Which was the real crux of the matter, he knew. He hadn’t had the courage even to face how deep the cut went as she was carved out of his life. The bleeding never seemed to let up. He barely slept, having no desire to crawl into an empty bed, and when he woke he saw no point in rising. His company was dominating the financial pages. The demise of Gautier Enterprises was a done deal. They were declaring bankruptcy while rumors of corruption dogged its board. He couldn’t care less.
His schedule had finally pulled him to New York, where he knew Melodie now had a flat, but she wasn’t even in the city. He followed her social-media accounts, and she was posting from Spain.
A blip on the reader of his office door announced his PA, Colette. He liked her well enough now that she was up to speed. Ingrid had always been cheerfully efficient, and Colette was equally strong on details and light in mood, not that anything really penetrated anymore. If he had felt like a puppet before, someone who moved through life without feeling, now he felt like a ghost. Even simple sensory pleasures such as a good meal or a piece of music were lost on him.
The worst part was he had fought deep emotions for so long he ought to have been an expert at suppressing them. The things he was feeling now were too big, however. Too dark and heavy and all pervading. There was no escaping the barbed and piercing pain that squeezed him in its coil.
He was in hell.
“Lunch,” Colette said, holding up a white bag, snapping him from what he realized had become a blank stare. “Thanks for buying this round. Everyone is really grateful.”
He shrugged. Colette had started a Friday lunch thing that seemed to boost morale and communication. She’d invited him to join them, but Roman had declined, preferring to brood in here alone.
He would always be alone.
He should have asked Melodie to stay.
But he couldn’t. Not when she deserved so much more than he was able to offer her.
Colette left, and he moved with robotic detachment, pulling out the carton and finding Chinese markings on its side. He wasn’t hungry for anything, he realized, least of all cheap noodles and overly sauced, chewy meat.
But he supposed he should eat.
Fishing for the chopsticks, he wound up touching something that he recognized and almost didn’t want to see, but he pulled it out and looked at it anyway: a fortune cookie.
He’d met Melodie many months ago, had spent countless hours with her since, and still he could remember their first conversation. She’d been so disappointed in him, so brightly engaging with her optimism in the way she described marriage, while he’d called weddings a shell for a useless piece of paper.
Before he realized what he was doing to do, rage broke through his shields and he smashed the cookie, pulverizing it in its cellophane wrapper. The white fortune with its pink ink peeked through beige shrapnel.
Swearing, wondering how the hell his control had deserted him so thoroughly, he opened the package and shook out the crumbs until he could pick out the tiny strip of paper.
“Patience will be rewarded sooner or later.”
Had he really hoped for actual guidance? Fortune cookies were stupid.
Weddings and marriage and lifetime commitments were equally useless things to place faith in. Just like women were.
Moving to the window, Roman rubbed a knuckle against his brow, chest tight. Was that what he really thought? That women were faithless? Because his mother had died before she could get him back? Because every woman he’d remotely cared about had left?
Had he given any of them a reason to stay?
The fact was, his father had been the one to abandon his mother. What did it say about Roman that he hadn’t even tried to keep Melodie in his life? Did there have to be a child at risk for him to take a risk? What made anyone fight to keep someone in their life?
On impulse, he turned to the phone and dialed a number he knew by heart, but rarely called. The woman who answered was the only woman he’d ever known who’d completely devoted herself to one man, despite the fact he’d left her—involuntarily, but definitely left her—years ago.
“Brenda? It’s Roman. Can I buy you lunch?”
A surprised pause, then, “Why don’t you come over here? I’ll make you grilled cheese.”
* * *
Grilled cheese and tomato soup. Hardly the fine dining he’d grown used to, but Roman was ridiculously comforted by the simple meal when he sat down in Brenda’s kitchen an hour later in what had been his only real home, and even then only for a year.
Brenda, so motherly it had been almost unbearable when he’d lived here, poured him a glass of milk, still attempting to nurture him. He hated milk. Always had, probably because he’d drunk it sour more times than not.