Chapter 9 - Dating My Ex-Husband
Our first coffee lasted four hours.
Our second lasted forty minutes.
Our third ended in an argument.
That felt strangely healthy.
The old Reid would have tried to win.
The new one listened.
Sometimes badly.
Sometimes with visible effort.
But he listened.
We did not call it dating.
For six months, we called it coffee.
Then dinner.
Then “walking because the restaurant was too loud.”
Then one night, after he walked me home, we stood outside my building while snow drifted between the streetlights.
He didn’t kiss me.
That mattered.
Old Reid would have interpreted the moment.
New Reid waited.
“Good night,” he said.
I looked at him.
“That’s it?”
Confusion crossed his face.
“You told me not to assume.”
“I did.”
“So I’m not assuming.”
I stepped closer.
“What if I want you to?”
He smiled slightly.
“Then you’re going to have to suffer the consequences of teaching me boundaries.”
I kissed him.
It was not cinematic.
My nose was cold.
His coat button caught my scarf.
I laughed against his mouth.
And somehow that made it better.
We still had problems.
Trust didn’t return because attraction did.
One evening Reid canceled dinner because of a company emergency.
My entire body reacted before my mind did.
Sixteen months earlier, “company emergency” had meant Camille.
I didn’t accuse him.
But I became quiet.
He noticed.
The next morning, he showed up with coffee.
“I’m not going to prove where I was every time I work late,” he said.
I bristled.
Then he continued.
“But I will understand why it scares you.”
He handed me his phone.
I didn’t take it.
“What’s this?”
“The emergency.”
He had received a takeover proposal.
A major technology conglomerate wanted Mercer Dynamics.
The offer would make Reid extraordinarily wealthy.
It would also remove the company from Bennett Capital’s orbit forever.
“What are you going to do?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“Why show me?”
“Because this affects your family’s investment.”
“That’s a business reason.”
“Yes.”
“And personally?”
He hesitated.
“Because I’m considering selling.”
I stared.
Mercer Dynamics had once mattered more to him than everything.
Maybe even me.
“Why?”
“I spent years believing if I lost it, Andrew died twice.”
His voice softened.
“Then I nearly lost everyone alive trying to protect something connected to someone dead.”
I reached across the table.
Not to forgive him.
Not to reward him.
Just to hold his hand.
The sale happened four months later.
Bennett Capital made an enormous return.
My father pretended this did not improve his opinion of Reid.
Nobody believed him.
Dad still did not trust him.
But hatred slowly became irritation.
In our family, that was progress.
The stranger development came from my mother.
She invited Reid to Thanksgiving.
Without telling me.
I walked into my parents’ dining room and found my ex-husband carving a turkey beside my father.
I stopped.
“What is happening?”
Dad pointed the knife at Mom.
“Your mother.”
Mom sipped wine.
“People were becoming boring.”
Reid looked terrified.
I laughed so hard I had to sit down.
It was the first family dinner since the wedding where nobody mentioned William.
My uncle had been sentenced to federal prison after pleading guilty to fraud, conspiracy, identity theft, and other charges.
Elliot received a longer sentence.
The two men who had tried to turn our lives into a chessboard had discovered that courts were less impressed by strategy than they were.
Camille moved to Colorado.
I knew because she sent one final letter.
She was working for a nonprofit helping women rebuild finances after abusive relationships.
The irony was obvious.
She acknowledged it herself.
She also wrote:
I hope one day I become someone you would have been proud to know.
I never replied.
But I hoped so too.
Two years after the wedding that wasn’t really a marriage, Reid and I traveled to Maine.
Not somewhere expensive.
Not somewhere impressive.
We returned to the little dock from the photograph he had shown me outside my parents’ house.
The restaurant still sold lobster rolls.
The dock still tilted slightly toward the water.
We sat with paper trays between us.
Reid looked nervous.
I noticed immediately.
“No.”
He blinked.
“What?”
“If there is a ring anywhere on your body, do not take it out.”
He laughed.
“There isn’t.”
“Good.”
“Because I’m not proposing.”
“Excellent.”
“I’m asking a question.”
“That sounds suspiciously adjacent.”
He looked toward the water.
“I want to know what you think marriage is.”
I stared at him.
“That is possibly the least romantic sentence anyone has ever said on this dock.”
“I’m serious.”
I knew.
So I answered.
“Marriage is knowing the truth when it’s inconvenient.”
He nodded.
“Anything else?”
“Being allowed to make decisions someone else thinks are mistakes.”
“That one feels targeted.”
“It is.”
He smiled.
Then became serious.
“For me, I think it’s being known without managing what the other person sees.”
That landed.
I looked at him.
“Therapy again?”
“Expensive therapy.”
“Worth every dollar.”
He laughed.
Then he reached into his pocket.
I narrowed my eyes.
“You lied.”
“No ring.”
He placed a folded document on the table.
I opened it.
It was a financial disclosure.
Every account.
Every asset.
Every liability.
Every investment.
I looked up.
“What is this?”
“Not a proposal.”
“Reid.”
“It’s me telling you there are no locked rooms.”
I stared at the pages.
Then at him.
“You understand this is incredibly unsexy.”
“I was hoping responsible transparency might become my new thing.”
I laughed.
Then cried.
I hated that combination.
He reached for my hand.
“Don’t answer anything today.”
“There’s no question.”
“Not yet.”
We spent the afternoon walking along the water.
Three months later, I was the one who asked.
We were cooking pasta in my apartment.
Reid was chopping garlic badly.
I looked at him and suddenly knew.
Not because the past had disappeared.
It hadn’t.
Not because I trusted him the way I once had.
I didn’t.
This trust was different.
The first had been innocent.
This one had been tested.
Built deliberately.
Chosen repeatedly.
“Marry me.”
The knife stopped.
Reid looked up.
“What?”
“You heard me.”
He stared.
“Nora.”
“I don’t have a ring.”
He laughed once, almost breathless.
“Are you serious?”
“Yes.”
He set the knife down.
“You said if I ever proposed again—”
“You’re not proposing.”
He stared at me for another second.
Then two.
Then three.
I raised an eyebrow.
His eyes filled.
“Yes.”
Immediate.
Certain.
No hesitation.
I smiled.
“Good answer.”
He came around the counter and kissed me.
Later that night, I called my father.
Reid heard me say:
“Dad, I have something to tell you.”
His eyes widened.
He whispered, “Maybe wait until morning.”
I laughed.
Because once, those words would have frightened me.
Now they were only a joke.
Dad answered.
And when I told him, there was a very long silence.
Finally he said:
“If that man hurts you again, I’m buying his new company just so I can fire him.”
Reid shouted from the kitchen.
“I don’t have a company anymore, Charles.”
Dad replied:
“I’ll buy him one.”
May you like
And for the first time, the memory of my first wedding made me laugh instead of ache.
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