Page 2 of Second Chance Husband

It was something I should have been used to as this wasn’t my first marriage and divorce. In fact, I was becoming quite an expert at failing at relationships.

I still held on to one of the names I had kept in a divorce, because I was young and stupid and hadn’t known any better at the time. I didn’t know about or understand the paperwork of changing your name. The first time was atrocious, let alone doing it again. I’d gone through the entire process to wipe my first mistake from my life, and yet I’d kept it as a middle name—an albatross around my neck to remind me to never make that mistake again.

And that was the excuse I had given myself and Jacob when I hadn’t taken his name.

Just another mark against me.

Never the perfect politician’s wife. Just the ballbuster who couldn’t even bother to love him enough to change for him.

I raised a single brow at the man I had thought I loved but then realized I had made a mistake the moment I said, “I do.”

“Are we done here?” I asked again, my voice chilly. I’d practiced the tone for years so I could blend in with the boys’ crew of my job and place in life. And I knew with every word, with every brittle edge of my sentences, it would cement who I was in Jacob’s eyes.

A frigid bitch not worth the paperwork.

And that was just fine with me.

“Yes, everything’s done.” He droned on about the legalities of what had just occurred, as if signature after signature hadn’t cut ties between two people who should have never been together in the first place. “Each of you had prenups, and the paperwork splits everything evenly. Any shared assets are divided 50/50, but as you barely had any, this divorce was simpler than most.”

Simple. I didn’t scoff, neither did Jacob. But the rage in his eyes, that was anything but simple.

I hadn’t told my best friends or anyone else that this was happening. The only person in my circle who knew I was divorcing Jacob, or in his words he was divorcing me, was my mother. Because there was no way I could ever hide anything from that woman.

I was more of a failure in her eyes than I was to Jacob, but I didn’t have enough caffeine in my system to deal with those kind of mommy issues.

“Yes, all nice and tidy,” Jacob said after a moment, but I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to say back to him.

I had married this man because I thought I loved him. Or maybe it was because I had clung to something that wasn’t quite mine. How was I supposed to know that falling for somebody because you were trying to run from another person and those feelings would blow up in your face?

And as spectacularly as they have now.

“Say hello to Lydia for me. Or don’t. I don’t care anymore.”

His eyes tightened, and there was the anger I had learned to expect from him. He had never growled at me, yelled, or made me feel like I was nothing until our wedding night. And that was the first time, and only time, he had hit me.

He had said it’d been an accident, and I hadn’t believed him, but he hadn’t done it again in the nearly two years we had been married. Of course the past six months of those had been dealing with the divorce. Things would have been complicated beyond what they were now if we hadn’t had the paperwork in place for the seemingly inevitable failure of our marriage. As he was of the Bartons of Colorado, which meant his family money outweighed most, having a clear and precise prenup had all been inevitable no matter who Jacob married.

No, it didn’t outweigh my own business, but he was old money, in this case of Colorado old, and I was new money. The two simply weren’t the same.

I was the trash who wouldn’t take his last name, and wouldn’t laugh at all of his jokes, and wouldn’t spend my nights and weekends placating him.

I wouldn’t lean into him as he called me worthless, as he gave me little digs to tell me I wasn’t enough.

That man wasn’t the Jacob Barton I had married. Or perhaps it had been the entire time and I just hadn’t realized it until it was almost too late.

Or perhaps until it was too late.

I’d be forever grateful that I hadn’t taken his last name. He had hated every minute of my independence from him and now it brought me a sort of joy.

After all, I still carried August’s last name. Even my company carried August’s name.

Talk about self-deprecation and turmoil. I surely loved hating myself more than any ex-husband could hate me.

Jacob’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t say anything. Of course Jacob Barton of the Colorado Bartons wouldn’t. He would wait till behind closed doors then he’d tell you that you were worthless and you wouldn’t be anywhere without him.

But that was Lydia’s role now.

Lydia Sampson, the mistress, soon-to-be Lydia Barton. They would get married soon and quietly and everyone would whisper. But they would never whisper about Jacob.

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