Page 80 of The Wrong Boss

“Mom, stop. Let me?—”

Mrs. Enders dove for the call button at the same time Alba did, and a tug-o-war ensued. Mrs. Enders let out a dramatic cry as one of her fake nails went flying. I stood up, hovering on the other side of the bed, feeling useless and unsteady.

The older woman won, yanking the remote from her daughter’s hands. “Ha!” she exclaimed, triumphant, fumbling to mash the call button half a dozen times.

“Mom. We broke up!”

Mrs. Enders stared. The door burst open, and a nurse rushed in. “Yes?”

The older woman, still red-faced, turned toward the nurse. She pointed at Alba. “My daughter is having a mental breakdown.”

Alba smacked her face with her palm. The nurse watched her, frowning.

I cleared my throat and put my hands up in a calming motion. “There’s been a misunderstanding.”

“I’ll say!” Mrs. Enders exclaimed.

“Mom, the wedding’s off.”

Mrs. Enders glared at her daughter, then at me. “Talk some sense intoher!”

I shook my head. “She’s telling the truth. We broke up. There isn’t going to be a wedding.”

There was a short, awful silence, and then the woman who might’ve been my mother-in-law crumpled to the ground in a dead faint. The nurse, who’d been watching us with a pinched, unamused expression, jumped into action.

I sat back down on my chair with a heavy sigh, lifting my gaze to Alba’s. “Really?” I asked. “Now?”

My ex shrugged. “Better than dragging it out. This way we can both move on.”

While more medical staff rushed in and tended to the older woman, Alba and I watched each other. There were a thousand questions cycling through my mind. Where had she gone, all those evenings? To her lover, I was sure. Who was he? How long had they known each other? Where had she been going when the accident happened? How many lies had she told, and why did I suddenly care?

Alba leaned back on her pillows and closed her eyes, her chest rising and falling with a big sigh—and I realized she didn’t owe me any explanations. How could I blame her for any of it, when I’d been just as checked out? We’d been doomed from the start, and she was the one who’d been brave enough to admit it.

Sliding my hand over Alba’s, I squeezed gently. She opened her eyes and met my gaze, blue eyes steady and unafraid.

“Good luck, Alba,” I said quietly, ignoring Mrs. Enders’ theatrics on the other side of the room. “I wish I could’ve been the man you needed.”

“No you don’t,” she said, a teasing lilt to her voice. For a brief moment, I remembered what it had felt like to meet hertwo years ago, to be dazzled by her beauty and her charisma, to be swept up in the feeling of belonging and making my father—my only family member—proud.

Then I thought of Carrie. The electric, undeniable need that swept through me anytime she was near. The yearning that had never died, even after seven years. The bubbly happiness I felt every time she laughed. Everything I felt for Carrie was so much deeper, so much more real. It wasn’t based on doing what I was supposed to do. It wasn’t an attempt to build a family, simply because I’d never had a real family before.

I felt all those things for Carrie because it was love. Maybe it had been love from the very start, when she glared at me, bloody and bruised in that hotel parking lot.

“You deserve to be happy,” I finally told her, and peace settled over me.

“So do you,” she replied.

I pulled my hand away and walked out of the room. My eyes were drawn to the nurses’ desk, where a man leaned as he spoke to the woman sitting behind the computer. He was as tall as I was with dark brown hair. He wore a leather motorcycle jacket and carried a helmet in his left hand. When he looked up, he watched me with hard, brittle green eyes. I didn’t recognize him, but he dipped his chin as I passed. When I got in the elevator, I saw him turn in the direction of Alba’s room.

Sighing, I let the doors close on that relationship. By the time I got to the ground floor, my phone was ringing. I looked at the screen with no small amount of trepidation. But there was only one thing to do. I swiped to answer.

“Dad,” I said.

“Son,” he replied, and the breeze ruffled the phone. He was still down south, probably overlooking the golf course from the club’s sunny patio. “Ted just told me you and Alba are broken up.”

A familiar fear slammed into me, making all my nerves ring. My father was disappointed; I could hear it in his voice. I wasn’t the perfect son, who married his best friend’s daughter, who toed the line as I was meant to. I was me—and this might be the moment he’d reject me.

As I walked toward the exit, I checked my watch. I had time. And I knew that even if my father rejected me, it didn’t change the fact that I’d met someone who had thought of me as long and hard as I’d thought about her. I’d met someone who had been supportive of me even when we were strangers. Someone who made me want to be a better man.

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