Page 19 of Best Kept Vows (Savannah’s Best #6)

Ophelia

S eeing Jane with Sebastian was a wake-up call. Our marriage was not in a good place—and Jane was a reminder of that. We’d been playing happy couple the past few weeks—but it wasn’t real , couldn’t be unless we dealt with our feelings, the true ones.

I didn’t want to bring my drama to my new job or my new boss, but neither Luna nor Aurora was having it.

They were so young, I thought, and Aurora’s marriage was new—they wouldn’t understand my long-term, married old-lady problems, I thought, but I was wrong. They did.

“I’m assuming you’re upset because you saw that woman with your husband?” Luna asked after we ordered martinis all around.

I smiled uneasily. “She’s just a coworker of his.”

“And I’m the Queen of England,” Aurora quipped.

“Come on, Lia, dish,” Luna demanded .

“I…look, this is my personal business and…I don’t want to drag it into work.”

They both looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “Gabe, that’s my husband, got me to work on a hotel of his after we broke up,” Aurora told me. “Trust me, that was crossing all kinds of personal and professional lines.”

“I must say that I don’t do that…cross lines,” Luna stated with feigned mockery.

“Please.” Aurora waved a hand, dismissing her. “She recorded my step-daughter, who was being a brat, and showed it to Gabe, which was why he came back groveling, wanting to be with me. And she’s my boss, too.”

“Don’t use that term ever again,” Luna protested. “Or I will have to go bossy on your ass.”

I laughed at that, but it turned into a sob.

“Oh fuck.” Luna put an arm around me. “God! Is your husband cheating on you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t think so. No…I know he’s not. But that woman wants him and….” I trailed off when the server returned with our drinks.

I downed half my drink and looked at my new colleagues and friends who were waiting expectantly to hear my sordid tale.

“Sebastian took over Boone Metals three years ago when his father had a stroke,” I began my sad story. “And since then, he’s been obsessed with the company and…he just checked out of being a father and husband.”

“So, this isn’t a ‘ I just saw my husband with a skank’ thing,” Luna noted and picked up her drink. “You’re sure he won’t cheat on you?”

I took a deep breath and thought about it. No matter how annoyed I was with Sebastian, I knew he wouldn’t commit adultery. That wasn’t who he was.

“He’s not capable of that kind of…well, he won’t be able to lie about it.”

“So, that’s good news,” Luna remarked.

I looked at her inquiringly.

“Hey, this kind of trust in a marriage is rare . So, you have an awesome foundation. Your husband got sidetracked with work.” Luna raised her glass in a toast.

“He didn’t even come for my graduation ceremony,” I complained and told them about lunch at the Olde Pink House, and how Jane called him Seb.

“But the past weeks, he’s been better?” Aurora asked.

“Yes. He…he made up with the kids, and he’s home.”

“But?” Luna prompted.

The truth was that for the four weeks I’d been working at Savannah Lace, my home life had been near perfect.

Sebastian and I were having fun again. It helped that we hadn’t gone for Sunday dinner—which pissed his mother off.

She’d called me, but I ignored her calls and told Sebastian to handle it.

She was his mother, not mine. I had no idea where my courage to say and do these things was coming from—but I was done being the Boone family punching bag.

I’d also had to tell Abraham that I couldn’t come for Sunday lunch, but I was now having lunch with him on Saturdays, which he appreciated.

In the past three years since his stroke, we’d become friends of sorts, since he saw so much of me—well, I was the only person he saw outside of the Sunday dinners, where his family ignored him.

Things with Sebastian were good, but…yeah, unfortunately, there was a but ….

“I feel like I’m being asked to just push away all my heartache and hurt. Just go with the flow. It makes me feel like a doormat, and I promised myself I wouldn’t be that again.”

Aurora and Luna gave me a scrutinizing glance.

“He hasn’t validated the pain that he caused,” Aurora summed up my feelings better than I ever could.

“Yes!” I exclaimed. “That’s it. I want him to…but more than acknowledging it, I want him to recognize what he did so he won’t do it again. I want to do better as well. I want to have my needs met, not just pretend everything is okay.”

I looked around and sighed. “I need to shut up before somebody hears me.”

“Let’s go to my place.” Luna finished her drink. “There, you can speak as loudly as you like.”

I’d left my car at the Savannah Lace parking lot so I could drink without worrying about driving home. We headed to Luna’s house with Aurora, and I felt terrible for dragging Aurora away from her family, but she said Betsy was watching her two daughters.

“Speaking of Betsy.” Aurora tucked her feet under her on a large, comfortable armchair on Luna’s porch. “She’s going to invite you to her next salon. And Ada. She was impressed with both of you. She has them on Sunday afternoons, right after church.”

“Betsy is the reason I got this job at Savannah Lace,” I admitted.

“No, the reason you did is because you gave a kickass speech at your commencement,” Aurora pointed out.

“Everyone good with burgers?” Luna asked as she got comfortable on a chair. “Armand said he’ll make it with blue cheese, and you’ll have to eat it whether you like it or not.”

“Who is Armand?” I asked.

“Armand is her chef,” Aurora teased. “Luna Steele comes from old Steele money, so?—”

“Please, you’re married into the Rhodes family, and you have Harrison, chef extraordinaire, so shut the hell up,” Luna threw at her.

I knew that Luna and Aurora came from high Savannah society—the same one in which the Boone family traversed, though the Boones were not at that level.

My mother-in-law did have a cook and staff at their mansion, so it wasn’t like I wasn’t used to those kinds of luxuries.

Sebastian had asked me if I wanted live-in staff, and I’d looked at our house and laughed.

We had four bedrooms and five baths—which was sufficiently large for our family.

I had no desire to have a show-off home.

We had a cleaning service that came once a week, and I did all the cooking and everything else.

After eating some of the best burgers of my life, I decided it was time to go home and face the music .

“I think you should think about couples therapy,” Luna suggested while we waited for my Uber.

“We see a family therapist every month,” Aurora announced. “It’s been invaluable for us—especially in the beginning when our older daughter…my stepdaughter was being manipulated by her mother to misbehave.”

I had thought about couples therapy, but I wasn’t sure if Sebastian would go for it.

“I’ll send you the therapist’s contact information,” Aurora offered. “Dr. Monica Ryan is amazing.”

I nodded nervously. “I…I feel like I need to fix myself before I can fix us . I need space, I think…I just don’t know how to get that.”

“I hear you.” Aurora patted my shoulder. “Look, if you need a place to get away once in a while or for a few nights or longer, I have an apartment close to Savannah Lace that’s fully furnished and sitting empty. I can give you a key.”

“I can’t stay at your place,” I objected.

“Why not?” Luna quipped. “No one else is there, and Aurora keeps trying to sell it, and then decides not to because someone ends up staying there. It was Stella a while back. And then Ginny when her marriage collapsed.”

Aurora chuckled. “It’s the Savannah Lace Women’s Shelter.”

I laughed at that. “I’ll…I’ll think about it.”

During the twenty-minute Uber drive home, I thought a lot about what I needed, and I knew that to save our marriage, we had to step away from it. And maybe therapy was not a bad idea.