Page 8 of Finding Denver

I brush her hair back, wishing I could remove the pins and tangle my fingers in the red locks, breathe her in and take her home. I have more wishes, too, but I keep them locked away.

“We’re perfect.”

We return to the ballroom, and when Denver is dragged away from me by eager guests, I go to the bar and watch as people flutter around her.

The first few months of our marriage seemed too good to be true. When I came home from a day of hell, she was there, awake and ready to listen, or sleepy and there for me to hold. Her day-to-day became our debrief over dinner. She’d tell me her worries over the decisions she was making, her concerns that she wasn’t doing enough or that she was doing everything wrong.

We talked. We shared. We became the kind of couple that depended on each other. We’d still rage, and fight, and the past wasn’t far behind us, but the knowledge that we shared a bed and a life made all that worth it.

She was the wife I needed, wanted. Her businesses were doing well. Her success was reaching peaks that made me proud. When her name was brought up at poker tables and drinks, it was to praise my wife, and I was right there with them.

My wife. My little bird. My partner.

And then things changed.

One run-in with Dorian Eddards and she became … more. More than just Mrs. Luxe with the lucrative businesses and a growing presence in the city. She was a woman who’d stepped up, a woman unwilling to be crossed, regardless of who was doing the crossing. And people took notice.

No one likes the Eddardses. And even my morals aren’t that fucking skewed that I’d associate myself with people like them. But they are a powerful family, their name associated with the moving and selling of people across the country.

And then Denver went and cut off Spider’s son’s finger.

A fluke, and she became a name.

Our dinners are no longer her asking for my help. She isn’t warming the bed for me when I come home. She doesn’t share her concerns, her failures, or her doubts.

I find out about her wins from other men.

It was one thing to know she was gaining traction through whispers; it was another when I discovered she’d met Samuel Lok Shun Lau and rumors of them opening a casino together were circulating.

The Triads don’t do deals with Luxes. Samuel doesn’t like me, and neither does his father, but it never bothered me because I have my own way of making money.

But Samuel met with Denver. Samuel likes Denver. And they’ve spent the last six months putting together a deal for a casino that will make them both millions.

And I had to hear about it over dinner with men I don’t even like.

When I confronted Denver about it, she’d been apologetic but excited. She said she wanted to make absolutelysure it was going ahead before she told me because she wanted to make me proud.

It didn’t feel that way. I felt ambushed by her success.

But I faked it. I told her I was proud. And when she came home exhausted from negotiations and land searching, I was there for her. I listened, though she never asked for advice. I comforted, though she clearly didn’t need it.

And every day it ate me alive.

I asked for this, though. I’d told her not to stand in my shadow.

I just never expected to be living in hers.

So when the opportunity arose for me to stop the casino from happening, I took it. The mayor is only where he is because of my money, so when we’d had obligatory drinks to discuss my cash infusion for the next election, he’d made an offhand comment about environmentalists and Denver’s land sale. It was all clear, he’d said, and nothing to worry about. “No problems at all,” he’d added confidently.

So, I created a problem.

I told him to tank it. He did. And now the thing she’s put her heart and soul into is over, and it’s my fault. I regretted it—for two days. Until Denver had come home close to tears. She curled up in my lap and asked me where she’d gone wrong, what she could have done differently.

She needed me again.

So, I let the deal fall to pieces, and I held her, and I said there would be other opportunities.

And now I don’t regret it at all.