck your theory!” I grit back.

She’d hung up the phone. I’d sent her a message of apology this morning as I was rushing to the elevator for this morning’s conference. I’d called her first thing, and she’d sent my calls directly to voicemail; the same as she had done after hanging up on me last night.

There’s a round of applause, and people are beginning to stand up. Looking around, I stand, too, and button my suit coat.

“Well, my friend, are you ready to get ahead of things?” Angie Davis, my CEO of capital markets, asks.

“As if we aren’t already,” I reply, smirking and glancing at my phone again.

“Is everything okay? You’ve looked at that thing no less than fifty times in the last half hour,” she says, nodding at my phone.

“Yeah. I just need to check on Meadow.”

“Tell her I said hello. I’m grabbing a bite to eat from the breakfast setup in the conference room across the hall. I didn’t have time to grab anything on my way down.”

“Okay,” I mumble.

“Oh, and Onyx?”

“Yes?”

“I know that you weren’t paying any attention, but we’re heading to our breakout sessions in individual rooms in the next twenty minutes. Our names and groups are posted outside of each door,” Angie says.

Looking up and meeting her knowing gaze, I smile and say, “Thanks, Ang.”

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