Jace
Evelyn Adler was notwhat I had been expecting at all.
I didn’t know what, or who, I was expecting, but the gentle, quiet woman I met with was not it.
She wasn’t shy, exactly, but she was reserved, and it made me want to do nothing more than coax a smile out of her.
It was absurd. I wasn’t the kind of man who wanted to coax smiles out of anyone, not even my ex-wife…
Especially not my ex-wife.
Camila was the bane of my existence, and my biggest mistake, yet I couldn’t bring myself to regret my marriage to her.
It brought me Elliot.
But I didn’t give two shits about what she was doing now, as long as she stayed far away from me and myson.
For all I cared, the bitch could burn in hell where she belonged for all eternity, and it still wouldn’t be enough to make up for her past sins, especially when it came to Elliot.
It had been six months since I forced her out.
Elliot hadn’t once asked for her. She may as well not have existed, and that said something about the impact she had on his short life.
In the five years since Elliot was born, he had become the center of my world. There wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t thank God for blessing me with my son. For giving me a second chance to do this right.
And I didn’t need anyone else, not when I had my boy.
But about six months ago, the PI I hired to look into Camila came across something damning. It was the reason I had kicked her out in the first place, and why she hadn’t contacted me since. She knew there was nothing holding me to her anymore, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it.
She had thought herself clever, and she might have even gotten away with it, if her godmother, Marie, hadn’t been so careless.
I watched Elliot in his car seat. He must have been tired from a long day out. I didn’t want to take him to work with me, but I didn’t have a nanny for him yet.
Tomorrow, Evelyn would take over Elliot’s care, and I knew she would excel at it.
I knew because I knew the kind of person she was. For three months, I had been watching her, mostly through a PI, and since this past week, a few times in person. I was waiting for the right time to approach her.
But even from a distance, I knew she was sad.
I need to start over. Going to a new place, taking on a new job, seemed like the best way to go. Don’t you agree?
She had said she needed to start over, not wanted to. I wondered if she was still so messed up from everything after all these years.
I looked back out the window, getting lost in my thoughts.
I hardly ever thought about the events that took place six years ago with Camila, and I wasn’t sure what even brought it on. Perhaps it was seeing Evelyn, or perhaps because I had let myself think of Camila today, but my mind drifted back to everything that started it all.