Page 58 of Forever King

Her flinty lawyer and Cynthia shuffle out, and once the glass door to the conference room closes, Jillian sits down at the other end of the table. She has no papers, no notes whatsoever. That surprises me. I figured she’d have a list of some sort.

“Let’s talk, Matthias,” she says in her British accent that always made everything sound so charming.

Even when it wasn’t anything close to that between us.

I take a seat across from her at the conference table in my company’s building, the company I run as CEO, and suddenly, I feel like a visitor and not someone who belongs here. Something about the icy look in her blue eyes makes me feel like I used to when I’d get called to the principal’s office in high school.

“Why did you want to talk to me in person after all this time?” I ask, genuinely unsure what this is all about.

She inhales sharply and hesitates for a brief moment before answering me. “I wanted to speak to you in person because I have something to say.”

I stop myself from saying that’s obvious since a comment like that isn’t going to help me get what I want out of this meeting. Instead, I remember what Cynthia advised and force a tiny smile.

“Okay. I’m all ears.”

Jillian tilts her chin up slightly and returns my smile. “I spent years thinking of what I’d say to you when you came looking for me again. You see, while you were living your life, I remembered every day that you hadn’t done anything about the divorce you want from me.”

She stops, and I don’t know why, but I feel the need to clear something up about what she just said. “I wasn’t the one who asked for the divorce, Jillian. I was back home dealing with my father’s passing, and you took that opportunity to tell me you weren’t interested in remaining married to me anymore.”

I silently chastise myself for saying that almost immediately. Who said what and when doesn’t matter now. I need to remember that.

Thankfully, her way of preferring to speak plainly, a trait of hers I always admired even if I didn’t appreciate it all the time, means she isn’t insulted. Instead, she nods and seems to relax a bit more after I’ve finished.

“Point taken. I was the one who ended things, and while I didn’t think of it at the time, I do want to say I should have chosen a better time to say what I did. You were dealing with your father’s dying, so I’m sorry for doing it then, Matthias.”

“It’s okay. I understood.”

She looks away for a second or two and then turns to face me again. “I couldn’t keep going knowing how you felt about me, about us.”

“I’m sorry things turned out the way they did, Jillian. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Looking back, I see I had no businessmarrying anyone. I was trying to please my father, but that was wrong.”

Sadness creeps into her expression when she says, “I didn’t know why you didn’t love me. All I knew was it hurt. That’s why I began with Henry. Not because I cared about him, but because it hurt too much to always be alone, even when you were in the same room with me.”

Now it’s clear why she wanted to meet in person. She’s wanted to say these things to me for years. As much as I hate hearing it, I don’t try to stop her or defend myself. I have no excuse for what I did with her. I shouldn’t have married her knowing I was in love with someone else.

“Are you still with him?” I ask out of curiosity.

She shakes her head and presses her lips together. “No. That ended a long time ago.”

The two of us sit quietly for what feels like forever. I don’t know what else to say. In many ways, this is harder than writing out a check for millions of dollars. This is personal, and although I know I have it coming, it doesn’t make it any easier to hear that I hurt her enough that she’s waited five years to tell me about it.

Finally, she breaks the silence with a sentence that stuns me. “You know, I swore I’d make you suffer after your brother told me the real reason why you never cared about me or our marriage. The thing is, though, now that I’m sitting here with you, I can’t do it.”

My brother? Which brother did she talk to? Jillian was never close to anyone in my family.

“What are you talking about?”

“A little while after you left, I ran into your brother Theo here in London. He was on his way to a race, I believe. We had dinner, and he told me the reason you were never really there for our marriage or me was you were in love with someone else. He told me the whole story about how she had been the one you loved foryears. I can’t tell you how much that hurt hearing that from him. To know you married me when you knew you loved someone else felt like a knife to my heart, Matthias.”

I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Why would Theo tell her that? Why would he be so willing to hurt her needlessly?

Closing my eyes, I push those questions aside. They aren’t the point anymore.

“I’m sorry, Jillian. I didn’t want anyone to get hurt. Theo was right. I did love Ava when I married you. It was wrong, and I don’t know what else to say but I’m sorry.”

She stands up and walks over to the window that faces the street. Her back to me, she says, “You should have told me. I deserved to know the reason why you never put the effort into our marriage. I deserved a lot more than I got from you, Matthias.”

Nothing she’s saying is wrong. I can’t deny a word of it. All I can do is apologize.