“Not the real version.”
“My feelings for you are completely genuine,” he went on. “I also had another motive because—and there’s no way to say this without sounding arrogant—I’m rich.”
“I know you’re rich, Trip. Or should I call you Jonathan?”
“It’s your choice. But I want to still be Trip to you. I want that to be your name for me.”
Lark massaged her forehead with the palms of her hands. “Mr. Wright.”
“I’m on the Forbes 400,” he stated simply. “But I didn’t want you to know who I was or how much I have because, as I found out the hard way, my ex-wife cared about my money and my social status. And I wanted to make sure you loved me for who I really am.”
“Without telling me who you really were,” she snarled.
He dropped his head and opened his palms. “I fucked up.”
Lark got up and sat on the matching couch across from him. “When were you planning on telling me the truth?”
“As soon as the divorce was finalized . . . but then things got complicated.”
“Because you proposed to me.”
“I didn’t think things through. Obviously.”
“You’re divorced now?”
“Almost. We’re ironing out the last details.”
“What’s her name?”
“Holly.”
“What else did you lie to me about?” she demanded. “Ohio, Indiana, your parents dying? You really have a brother named Matt who’s afraid of flying?”
He hesitated ever so briefly. “That’s all true.”
She looked around the apartment, at the sleek impersonal decor with no trace of his personality. “What about this place? Do you even live here?”
“I’ve stayed here on and off while the divorce plays out,” he said earnestly. “But it’s a corporate apartment owned by my company, so I move to a hotel to make it available when necessary.”
“Which is why you got rid of our pictures,” she said, heartbroken at the futility of that gesture.
“They’re still here!” Practically leaping off the couch, he hurried to the hall closet, where he took a banker’s box off a high shelf and brought it back to the coffee table. He removed the lid so she could see the half-dozen framed photos inside.
She lifted out the top one and wiped off the thin layer of dust with her sleeve. It was the selfie they’d taken at Niagara Falls.
She remembered his caption: People say you can’t find the end of the rainbow. Not true.
Suddenly, she was sobbing uncontrollably. Trip sat down next to her. He was crying, too.
They stayed up talking half the night. Sometimes she let him hold her. Other times she pushed him away. When she yelled at him, he took it. The one time she hit him, with a closed fist on his chest, his expression told her he knew he deserved it. She wanted to hit him again—to hit anything—but didn’t.
Eventually, they fell asleep on the bed, fully clothed.
She woke up at dawn, as he was leaving.
“I have to go to the office,” he told her softly. “Stay here as long as you like. I’ll keep out of your way. I don’t want to rush you. What happens next needs to be your decision, and I want it to be right for you. But I still want to marry you, Lark, and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. No more lies. You are everything to me.”
She looked at him, exhausted. “I’m not even sure what you are.”
Chapter Forty-Two
JESSICA
A lie will cover another lie for only so long.
—“How I Lied about My Name and Discovered My Truth,” a TED Talk by Jon M. Wright
“I missed you so goddamn much,” Jon said, appearing in Jessica’s office and closing the door behind him.
Thankfully, an entire wall of her office was glass, so they couldn’t hug or touch.
“I missed you, too,” she said, more easily than she’d expected. “Did you get any sleep last night?”
She hadn’t, wondering if he was really in Indianapolis like he’d said, or at the corporate apartment for reasons that didn’t seem to make any sense.
“A few hours,” he said, not making eye contact. “Jessie, I’m so sorry we had to be apart, especially after your grandmother’s stroke.”
“It was touch and go for a few days,” she managed to say, barely remembering the excuse she’d manufactured for missing work.
“I’m just glad everything’s okay now.”
Nothing’s okay, she wanted to say. Still stunned at what she’d learned in the month since they’d exchanged marriage vows.
“And how is the Holly situation?” she asked instead.
Jon sighed too deeply. “I finally got her under control, and she’s receiving the help she needs. Would you believe she took a sledgehammer to my old home office?”
“That’s awful,” Jessica said, with what she hoped was convincing conviction.
“Ava texted me to let me know, so I had to go out to the house to repair the physical and psychological damage. I needed to recover after that.”
Jessica had to admit that his pained look was utterly convincing. She gave him an understanding nod—understanding that the desk-smashing incident had happened after, and not before, he’d gone to “the desert.”
“I didn’t want to scare you,” he said, “but that’s the real reason I wanted you in Omaha.”
“I understand. Where is Holly now?”
“At an inpatient residential treatment facility,” he said, now looking directly into her eyes without so much as a telltale blink. “Which, ironically, is where I told her I was.”
Had he really both lied to her and admitted something so profoundly startling in the same sentence?
“But you weren’t?” Jessica asked, wondering how many more gut punches were coming.
“Getting inpatient counseling because my wi—ex-wife lost her marbles? Hardly.” He chuckled.
“Why would you tell her that, then?”
“The only way I could get her to agree to seek help was to tell her I was working on my issues, too.”
“Where were you, really?” Jessica asked.
“Palm Springs, mostly,” Jon said. “And LA.”
“Are you opening an office in LA?” she asked, as innocently as
