Page 27 of Shootout Daddies
What she meant was: I didn’t want kids. Not then. Not while we were still trying to untangle our own crap. I wanted to wait. She didn’t.
So she left.
Took her designer heels, her ambition, and her Instagram of sourdough starter she never fed, and filed for divorce with Cartwright & Lowe, who promptly fed every step of the case to the press for free.
Now it’s over. The papers signed. The condo we shared sold. The dog—hers, not mine—living with her sister in Aspen.
And me still trying to remember what life was supposed to look like.
Maybe this—Miami, new faces, hockey players with too much money and too little sense—is the break I need.
The elevator dings as I return to my floor. Leah’s already waiting.
“You’re all set for tonight,” she says, handing me a printed itinerary. “Flight at 11:10 p.m. Car will be here at eight.”
“Thank you.”
“And Landon?” She pauses. “It’ll be good for you. A change.”
I give her a tight smile. “We’ll see.”
Back in my apartment, I pack with more detachment than care. Clothes. Laptop. A leather-bound planner that’s mostly blank now. I pause at a photograph—me and Teresa in Paris, before the rot set in.
I toss it in the trash.
Miami it is.
The red-eye is quiet. Cold. My seatmate sleeps with a mask on, snoring softly. I don’t sleep.
At 3:40 a.m., the plane lands. By 4:15, I’m standing outside the terminal as a black car pulls up with my name on the dashboard.
The driver nods. “Mr. Shaw?”
“That’s me.”
“South Beach?”
“Yeah.”
The penthouse is exactly what I’d expect from our firm’s Miami accommodations—sleek lines, dark wood, chrome fixtures, and a view of the ocean that looks like someone painted it for a real-estate brochure.
I drop my bags at the door and step out onto the balcony.
It’s still dark, but the horizon is fading from deep blue to gray. A slow burn. Like something is waking up.
I haven’t lived anywhere warm in years. I sit in one of the balcony chairs and lean back.
This isn’t the life I wanted. But maybe it’s the life I need.
The gym in the building opens at six, and I’m there by six-ten.
It’s small—just a couple treadmills, free weights, a cable machine—but it’s clean and empty. I jog for twenty minutes,then do a circuit until the sweat soaks through my shirt and the edge starts to come off the tightness in my chest.
Not that it ever completely fades, but I’ve learned how to dull it. Repetition helps. So does silence.
After a shower and some espresso from the in-unit machine, I head out in a clean navy suit. The city outside the penthouse is awake now—palm trees swaying, sidewalks steaming in the heat. The joggers and the cyclists seem impervious to the temperature.
The firm’s Miami outpost isn’t far—an upscale floor in a shared executive building with tinted windows and a lobby that smells like lemongrass and ambition.
