Page 26 of A Different Husband

When another hour passed, I got up and left. “Where would she go?” I asked myself on the way to the car. The fucked up thing is that I didn’t know. There were things I still hadn’t learned about my wife. Despite the fact that we had been friends since before high school, there was a certain distance I maintained from Courtney over the years to spare myself the heartache of having to see her happy with someone else, especially since that someone else was my assholish cousin.

There were two people who might know more than me, though I really didn’t want to go there and admit I was failing their daughter. Still, she might go there, back to the pool house where she lived before we got married. Once I thought about the fact that she used to live there, it dawned on me that my wife had not brought a lot of her things to the house we shared. It was as if she had been waiting for the other shoe to drop and didn’t want to get too comfortable.

I scoffed at myself for not seeing it sooner. She wasn’t all in and I was too complacent to see it. The drive over to the Parker family’s house turned into a steady stream of what-if scenarios. I wasn’t normally a person who dwelled in that space because self doubt was a killer of dreams, but she was more important than anything else I had ever done in my life. My business could goto hell, friendships, even my family could be pushed aside while I accomplished my goals, but Courtney… I needed her in a way that made everything else fall to the wayside.

I didn’t even get a chance to knock on the door before it opened and I stood there facing Reed Parker, Courtney’s dad. “Hey,” He called out to me as he glanced around my shoulder as if looking for something - or someone. “Where’s Courtney?”

“That’s what I was here to find out.” The panic that gnawed at my stomach hit a little harder.

“She’s not here, and I don’t think she pulled up at the pool house without me knowing either.” He stepped back and left room for me to enter. “Why don’t you fill me in on why you have no clue where your wife is while we walk out to the back to see if she’s there?”

I nodded my head and explained everything that had gone down the past two days concerning his daughter, Beckett, and me. Reed never said a word as he took it all in and we walked through his stately house to the sliding glass door that led out to the deck that overlooked the pool below and the pool house that was clearly dark and without a car parked in the drive leading up to it.

“We’ve come this far, might as well go the whole way.” I followed Reed down the stairs and out onto the lawn, all the while we both remained silent. Once we got to the pool house, Reed inputted a code on the door and headed inside. His face slipped into a frown as he took in the space his daughter occupied prior to our marriage. “She didn’t take a whole lot with her, did she?”

I shook my head as I looked around at all the little things that made the space uniquely hers, like her easel and paints. The paintings, many of which had her signature on them. “Jesus,” I whispered as I took the space in.

“Obviously, my daughter hasn’t settled into married life yet. How is it that she’s been living with you since your wedding and all of her stuff is still here?”

“I don’t know. I thought…” I spun in a slow circle and took it all in again. “I thought we were going to give it a real shot, but…” I had no words for the fact that I was a blind moron who hadn’t realized that his wife was having nothing more than an extended sleepover with him, and hadn’t actually moved in.

Reed’s hand clapped down on my shoulder and he squeezed. “If there’s one thing married life has taught me, it is that men are generally the blind ones in the relationship. The women see everything, and they aren’t afraid to hold it against you that you don’t.” He sighed and then tipped his head toward the couch that looked out a sliding glass door toward the pool. I nodded my agreement and we sat.

“I don’t know how to fix everything. Did I doom us by agreeing to the marriage even when I knew that it wasn’t what she wanted?”

Reed chuckled. “Son, I hate to tell you, but if a part of my daughter didn’t want to marry you, she wouldn’t have even entertained doing it.”

My eyes tracked over to Reed’s amused face. He had the same russet hair color as his daughter, with exception of a little gray that had started to sneak in around his temples. Courtney looked more like her mother, but inherited her coloring from her father. That was probably for the best as Jill was always a little washed out and pale, especially when combined with her naturally light blonde hair. His blue-gray eyes stared straight at me, and almost dared me to contradict him.

“I call her Nemesis.”

“I wasn’t aware that you two were in competition for anything.”

“We’re not.” I chuckled at the memory of how she earned that nickname. “I call her that after the Greek Goddess of Vengeance.”

Reed burst out laughing and slapped me on my knee. “Shit, Flynn,” He managed to choke out between the laughter that died off to a chuckle. “Maybe you see more of her than I gave you credit for. You think she only agreed to marry you as some sort of payback for Beckett offering her up to you.”

“I think that was a big part of it. She did it to hide from him and her heartbreak just as much, though.”

Reed shook his head. “No, I don’t think my daughter has been in love with him for a long while now. She thought she was because they’d invested so much time in trying to stay true to some dream they cooked up as children. The truth was, that boy didn’t make my daughter happy. She was content and comfortable enough to go with the flow, but that was it. Beckett is a selfish prick who never deserved my daughter.”

I nodded because what else could I say.

“He comes by that shit honestly. No offense, I know Marty is your Uncle, but that fucker is just as bad - worse even.”

That was news to me. The Parkers had always been exceptionally tight with my aunt and uncle. It was how Courtney and Beckett grew so close as children to begin with. “I thought all of you were friends?”

“We were. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes you have friends - even good ones - who you know aren’t the best people. Gayle is as solid as they come, but Marty has always been the friend who I took at face value and didn’t look too closely, for fear of what I might learn that would put me in a compromising situation.”

“If you thought that poorly of him, why would you trust your daughter to his son?”

“We’re not our parents, Flynn. I thought I was doing the right thing, and that she would outgrow him. Courtney did just that,but the problem was that she didn’t realize she had outgrown him because my little girl was still hung up on that silly dream about the future they planned when they were too young to understand what it all meant.”

We sat there in silence for a few minutes, taking in everything. I was about to get up and leave when Reed heaved out a heavy sigh.

“Not a fan of you discussing my daughter’s sex life with Beckett, or me for that matter. I get why you had to tell me what was said, but I’d prefer to think of my baby girl as a virgin who could still go cloister herself away in a convent somewhere, never to be touched by a man.” The sharp look he gave me was almost enough to pierce skin. “As a man, not thinking about the woman in question as my daughter, I get it. It’s obvious you care about Courtney. If I were a man, in love with a woman, and I had to face down her ex who wanted to keep stringing her along while he had his fun, I’d probably have thrown it in his face too.”

“I already know it was the wrong move. It didn’t hit me why she never answered him until she got angry with me for doing it. I thought maybe it was because she wanted to keep her options open where he was concerned.”

---