Page 17 of Second Chance Husband

No, I felt like the two people in front of me weren’t staring at my signatures, but rather the bruise I had tried to cover up.

They couldn’t see the bruise of course. It was only a slight one, that was mostly a red mark. I had been clever with concealer and bronzer, and they wouldn’t be able to tell that my mother had hit me. After all, I should have been expecting that slap from her.

They may not have been able to see the bruise, but I could feel it. My mother rarely hit me. She hadn’t as a child, just a quick few slaps here and there when she wasn’t getting her way.

And while I realized as an adult that was never okay, I knew others had it worse. After all, I had been able to get out.

I just hadn’t realized my mother had found a way to get my house key. Something I would be working to change soon. New locks. New keys. New security.

Because damn that woman and everything she represented.

My mother had paced in front of me while I’d done my best to stay steady. “How could you? You were supposed to stay married to him. We were going to be someone. We had power. And you threw it all away because what, he didn’t like your cold vagina and heart?”

I had scoffed at her, walking away. Of course, my mother would go straight to sex and feelings as if she had a single drop of care for another person who could penetrate her reptilian skin. All she had wanted was for me to be the perfect little pawn in her grand schemes. It was odd though because I had never realized my mother had such grand schemes. Before, it had been beauty pageants when I had been little, making sure I was the prom queen, and any little part of our small town into the big city where I could shine under her glow. Or maybe it was the reverse? I wasn’t quite sure where that metaphor had taken me, other than the fact I couldn’t escape this woman.

I had tried to escape to Colorado. But apparently, I hadn’t gone far east enough of Oregon. My business was settled here, and we were thriving in this atmosphere. Even if I had to deal with the Bartons, even if I had to deal with my mother, we were kicking ass and taking names. Even if today’s signature didn’t quite feel like it.

I wasn’t going to change my life and uproot everything to run away from my mother. I’d done it once before out of sheer desperation and grief, and in the end, I’d only been able to because of the circumstances shrouding me. Moving on and starting over had just been an advantageous consequence of the interactions set forth by those around me and those I’d willingly made. Although she had ended up following me anyway.

No, I had run away from my problems and memories, and they had still come to bite me in the ass.

This time the wrong decisions suffocating me didn’t push me onto a dance floor…no, I wasn’t going to go down that memory lane—not with how I’d ended up that night.

“Is everything okay, Paisley?” the woman in front of me asked, and I nodded tightly, not letting her see beneath my shell. There were only two people who worked in this building that truly saw who I was, and sometimes I was afraid even they didn’t see that.

Devney and Addison were off today, as our company only worked four days a week—at least most of us did. I tended to work seven days a week, but I didn’t examine that too closely. However, with those two out of the office, the people who could truly see what I was feeling and knew too much weren’t here. So I had a little bit of time to keep hiding the bruises that had nothing to do with the one on my face.

“I’m sorry, my mind’s going a mile a minute working on other things. But this paperwork looks fine.”

“That’s true, but it doesn’t have to be final if you don’t want it to be,” Jessa said softly, and I gave her a strange look. “You were the one who helped push for this sale. After all, we didn’t build the company, it was an acquisition we helped strengthen, and now the former owners want to move to a different company, settled in Europe and not here.”

“And you don’t have to do that,” Dawn whispered.

I stared at the two of them, frowning. “What’s going on? This is a matchmaking company, one that is doing well, unsettled, but we don’t need to have any stake in it. We did what we wanted to accomplish. We helped build it up. Now we’re going to sell it. Just like the former owners who will still have a stake in the business want. Talk to me.”

Dawn swallowed hard. “We were just thinking. You know. About the optics.”

I raised a single brow. “And by optics, what do you mean?” I ask, though I had a feeling I knew exactly where they were going with this.

Jessa cleared her throat. “Well, it might be prudent to put off selling a matchmaking firm until news of your divorce is no longer on the press’s mind.”

I tilted my head as I stared at them, trying to hold back any sign of emotion.

Of course now that the divorce was public, people would be talking about it. Since I first walked into the building, people had either given me pitying looks, or darted their gazes away.

I shouldn’t have been surprised people didn’t know how to act around me now. No one truly understood how to as it was. I’d been their boss, their savior, their ice queen, and now the topic of their gossip.

And while I was used to people not understanding the labels they etched into my skin whether well-intentioned or not, I wasn’t in the mood to deal with the outcome of the divorce today.

I didn’t want their pity, their knowing looks. I didn’t want the questions in their gazes.

Was I good enough for the Bartons? Why had we divorced so quietly? And quickly? Was I at fault? Of course I was. It couldn’t be dear Jacob because he was perfect. Perfect and pristine just like his golden boy image would always be.

And when he got married to dear Lydia, everybody would continue to see him in his golden image with sparkles and unicorns coming out of his ass. They wouldn’t see him for who he truly was.

They would see me for who they thought I was.

The cold bitch who couldn’t keep him.

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