Chapter 35
Logan’s POV
Catherine did not say anything, granted there was no accurate answer to what I just told her, but a part of me wanted her to know, a small petty part of me, that knew she knew I put her above my wife all the damn fucking time.
“The day she called me,” I continued, my voice flat, measured, because if I let any emotion into it I was going to shatter and I wasn’t ready to cross that bridge yet. After all, I was in full autonomy when I was doing it, so pinning it on her was not reasonable.
“The day I told her it was none of her business and hung up. She was calling me from a hospital waiting room. She was about to get the worst news of her life and she called me, and I told her she was being selfish and she shouldn’t bother me, because I was with you and you were more important p>
“Logan-” Catherine’s voice was very quiet. “I didn’t know p>
“Neither did I. That’s the problem. I didn’t know because I didn’t ask her questions, I just concluded. I didn’t ask because I didn’t look. And I didn’t look because I was too busy being angry at her for existing inconveniently in my life.” I laughed, and it came out wrong, I sounded bitter and broken as I suppressed the tears, as I continued speaking.
“She signed divorce papers and disconnected her phone and disappeared. At first I was willing to wait her out, thinking she was trying to make me panic, but that was before I found out about the cancer and realized that I had been delusional all this while, She’s dying somewhere and she doesn’t want me to find her because she knows I’ll make it worse p>
“You don’t know that p>
“She’s right, Catherine.” The name felt strange in my mouth, as it suddenly felt heavy with a weight that I hadn’t carried before. “She’s absolutely right. Everything I’ve done since you came back to Chicago- everything I’ve said, every dismissal, every time I told her she was overreacting-I was making it worse. I was so convinced she was jealous and manipulative and unreasonable that I never once considered whether she had a reason. Whether there was something real underneath all of it p>
“Logan, I-” A pause. “I’m sorry. If I played any part in p>
“I need to find her.” I cut her off, not unkindly but firmly. “That’s all I can think about right now. I need to find
her p>
“How? If she’s disconnected her phone, if she’s left Chicago p>
“I don’t know yet. But I’m going to figure it out. But when she comes back home, I will make her my priority and not you,” I stood up straighter, something resolving in me even through the grief, some vestigial competence reasserting itself. “I have to. She’s my wife. She’s Nick’s mother. Whatever else I’ve gotten wrong in the past year, I can’t get this wrong too p>
After I hung up, I stood on the sidewalk outside Sedona’s bookstore for a moment longer, looking up at the gray Chicago sky.
12
< Putting Sedena Fist Before Catherine
+25 Points
I’d spent three years with a woman and learned almost nothing about her. Her past. Her family. Her real name, maybe because if she’d hidden a family from me, what else had she hidden? Who was she, really, beyond what she’d let me see?
I had divorce papers signed by Sedona Claire Hayes. A maiden name she’d never told me. I never even knew her middle name.
I pulled out my phone and called my lawyer.
“I need you to find someone,” I said when he answered. “Her name is Sedona Claire Hayes. Or possibly Sedona Claire something else I’m not certain Hayes is her original surname. She’s approximately twenty-eight, grew up somewhere, possibly with someone, a boyfriend or a brother named Cameron. She was at Northwestern Memorial about ten days ago and Chicago General about three weeks ago.” I paused. “Find her. Whatever it costs, whatever you have to do. Find her p>
I hung up and stared at my reflection in the bookstore window. I looked like a stranger-pale, hollowed out, the expensive suit that Sedona had labeled and categorized and recommended somehow making me look smaller instead of larger.
You wore this on our first anniversary. You looked so handsome. Love, S.
I was going to find her. I was going to find her and I was going to look her in the eye and say every word I should have said months ago, years ago, the day she first walked into my life and I saw only a resemblance instead of a person.
And then I was going to spend every single day she had left making it mean something. If she’d let me. If it wasn’t already too late,
I stopped counting days after the fourth one passed with no positive feedback from the private investigator that I was paying to find her. My day continued in this specific set of routines that had characterized my life recently: waking before dawn/with Sedona’s name already in my mouth like a held breath, checking my phone for messages that nevér came, making coffee I barely tasted, dropping Nick at school, spending hours staring at reports that told me nothing new, picking Nick up from school, answering his question about his mother with the same deflection ant lying to him, that she was coming back, putting him to bed, lying awake until two or three in the morning running the same thoughts, trying to figure out where she might have gone.
She was somewhere. People didn’t simply cease to exist. She was somewhere, and I was going to find her.
The private investigator I’d hired-Marcus Reeve, recommended by my lawyer as the best in Chicago, a former FBI agent who’d found missing persons in twelve countries-had been working for six days and had called this morning with a report that was basically listing out his failures on paper.
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Ruby Walker is a rising voice in the world of romance and spicy fiction. With a gift for weaving deep emotions, sizzling chemistry, and unexpected twists, her stories are a blend of passion and drama that captivate readers from start to finish. Ruby’s writing style is bold and irresistible—perfect for those who crave intense, addictive love stories.