Page 39 of Mine to Keep

“She’s still in love with you,” Bryn said matter-of-factly.

“She should have thought about her feelings for me before she cheated on me.” Jamison’s brother, Miles, constantly told him how much his ex-wife still carried a torch for him. Part of him knew that was true. However, the last six months of their marriage had been a living hell. It was as if he’d landed a role in a horror movie and it wasn’t one where he would survive to the end.

“I’m sorry she did that to you.”

He shrugged his shoulders. When he looked back on it now, Cheryl had done him a favor. She’d given him a reason to get mad enough to bring up divorce. She might have been the one who did the leaving, but he was the one who’d suggested they call it quits. And if he were being honest now, they had been doomedbeforeshe cheated. They were like oil and water, and he knew he would never be able to make her truly happy unless he changed everything about who he was—and he wasn’t willing to do that. If he did, then he’d have been the miserable one, and their marriage still would have been horrible.

“There was a lot going on with me at the time. A year before Cheryl and I called it quits, I found out that my dad wasn’t my father, and I wasn’t easy to live with.”

“That doesn’t give someone permission to cheat,” Bryn said. “She was your partner. She was supposed to support you and be a sounding board.”

He laughed. “Steve is rich. She wanted his money because I don’t make much. Better yet, she wanted me to ask Steve for a job. Cheryl’s very much into appearances. She grew up dirt-poor. I get it. She wanted more. She also wanted respect. When her mom and mine became friends, Cheryl saw how everyone in this town looked at my mother and she wanted that.”

“Not much is more honorable than being a firefighter.”

“Thank you for saying that. However, the salary isn’t great. Even at the level I’m at. And Cheryl has expensive tastes. She wants fancy cars and fine jewelry.” He chuckled at the memories popping into his mind. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to give his wife those things, he just couldn’t afford everything she coveted. They’d had to live within their means. He’d worked hard—still did—and he was willing to work more, but they would never have been millionaires.

“I thought I was being such a good husband when I bought the house I’m living in now for our first anniversary. Well, let me tell you, Cheryl was not happy. She actually told me that she’d be embarrassed to entertain her friends in something that needed to be completely gutted. When she said that, I burst out laughing because the people I bought it from had done a fair amount of work. There wasn’t much left to do. Granted, it still needed some updating, but it’s a nice house, and the view is spectacular. I get shit living in it because people always wonder how I can afford it. I usually laugh and say it’s mortgaged to the max.”

“I have to ask, considering the size of my place, what’s your definition ofsmall?” she asked as she brought her straw to her plump lips and sucked.

He inwardly groaned. “It’s not tiny at twenty-four-hundred square feet,” he admitted. “But we were talking about starting a family when I bought it, and I’m one of seven. She’s one of four, so the three-bedroom thing I knew might be an issue. But given where I bought, we could have built up. So, we could have added bedrooms if we wanted.”

“You bought it without her knowledge?”

He nodded.

“I’m sorry. I don’t want to take her side because of how she just behaved, but I’d be mad at you too if you did that. It’s insanely controlling, and she seems like the type of woman who would resent that.”

Zadie fussed, and Bryn reached over and rocked the car seat.

“Cheryl loved grandiose gifts. One of her friend’s husbands bought his wife a car. And not just any car, a Porsche. He did so sight unseen, and Cheryl thought that was the most romantic thing ever and hinted that something like that would be okay for me to do. Silly me to think a house would be on the same level.”

“A vehicle that you drive is very different from a place you live,” Bryn said with her forehead scrunched just enough to make a few creases.

Jamison didn’t have his mother’s and some of his brother’s cop skills, but he didn’t need them to read her face.

Something about the idea of Jamison making a decision for both himandhis ex-wife bothered her to the core.

“I understand that,” he said. “However, we discussed exactly what she wanted, and we even looked at a few places together. Of course, they were all out of our price range, which I explained to her. I also told her that we could do it if we scaled it down.”

“And what did she say to that?”

“She told me to show her some places. My house was about to come on the market, so I put an offer on it because I knew it would go fast—”

“That was a mistake. You should have showed it to her first.”

“In Florida, you can back out of a deal after thirty days, no questions asked. So, we could have walked away. It was her call,” Jamison said with a little more kick than intended. He was tired of defending his actions when it came to Cheryl. He wasn’t the one who’d checked out on their marriage. He wasn’t the one who’d decided that his career wasn’t good enough. His money wasn’t enough. That nothing about him would ever be good enough.

“I don’t mean to be judgmental, but that’s a lot of pressure to put on someone, especially when I suspect you were super-excited. If she said, ‘No freaking way. I don’t want it,’ she would be crushing your dreams and putting a hole in your heart.”

“That’s kind of what she did,” Jamison said.

“But you said that was on your first wedding anniversary. Had your marriage already gone bad that early?”

He curled his fingers around his beer glass and took a long, slow sip. He thought long and hard about his marriage and their courtship. He’d honestly loved Cheryl, faults and all—and she had a few. His father had once asked him if he’d thought he could change her. Jamison had known that he couldn’t, but he’d always believed that she’d grow and learn, like everyone did.

Being eight years younger than Jamison wasn’t that big of a deal. The problem was that Cheryl wanted more than she had. Always. Her family had struggled financially for most of her life, and Cheryl had spent her childhood being jealous of those who had more. The problem was that she didn’t do anything about it and simply expected others to take care of her—starting with Jamison.

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