“So you have, like, an arrangement?” Jack finally found his words. He didn’t want to know this. He really didn’t want to know this.
“Yes. For years. We’re not a good married couple, but we’re still good when it’s just us.”
“Shit, that’s gross, Mom.” Bridget rarely called their mother “Mom,” so she must really be upset.
“Language, Bridget.”
“You know I lived alone with Sean Nolan and his two spawn for over a decade. So you know what kind of language I was exposed to.” Bridget was starting to yell, and Jack should probably intervene and smooth things over, but he was too rocked by this new information to do anything.
“Well, not everything is about you, Bridget.”
“She knows that—” Jack’s interjection was weak. “This is a lot of information for brunch, and I thought we were here to talk about my problems.”
“You know how to solve your problem, Jack.”
“No, I don’t.” Jack had no idea how to get Hannah back. She’d probably visit mayhem upon him if he showed up at her house with roses. And she would definitely eviscerate him if he tried some grand public gesture.
“Yes, you do.” His mother seemed insistent that he was smarter than he actually was.
“I actually agree with her.” At least Bridget wasn’t yelling anymore.
Jack shot his sister an Et tu, Brute? look.
“You said it before. You paid attention to her for almost a month. More than any other man she’s dated, probably.” His mother gave him a pointed look. “You know her because you made it your business to know her. How would she want you to fix this?”
“She’d want me to drop dead about now.”
“So she has a quick temper. Does it last?”
He thought back to how she’d rolled with everything he’d done to try to lose her—except the lying. One thing he knew for sure about Hannah was that she valued honesty and integrity above all else. The one unforgivable thing he’d ever done to her was lie about the story. If he’d told her flat out about the assignment, she probably would have gone along with it and even upped the production value. He smiled to himself.
There wasn’t going to be some rush-to-the-airport scene where he could declare how much he loved her and ask her for a second chance. Even if there was, Hannah would run him the hell over with her car before stopping to hear him out.
“I need to give her some time to cool off?”
“She might just use that time to plot different ways to kill you.” Bridge had a point. “Maybe you should get in there right away.”
“If she needs time, she needs time.” His mother would certainly know something about that, Jack thought, wincing anew at the morning’s other revelation.
“She liked hanging out with Dad, Michael, and Bridget,” Jack said. “I think it made her feel like I was thinking about a future with her. And her jackhole ex-boyfriend never made her feel like that.”
“I think she enjoyed herself at the gallery opening.” His mother was right. Until he’d tried to make her jealous by flirting with another woman in front of her, she and his mother got on like gangbusters.
Now that he thought about it, when neither of those things fazed her, that might have been the precise moment he fell in love with her.
An idea began to form in his head for how he might approach getting her back without sustaining grievous bodily injury. It would take the cooperation of his mutant-version-of-the-Brady-Bunch family, but it all started with finishing the article about how to lose Hannah and sending it to just one person.
He finished his second mimosa in one swallow and motioned for another. This was going to be painful.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
HANNAH WALKED INTO ANNALISE’S office fully prepared to be fired. And to be yelled at, which she hated even more than the idea of being out of a job. That was because she had a plan for what she would do if she got fired: find another job or hang out her own shingle. Her only plan if Annalise started yelling was to try not to cry and probably fail. Her hard-ass-bitch shell had cracked, and she was at a loss for what—if anything—to do about it.
She’d always liked to cry in secret, but she could feel that a bout of yelling would get those juices flowing. Ironic given her penchant for breathing fire at vendors who refused to bend to her will. Just remembering that gave her spine some steel. At this moment, she was too raw from realizing that she was in love with Jack, and that he’d been using her and lying, to keep her emotions in check. The pain of realizing that he was closer to being the perfect guy that she’d met at a stupid, pretentious bar than to the cad he’d turned himself into for profit was stabby and vicious. And she needed to rechannel that pain into what her whole fling with Jack had originally been about: saving her career.
The first step—getting fired like she had the goddamn ovaries to take whatever Annalise threw at her. She was definitely, probably going to lose her job, but she wasn’t going to break down in front of someone she’d looked up to until recently.
After her conversation with Sasha, she’d really thought about what Annalise had asked of her. It was clear that she’d never intended to promote her—and likely that she looked down on her for her confirmed bachelorettehood. She’d probably told her that boyfriend equaled promotion just to exert control over her, and that was pretty disgusting.
She’d worn her chicest black dress that morning and didn’t even stop at her desk to drop her purse. If this went how she thought it would, she wouldn’t be there for very long anyway.
After multiple mimosas, she and Sasha had come up with a plan for how to play this. Although she’d tried to convince her best friend that at least one of them should keep her very good job, Sasha would not be dissuaded. Sasha had been on the “screw Annalise” train long before Hannah had boarded sometime after mimosa number three. Heartbreak over losing Jack seemed to have softened her edges—the really weird thing was that Hannah didn’t hate it.
Still, she needed to pretend to have her sharp corners and brass knuckles to deal with this meeting.
She didn’t knock, just slid in the glass door while her boss stared at her screen.
“Good morning.”
“Is it?” Hannah hadn’t been expecting sarcasm, but okay.
“No, it’s actually a pretty rough morning.” That wasn’t a lie. She was terribly hungover.
Annalise motioned to the chair across from her desk. Apparently, this wasn’t going to be a short conversation. Hannah sat down and felt her boss’s disdain settle like a blanket over her.