She Was Never Just the Billionaire’s Wife (Natasha and Chase) novel Chapter 209

(Piper)

Gloria finally texts me on Monday morning.

Meet me for coffee at the place on Beverly at 10.

No are you available. No if you can make it.

Not even a question mark.

She knows I’ll be there.

I reply fine. No punctuation on my end, either.

We’ve known each other for eleven years, and we’re way past using punctuation that costs us pride.

If this was good news she would have invited me to dinner. Not coffee in a public place on a weekday morning.

My traitorous heart keeps insisting there’s still a chance though.

I walk in at nine fifty-seven.

She’s already there, a large coffee in front of her.

She’s wearing a fitted black pantsuit with a red blouse.

She wears red when she wants to portray confidence.

Her hair is up in a high bun, which takes forty minutes with her curls. I know because she’s complained about it before.

She does that when she’s nervous and needs to keep her mind off whatever’s bothering her for a while.

Mostly she just wears it down or in a ponytail.

This is definitely not good news.

I sit across from her and order an espresso from a waitress with aggressively arched eyebrows.

"Piper. Thanks for coming."

"You knew I would."

"I appreciate it anyway."

She doesn't waste time.

It’s the thing I love most about her, and the thing that makes me want to put my head through the drywall right now.

"I want you to know this isn’t something I just decided overnight. I really gave it a lot of thought and I’ve rehearsed how to say it, so let me get it out, and then you can say whatever you need to say."

"Sure."

She wraps both hands around her mug.

"London was real. I'm not going to pretend it wasn't. We were twenty-four, we slept together, and you bolted before sunrise. I told myself for a long time that if you’d stayed, I would have built a different life. That was a story. It might have been true then. It’s full of shit now."

She doesn't blink.

"Things might have been different if you’d opened your mouth the morning after. Or six months after. But you didn't. You said it in the office last month, after eleven years, in front of him. After doing something horribly underhanded to undermine him."

I keep my mouth shut. I said I’d let her finish.

"I need you to know that I love Nathanial. It's not the kind of love I had for you at twenty-four, because I'm not that young and naive anymore. It's the kind of love I have at thirty-five. It’s uglier. It’s been knocked down several times and keep getting up. I hope it will last this time. I will always care about you, but I want to try and build a life with him."

My espresso arrives. The waitress drops it off without clocking the radioactive waste spilling across the table. Good for her. Self-preservation.

Gloria waits.

I stare at the crema on my espresso. I don't touch it.

"Anything else?"

"I'm sorry, Piper. I don’t want to hurt you."

"Don't."

"I am, though."

"I know. Stop."

She gives me one nod. Takes a sip of her coffee in an effort to center herself.

I sit there listening to the espresso machine hiss.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify