Goodbye, Mr. Regret

"Love or not, I can't say for sure. But what I do know is-there's no way things will work out between you two."

The phone call left Timothy with a heavy heart.

He'd always thought Yates was on his side, speaking up for him, maybe even knowing Jessica was Salome, understanding that he didn't want a divorce, and trying to help him out.

Turns out, he'd gotten it all backwards.

"So," Timothy shot back, "if I can't be with her, you think you can?"

He might be miserable, but he wasn't about to lose his nerve.

His words hit Yates where it hurt, though to be fair, Yates hadn't exactly been a paragon of virtue himself. Back when he didn't know Jessica was Salome, he hadn't made Timothy's life hell the way Vince had.

That much, at least, was true.

"My chances are better than yours, Timothy. You're the one who burned this marriage to the ground. There's no going back."

"Spare me the lecture."

He knew. Of course he knew. But knowing didn't help he didn't want Jessica to leave, yet he couldn't find any way to make her stay.

"I'll say just one thing. There's one thing you did that's truly unforgivable, do you realize that? Today, she showed up in front of Mrs. Zimmerman, and Mrs. Zimmerman recognized her instantly. All I could think was—if you'd introduced her to people, just once in your seven years of marriage, the Zimmermans wouldn't have spent all these years not knowing she was Salome."

Yates' words cut deep.

She really was recognized at a glance?

He almost laughed at himself. All this time, he'd been fantasizing about removing her birthmark.

"What's worse," Yates pressed, "is that even after you found out, you kept it from the Zimmerman family. Tell me, Timothy-when did you know? Was it when Vince told you about the birthmark?"

The call ended abruptly.

snapped his phone

a weight pressing

when Vince first mentioned the

and Jessica hadn't

But he hadn't.

told himself it

that one year's difference

his eyes. Maybe if the pain from his wounds was sharper, it could drown out the ache choking

found himself longing for the

those quiet, gentle

and his grandfather had set his sights on molding him into the heir of the Lawson Group. His father, never particularly capable, had remarried and started a new family. His grandfather was eager to raise

had lived under immense

then, as he

Jessica that he learned what a home could be—a

pressure, a place he could

to unravel every knot inside him.

if you let yourself get too comfortable, you'd get

finally get what you've always longed for, you start to care, you start to

you lose it, the pain is

his distance, tried to run from it

in the end, he'd fallen headlong anyway, and now he was learning just how much it

deal, and went for an early morning walk. As

the first truth

suffering from change, suffering from pain, and suffering from

listed eight great pains of human life: birth, aging, sickness, death, wanting and not having, separation from loved ones, dealing with resentment, and the turmoil of

sickness, and death. As for the rest-never. Those

them-wanting and not having, and being separated from someone he loved-for a

as they'd left the chapel, the priest had said