Imperfect Love (Heart 0f Hope Book 4) Read online

  Imperfect Love

  A Second Chance in Marriage Romance (Heart of Hope Book 4)

  Ajme Williams

  Contents

  Description

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Our Last Chance (Preview)

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  Copyright © 2020 by Ajme Williams

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of authors imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The following story contains mature themes, strong language and sexual situations. It is intended for mature readers only.

  All characters are 18+ years of age and all sexual acts are consensual.

  Cover Photo Credit: Shutterstock.com

  Description

  A broken marriage.

  A broken heart.

  A broken home.

  Brayden and I have everything going against us.

  There was a time when we were madly in love.

  Our laughter still echoes in my ears.

  They say marriage is built on trust.

  They said love is the foundation.

  I wonder if we have either of those now.

  And what’s worse?

  I’ve been diagnosed with a life-threatening illness.

  Divorce or death.

  I have no clue what comes first.

  But they both feel the same.

  Brayden still has my heart.

  And I have a feeling that he wants to keep it.

  Will he fight for us and give our love a second chance?

  Or is this the end of an era for our family?

  Prologue

  Terra

  I wondered when my marriage went off the rails. As I sat on the edge of my bed, I experienced a rare moment of quiet and solitude in my home. I searched my brain for the moment the fairy tale ended. I couldn’t pinpoint an exact time. The busyness of life must have simply worn away at us until all that was left was resentment.

  I should have known it wouldn’t last. I learned at eleven years old that life is a bitch and then you die. This lesson really sank in after I watched my mother battle cancer, only to lose in the end... She’d endured painful and debilitating treatment to save herself. She’d sacrificed any quality of life in the hopes that she’d live, but her fight was all for naught. She died anyway.

  I wondered, if she would have made a different choice. Had she known she was going to die, no matter what, would she have sacrificed some time to be able to enjoy life more fully until the cancer took her? Would she have taken me for mother-daughter tea like we did once a month before she was too sick to walk? Would she have piled all the pillows on her bed and turned out all the lights to watch movies with me like we often did until her sight left her?

  After she died, my father said we had to live life to the fullest, for her, and for the most part I had. But in my mind, I’d always been aware that love and happiness could be gone in an instant, and therefore seeking it, wishing for it, was dangerous.

  It wasn’t until I’d met Brayden that I let love and laughter into my life again. From the moment I met him, I was his. For the first time since my mother had died, I wondered if maybe some part of the fairy tales I read as a child were real. But now, years later, I saw that I was wrong.

  I sent the letter, from my lawyer, which I received today. I was in awe, in a bad way, of how quickly plans could change. I’d been considering walking away from the life we’d failed to build, but now that couldn’t happen.

  I heard the front door open and the sound of my children’s voices as they scurried into the house. Tears welled in my eyes. I closed them, and listened like it was the last time I’d hear them.

  “I want apples and peanut butter,” six-year old Lanie said.

  “No peanut butter,” four-year old Noah whined.

  A sad smile came to my lips. Noah didn’t like how thick and sticky peanut butter was.

  “Put your packs away and meet me back in the kitchen,” Brayden said. His voice was closer, which suggested he was making his way to our room.

  I sucked in a breath to prepare myself to see him.

  He stepped into the doorway and, for a moment, I remembered the man who’d stolen my heart ten years ago. As I looked at him objectively, I thought that he was more handsome now than when I’d met him. His six-foot three-inch frame carried a muscular physique which he maintained through regular exercise at the office gym. At least I thought he was still muscular. I didn’t see his body too often anymore. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d had sex. A few weeks ago, I caught him in the shower masturbating. There was a time I’d have found that a turn on and joined him, letting him jerk off into my mouth. But that time was gone. When I watched stroke himself, I felt hurt instead. Unlike him, my body wasn’t anywhere close to the size two I’d been when we met. I was sure he wasn’t thinking of me as he shot his load. It was probably his secretary.

  “You’re home.”

  “Yes, I finished earlier than I expected.”

  He stepped into the room and shut the door, a sure sign we were going to fight and he didn’t want the kids to hear. “You said you were busy and needed me to pick up the kids.”

  “I thought it would take longer.”

  He set his hands on his hips as he looked down on me. “I had to cancel an important meeting to get the kids, Terra. You could have picked them up.”

  Work. Perhaps he was banging his secretary, but his real mistress was work.

  “I didn’t know I’d be done so soon.” I stood, not liking the feeling I was being interrogated. I took off my jewelry as I didn’t usually wear it unless I was going out. Raising kids was messy work, so I didn’t dress nice or wear jewelry in my everyday life.

  “Now I’ll have to stay late. My wife gets annoyed when I work late.”

  I hated when he talked to me in third person. “Yes, heaven forbid she would want her husband home to have dinner with her and the kids.” I closed my jewelry box.

  “What’s this?”

  I looked at him through the reflection of the mirror over my dresser. He was holding the letter from the lawyer. For a moment, I had a feeling of panic, but then I figured there was nothing to hide. Maybe he’d be relieved.

  He frowned as he looked toward me. “You want a divorce?”

  I turned toward him, noting that he still looked pissed, but not upset or worried as I might have hoped his reaction would be to my consulting with a lawyer. Of course, divorce was out of the question now.

  I shook my head. “No.”
/>   “Then what’s this?” He waved the letter at me.

  “I thought about it—”

  “This looks like you’ve done more than think about it. You’ve retained a lawyer.”

  “I’m not going through with it.”

  He studied me. “So, you don’t love me anymore.”

  “I never said that.” That was the tragedy in all this. I still loved him. But we were too broken to fix. I wasn’t even sure he would want us to be fixed.

  He didn’t respond.

  “Are you relieved or annoyed that I’m not going to follow through,” I asked, genuinely curious.

  “I’m wondering what happened to you.”

  I laughed derisively. “Me? It’s not just me. It’s us, Brayden.”

  “I work my ass off to make you and kids happy, but you’re impossible to please.”

  He did work his ass off, but it wasn’t about me. That’s the excuse he told him himself to justify the long hours. No, he worked for him.

  “Well, perhaps you’ll get lucky and you won’t have to put up with me anymore,” I said.

  “So, you are leaving me?”

  I shrugged and, for a moment, I wondered if he’d be happier if the cancer that was growing in my breast killed me as it had my mother.

  1

  Brayden – Friday – Two Weeks Earlier

  I stood at the head of the boardroom table looking over the executives of Burrow Data Tech. In eight years, we had gone from a two-person operation to a full-scale global company. As we’d grown and expanded, other larger tech firms sought to buy the company, but we’d said no to the multi-million dollar offers and built our vision. The company now made the Fortune 500 list. We were a success. Too bad the motivational gurus didn’t mention the sacrifices that had to be made.

  I didn’t mind the long hours, but my wife Terra did. She’d been a part of launching the company, but she wasn’t at the table today as we reviewed current financial data. She’d made the choice to stay home when we had children. It was a decision I supported, but it seemed wrong that she wasn’t here to see our profits; another quarter of great growth.

  “You’re all an integral part of what makes Burrow Data Tech a success,” I said to the table of men and woman. “We’re larger now than we used to be, but I like to think we’ve been able to maintain a sense of closeness and camaraderie, not just between us, but with those that work to make the company a success.”

  Heads nodded at my statement.

  “Keep this up through the end of next quarter and you’ll see some nice holiday bonuses.”

  “I’ll be able to pay my kids' college,” Stan Gaynor said.

  “A semester, anyway,” Janis Tobin said jokingly.

  I’d started a college fund for each of my kids the moment I’d learned they were conceived. After I’d grown up with a single mom who struggled to put food on the table, when we had a table, and worked two jobs through college (still ending up with exorbitant student loans), I’d vowed that I would never be financially strapped again. Nor would my family feel the strains of worrying about whether they’d be able to sleep in a bed as opposed to a car or alley.

  Work had been my salvation. The business and the financial success of it was my reward. If only my wife, Terra, understood that. She wanted me to be home more and to spend some of the hard-earned money to enjoy life. Sure we had the money, but the economy and financial security were both fickle. I couldn’t sit back on my laurels and expect that the money would always be there.

  “I’m going to Vegas,” JT Long said. He was our newest VP of digital marketing. At only twenty-six, he reminded me of me when I was that age and living life to the fullest.

  I laughed. “Ah, to be young and single without a mortgage.”

  “Someone has to party,” he grinned.

  “Take pictures so we can live vicariously through you,” Stan said.

  I finished the meeting and then sent them off to their departments hoping they’d share the news of our continued growth and probable bonuses if the trend continued to the rest of the staff.

  I checked my watch as I headed back into my office. I decided I’d head home and have dinner with my family for once. Terra deserved to hear the good news.

  I powered off my laptop and pulled out my case.

  “Bray, you got a minute?”

  I looked up to see Kyle Doss, my right-hand man and confident.

  “A minute. I was thinking I might actually have dinner with Terra and the kids.”

  “Oh, well this can wait until Monday.”

  I waved him into my office. “No, I’ve got a minute. What’s up?”

  “I wanted to show you the update on the new security system the cloud tech team has been working on. It’s better than expected. I think it could make this a billion-dollar tech firm.”

  “That’s the sort of news I’ll always take time to hear.”

  He set a stack of papers on the worktable in my office. “We have some prototype work I can show you if you like,” he said putting his laptop on the table too. “You’ll want to file for intellectual property protection.”

  Cha-ching, sounded in my ears.

  I sat next to Kyle and listened as he walked through the new system. Excited about the development, I asked him to show me the prototype on his computer.

  “Excellent work, Kyle. Tell the team that for me, would you?” I said when he finished.

  “Already have.”

  I stood up and grabbed my coat. “Do you have plans for this weekend?”

  “Trolling for love, as usual.” He grinned. Another single man who didn’t have a care in the world, except getting laid.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I got laid. My sexual release now came in the shower with the help of my hand.

  I walked with Kyle to the open area outside my office. My secretary, Johanna was gone for the day.

  I frowned and checked my watch. It was nearly seven. Fuck. I’d missed dinner. By the time I made it through Seattle traffic to my home, the kids would probably be in bed.

  Ah well. Today would be like most other days. I drove from my office east towards Madison Park on the shores of Lake Washington. By the time I was forty, my goal was to make it across the lake to live in Medina, where the likes of Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates lived. I wasn’t there yet, but at thirty-four, I had a few years left to work on it.

  The house was quiet as I entered. I went to the fridge to find a beer. A dinner plate covered in plastic wrap waited for me, as well. On it was a crayon written note from my six-year old daughter, Lanie. “I love you daddy,” it said. I sighed. At least someone loved me. I wasn’t so sure Terra did anymore.

  I put the plate in the microwave and then headed up the hall to Lanie’s room. She was sound asleep in her bed. I watched her for a moment, marveling at the miracle of her. When she was born, Terra and I were still living and loving intensely. Somehow, over the last few years, all that had fizzled away. But the love for my kids was fierce. It was what had me striving to work to give them every opportunity.

  I bent over Lanie and kissed her on the forehead. “Goodnight baby.”

  I left her room and went across the hall to Noah, my four-year-old son’s room. Inside, he was sleeping too, with Terra laying next to him. She was asleep as well. It was rare to see her relaxed, and so I took a moment to look upon her.

  When I’d met Terra, I fell hard and fast almost immediately. It wasn’t just her beauty or her sexy body that had me, but her intelligence, wit, and humor. She was a strong woman with a drive to achieve like me. And boy did we achieve. At least in business. The marriage was struggling, but I was at a loss as to what to do about it. I could see she was unhappy.

  I wondered why I found her so often laying with Noah. Was he having trouble going to sleep? Did he have nightmares? The fact that I didn’t know suggested I wasn’t being a very good father. Then again, I wouldn’t be surprised if she was here because she didn’t want to be with me. It wasn’t just that s
he was unhappy, it was that she seemed to resent me. But what could I do about it?

  I ate my dinner alone as usual, and then went to bed, also alone as usual. I lay with my arm under my head staring up at the ceiling. I’d achieved my dream. But I was finding it wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be. I didn’t understand how things had gone off track. Terra and I started the company together. It had been her dream too. So had marriage, the nice house, and the kids. We got what we wanted and were miserable.

  I tried to remember the last time I’d seen her smile. Actually, that wasn’t too hard because she often smiled at the kids. But not with me. We didn’t fight a lot, but that was probably because we didn’t talk to each other a lot. I suppose much of that was my fault for working, but my work was what fulfilled our dreams.

  When we did talk, it was mostly over logistics, like Noah’s soccer practice or Lanie’s gymnastics. It hadn’t always been like that. In the beginning, we talked about anything and everything. Hell, we’d talked during sex even. Dirty talk that had us both coming so hard. Now we didn’t have sex, and when we did, it was quick, quiet, and not very satisfactory. It wasn’t that she wasn’t attractive, because she was. Yes, she wasn’t as put together as she used to be and she carried more weight, but to be honest, I liked the curves. If she was into me, I think I’d have enjoyed really savoring her luscious body. But I’m pretty sure she didn’t enjoy sex anymore, and so to save us both from the discomfort, I’d relegated my sexual desire to the shower where I jerked off several times a week.