Page 57 of Fierce-Dane

“I thought so too. She wasn’t a nasty type of woman. Not that I could see. She just...wanted what she did and then pushed her agenda onto my brother.”

“And he’s a nice guy and wanted to make his wife happy,” Sloane said. “My words, not his. It’s just what I’ve observed.”

“I think you’re a good judge of character too,” Chloe said. “Yes. He wanted to make her happy. Dane is one hundred percent all in when he’s with someone.”

“I figured as much,” she said. Which was something she was coming to terms with.

She’d never been all in with anyone in her life.

Partly because she was afraid to do that and get hurt.

The other part was she wasn’t so sure she knew how to be.

It’s not as if she had any good examples of relationships in her past.

She didn’t have a lot of friends either that she could lean on.

She went by what she’d heard from her clients and what she’d felt.

Most of the time she realized she didn’t feel enough for the men she was with.

Dane was different though.

She’d known that from the first moment.

“His kids are his world. They always will be, but Dane isn’t so single-minded focused that he can’t make room for someone else. Regardless of what he might say about his ex.”

“We don’t talk a lot about her,” she admitted. “I think he’s told me what I need to know, but it doesn’t come up. They seem to have a decent relationship now for the kids’ sake.”

“They do,” Chloe said. “But I know Dane was hurt by everything that happened.”

“How could he not be?” she asked. “I get the feeling he was blindsided.”

Chloe sighed. “He was. I wasn’t. I don’t think my parents were either.”

“You saw this coming?” she asked.

“Yes and no. I didn’t see it coming like it did or not that soon. I was livid. More pissed than anything. To me—and I know to Dane—they’d gotten through it. Med school and his residency. His fellowship. He was working and going to be in a routine. They could start their life and were. Six months into it and they are in this brand new house she had to have, the kids are in this great daycare.”

“All her dreams were coming true,” she said sarcastically.

Chloe laughed and opened her eyes to make contact with Sloane. There was a smirk on her client’s face.

“Exactly,” Chloe said. “Then she just hits Dane with the whole, ‘it’s not what I thought it’d be even though you gave it all to me.’”

Bitch. But she didn’t say those words and never would. Not her place. She could think thoughts and keep them to herself and planned on it.

“Which had to hurt even more,” she said.

“Yes. Dane didn’t even fight it. I thought for sure he’d ask them to go to counseling and he didn’t.”

“Why bother if she’d made up her mind?”

“That is what I realized afterward. I’m glad he did too. Ithought he’d fight harder and, after some thought, I figured it out.”

“He didn’t love her the way he should have?” she asked. “That he did it all for the kids?”

“These are some of my thoughts,” Chloe said. “He loved her. He always will for the kids. But he didn’t feel for her the way a man should a woman. He’d have to give up his career for them to give it a try to have it work the way Melanie wanted it. He wasn’t doing it. He shouldn’t have had to. In the end, he might have thought he didn’t love her the way he should then. The way I do with my husband. Which, by the way, I never thought I’d ever feel and then, bam, there it is.”

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