She Didn’t Fix Her Reputation. She Threw It Away. Chapter 28

She Didn’t Fix Her Reputation. She Threw It Away. Chapter 28

Meanwhile, Beckett’s world had completely disintegrated.

He had assumed Daphne was just angry.

He thought that with a grand enough gesture, an expensive enough piece of jewelry, she would eventually come back.

But she was really, truly gone.

After she had failed to appear for the family’s crisis meetings, he had locked himself away in the house that was supposed to have been their marital home.

He replayed their life together, over and over.

He had gotten so used to having her by his side.

She was like air. Like a steady heartbeat in the background of his life.

It was only in her absence that he realized how much he had depended on her.

When he went to business receptions, there was no one to quietly slip him notes on the other guests, no one to give him a subtle look to steer him away from a sensitive topic.

When he gave speeches at board meetings, there was no one who had stayed up all night with him, turning his long, rambling drafts into sharp, incisive remarks.

When he was surrounded by people who only wanted something from him, there was no one to run interference, to gracefully deflect the endless social obligations.

Most importantly, there was no one who looked at him with that unwavering, absolute belief.

As if he were truly the man he was pretending to be.

Anya still came around.

She still deployed her usual arsenal of seductive tricks.

But he suddenly found it all so empty.

Her shallowness, her constant demands, her flippant disregard for everything—it all grated on him.

How could he have ever thought she compared to Daphne?