“Demetra, no. Whatever angle you’re trying to work, I’m not interested. I told you to move out for a reason,” he said, and she immediately lost the smile.
He’d broken up with her?
“Cain, relax,” Blayden called down the table. “We’re only trying to get to know your bride. She’s a mystery to us. He turned to me. “Where did you go to school, Aria?”
“Cain, what did you think of Aria’s dress for the ballet gala?” Sebastián suddenly asked. His voice was louder than usual and angry in the same way he’d talked to me about the art they had stolen and how Cain didn’t deserve to have it.
“Her dress?” Cain’s eyebrows raised. “I didn’t get to see her in it. There was a misunderstanding with security at the door.”
“Was there?” Sebastián turned to Blayden. “Is that right?”
Blayden stared back at him. His nostrils flared. “I don’t know what you’re hinting about.”
Sebastián laughed but I watched his fist clench on his leg under the tabletop. “I’m not hinting about anything. I was there, remember? I was the one who told security to remove her name from the guest list so she wouldn’t be able to get in. I told them that when you asked me to do it, and of course, I had to genuflect to you, my patron. That was right after you took Cain’s phone when he put it down. I guess it was so she couldn’t call him? Anyway, Aria didn’t get into the gala that night. It was a great dress and she looked gorgeous,” he told Cain. “I watched her on the sidewalk, arguing with the party security. She was absolutely beautiful—my finest creation.”
It was so quiet at the table that I heard my heart thumping in my ears, boom-boom, boom-boom.
“What in the hell is he talking about?”
We all looked at Blayden and waited for him to answer Cain’s question. He just shrugged a little, and got a funny smile. There were a few giggles around the table, maybe the Furies or some of the other women there. Sebastián’s fist got tighter, so tight his knuckles turned white.
“Did you actually do that? What, as a joke?” Cain leaned forward, his own fists on the table. “What’s the matter with you?”
Blayden shrugged again. “If you expected that we’d all stay quiet after you married a woman like that—”
Cain stood so fast that his seat slid back and slammed into the wall. “Do you think you’re better than her? She’s worth more than all of you put together. Fuck you,” he told Blayden, and looked around the table at everyone else. “Fuck all of you.” Then he focused on the man sitting next to me. “Sebastián, if I see you around my wife, if you do anything with those drawings, I’ll break every bone in your body.”
He walked to me, pulled back the chair, and picked me up out of it. I looked over my shoulder only once as we left, back at the dinner table of fancy, educated people, all of them staring at their plates like they were five years old and had gotten caught eating chocolate chips again.
Chapter 13
Cain didn’t talk to me on the way home. He didn’t say anything as we walked into the kitchen, where he threw his keys and wallet onto the counter. He took his phone and put it into a drawer, but not before I saw that the screen was full of notifications. Probably his friends trying to get in touch.
I felt like I had to explain. “I did go over to Sebastián’s studio,” I said. “I thought he could help me with a dress for the ballet gala and he did, but he was very mean about it, and I went back because he’s the only person I know here and I was trying to show Kayleigh that I had a friend. An acquaintance.”
“Do you have what he drew or does he?”
“I do. Um, I’ll get them.” I did, taking them from their hiding places, and put them on the counter in front of him.
Cain didn’t even glance down. He’d gotten out a bottle of whiskey while I’d been upstairs and he took a long swallow from his glass. “Naked pictures. That’s his standard scheme to get women to sleep with him,” he said. “It’s worked on almost everyone. It worked on all the women who were at the dinner with us tonight.”
Really? Demetra, even? I flipped the drawings over because I couldn’t stand to see them. “I should have told you. I was so ashamed of this, though. At first, I didn’t understand what he was really like and I thought he was helping me. He found a dress that would make me fit in and got me a hair appointment. He told me what everyone was thinking so I would know how to fix things. But now I understand that he was just trying to be…he’s just an…”
“An asshole,” Cain filled in. “Yeah, he is. What was he telling you that everyone was thinking?”
“You saw them tonight!” I said. “It’s pretty obvious how they feel about me and about us being married.”
“Why would we care about that?”
“Because they’re your friends, of course! Your best friend kept me away from that party on purpose, Cain! That’s how much he hates me. That’s how wrong it all is. I’m just wrong here. I am,” I told him, when he opened his mouth to answer me. “We both know it.”
And before he could say anything else, I went upstairs and washed off all the ugly makeup and put my straight hair into a knot on the top of my head so I wouldn’t have to see it. But there wasn’t anything I could really do to change myself. I could straighten my hair and wear clothes I hated and plain shoes and bad makeup and I could even lose the accent, but I’d always be the same old Aria.
Cain didn’t come up for a long time and I didn’t sleep as I waited to hear him. Instead, I lay there and thought about everything that every person at that dinner had said, from Blayden trying to trick me into being an idiot, to Sebastián telling everyone that he’d helped keep me out of the ballet party, to Cain telling them to chuck off. Blayden was a terrible person, that was just a fact and there was no use trying to give him the benefit of the doubt or any sympathy. But Sebastián, after everything else he’d done before—being so mean, and stealing the etchings, and sleeping with my cousin who was obviously in some kind of trouble—after all of that, he had stood up to the guy who paid the rent on his studio! So maybe there was something in him that could be salvaged. He just needed to find it and make it bigger.
And Cain. He thought I was worth more than all of them? Really?
The door to the bedroom opened quietly and he came in, but not at all quietly himself. “Aria?” he asked into the darkness. I’d left the bathroom light off.
I sat up. “I’m here.”
“I thought you would have gone back to your room.” Cain sat on the edge of the bed.
“No, this is where I’m sleeping now,” I told him. His voice had slurred a little and I wondered how much of the bottle of whiskey he’d drunk before he came up.
“I’m sorry I took you over there tonight. I’m sorry I made you meet any of those people.”
“They’re your friends. Of course I’d meet them.”
“No, they’re not my friends. They’re not anyone we have to see again. They’re people I know, people I thought I should go to parties with and do business with. They don’t like me and I don’t like them. Less, now. I could have killed a few of them tonight.” I shivered, because I thought that he could have. I could almost feel his blue eyes peering at me, but I couldn’t see his face. “Blayden seemed to think that I would drop you, for him. What would you do if your mother said that she wouldn’t see you anymore because of me?”
“What? My mother?” I shook my head on the pillow. “No, she would know better than to ask that of me.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I married you and we started our own family. So, if someone tells me that they can’t be around you, then I would probably be sorry, but I made my choice,” I explained. “My choice is you. Always. I swore it before my family and they all know. I swore it before you, and I hope you believe it.”
“I think you really mean that.”
“I do,” I told him, the same words I’d said back in the garden when Gary had asked me if I’d take this man to be my wedded
husband. “I do.”
The bed shifted as Cain moved across it and his mouth found mine. He kissed me hard and deep, pressing me back into the pillow with the luvbug case. Then his body moved over me and I sunk a little into the hard mattress. He kissed me even harder, like he was frantic, almost.
I didn’t care how or why it was happening. I held onto him with everything I had and kissed him back, and when he started to pull the pig pajamas off me, I helped him, and when he ripped off his shirt, I threw it to the side. His hands were on my breasts, massaging and kneading and rubbing and I moaned and undid his pants so he could kick them far away. I did what Cassidy had told me and rubbed him, too, squeezing gently and sliding my hands up and down, trying to remember her instructions. It didn’t seem like I needed them, though, because the moment my fingers went there, Cain lost his breath. I moved down his body to take him in my mouth and he held my head and said to wait.
“Are you ready? Are you ready?” he panted, and I told him yes, yes! Then I was on my back and he was pushing inside me.
It hurt. It pinched and stretched and I shifted, grimacing.
“Is it all right?” he asked me, and no, the pain wasn’t all right, but sleeping with my husband?
“It’s wonderful,” I told him, and he thrust against me, over and over, repeating my name until his hips jerked and I knew that he came. I wrapped my legs and arms around him and buried my face into his neck, smiling even if there were a few tears, too. Because now we were real. He was mine, and I was totally his. I loved him and he loved me back, obviously! We fell asleep holding each other like we had before, but I knew that everything had changed.
And when I woke up to weak sunlight coming in around the curtains, I knew exactly what Cain had meant about the morning: it was all better. Everything!
But I had to get out of bed carefully, slowly, because I was a little sore down there. It didn’t matter. I smiled as I put the pjs back on and stripped the sheets off the bed. This was the best day ever. I knew, finally, how he felt about me, and I loved him right back, with every red hair on my head and every beat of my heart. I patted the jade pendant that hung against my chest. That had brought me a lot of luck. I didn’t even mind how my hair looked as I went down the stairs, wincing a little, and into the kitchen.
“Hi!” I immediately walked to where he sat at the kitchen counter drinking coffee and kissed him. “Good morning!”
“Good morning.”
I went to throw the sheets into the washer and then asked, “Can I make you something for breakfast?”
“No. No, thanks, you don’t have to make me anything. You don’t have to wash the sheets, either.”
“Oh, um, I didn’t want your housekeeper to see them,” I explained. “There was some…there was some stuff on them.”
“Blood,” he stated, and I nodded, a little embarrassed.
“And other stuff.”
“Because I didn’t use a condom. I’m assuming you’re not on any birth control.”
I shook my head. I hadn’t needed to be before.
“Are you ok, Aria? Did I hurt you?” I shook my head but he did, too, like he didn’t believe me. “I can’t believe I did that.”
“Did that? You mean, us sleeping together? It’s pretty normal, isn’t it, for married people?” My happy feeling was fading fast. He wasn’t acting like this was a good thing, not at all, but it was wonderful!
“I drank too much last night and you were a virgin. I can’t believe I did that,” he repeated. His voice was hard and unforgiving.
“It’s ok,” I assured him. “It was fine. Good!”
“No, I’m sure it wasn’t, not for you.” He looked at my stomach. “And I didn’t even use protection. You could be pregnant.”
A little bubble of hope rose up in me. It burst open in my chest, filling me with happiness. “Oh,” I breathed. My palm moved over where a baby might be growing and that was so wonderful, even though it seemed like Cain was upset about what had happened. “I could be pregnant.”
“You’re happy about it,” he stated, his voice like ice. “Jesus.” And he put his face into his hands, just like he’d done after we got married in the garden behind the welding shop. Like his world had just come to an end.
It felt like my heart would beat out of my chest and I heard it thumping like I had the night before, at the dinner party. He didn’t want to have slept with me. He didn’t want a baby with me.
He didn’t want me at all.
“Oh,” I whispered. “Ok.” I turned, not able to see very well where I was going, and went upstairs. I looked around the room, Cain’s room, and not mine at all. I pulled on some leggings, black ones that would disguise any jiggle, and my strongest bra. I left the house through the front so I wouldn’t have to see him again and even though it hurt in a lot of different areas, I made myself run, up and down sidewalks and up and down stairs, over and over again. Each step felt like a punishment and every time my foot hit the pavement it seemed to ask, “Why? Why? Why?”
What was I going to do? How was I going to live like this, with a man who didn’t want me back?
As I rounded the corner to Cain’s block, figuring out a way to get inside and avoid him, I saw the stray. She huddled almost in the middle of the street in front of his house, and someone was going to come and hit her, I was sure. There were the worst drivers here that I’d ever seen in my life, even worse than my old boss, Gary. I thought it was because they were so preoccupied with all their important issues, too important to bother to look at the road. I’d had a few close calls myself and I was a big, fat human with bright red hair.
The stray was a girl, I could tell, and she must have had puppies lately, which would have explained how aggressive she’d been. “We weren’t trying to hurt your babies,” I told her, and put my own hand over my stomach. Oh, my word, I shouldn’t have exercised like that! What if I’d hurt my own baby? Could I have? Because even if Cain didn’t care about me or want me at all, I would love our child more than anything. I would go home and raise her and love her enough that it didn’t matter that her father wanted to forget about us.
I got closer to the house and slowed my steps. “Hey,” I called to the dog. She didn’t move and she didn’t growl or bark. “Hey, honey. Are you ok? Do you want something to eat?”
Cain had been saying that maybe I should have a dog to keep me company. At the least, I could help this one and bring her to the vet and a shelter. Or maybe, if I had to drive back to Tennessee, I could even take her with me to live on my Uncle Harry’s farm. I could get an apartment that allowed pets and the three of us could live together, the baby and the dog and me, the three of us loving each other.
“Hey,” I repeated softly.
“Aria, get away from that dog,” I heard Cain say. I looked up and saw him standing on his steps. “I just called to have it picked up. It’s really aggressive. I think it’ll bite.”
I had called the city too, many times, but no one had ever come. “Maybe she just needs someone to love her,” I said, not taking my eyes off the poor dog. “She’s scared.” I thought I even saw her tail jerk, like it was going to wag. “Hi, baby,” I said. “Can I help you?”
I stretched out my hand, and that was when she lunged, and I heard Cain yell my name.
∞
“We’re almost there. We’ll be landing soon.”
I nodded but didn’t look out the window where Cain was pointing. Good, we were almost in Chattanooga. I stared at the seat in front of me, wondering what I would do when we were. I assumed he’d go to Miss Liddy’s old place and I’d go to my memaw’s house, but we hadn’t discussed it. We hadn’t been talking very much for the past few days about anything very important.
“How is your arm feeling?”
I looked down at it, but the bandage was covered by my sweater sleeve. “It’s fine.” It hurt a little, actually, the bruises from the dog’s jaw aching and the stiches pulling, but it didn’t hurt as much as the cramps I’d had in
my stomach. I’d gotten my period a few days before and told Cain, “I’m not pregnant. You don’t need to worry about that anymore.” He hadn’t had any answer. I’d been worried about the rabies shots that I was getting and if they would be bad for the baby, but now I didn’t have to. I didn’t have to worry about any baby at all.
“Aria,” Cain said, and I quickly wiped my eyes. I just hadn’t been able to stop crying lately and I was sure he was tired of seeing it. He’d been working from home at the big desk in his bedroom while I lay on that hard mattress and tried to sleep, or read the Greek mythology book, or looked at old pictures on my phone. I also stared out the window a lot, not really seeing the house across the street and the little strip of grey sky above it.
“Sorry.”
“No, don’t be sorry.” He put his hand, very lightly, over the bandage on my arm. “Are you sure that you want to go ahead and have the memorial for Aunt Liddy?”
“Of course,” I told him. “We should honor her. It doesn’t have anything to do with me. Don’t you think it would help you, too?”
“Maybe, but I don’t know what it would do to you. You’ve been pretty sad. Is this going to make it worse?”
“It doesn’t have anything to do with me,” I repeated. Cain had been working on pulling the memorial together when he wasn’t working on his business. He’d secured the space in her church and invited her old friends, he had a florist and a caterer, even, to provide food for everyone. It was going to be beautiful, I was sure. “I’m so glad that you’ll do this for Miss Liddy.” Oh, my word. I had to wipe my eyes again. “Maybe I’ll go to sleep for a while.”
I did, and I was still groggy as we landed in Chattanooga. Cain had rented or hired or whatever you did to get us a plane just for ourselves, just like he’d threatened to do for Miss Liddy, to bring us back here. Unlike Miss Liddy, I hadn’t objected. Somehow, I hadn’t really thought about it until we got to the airport and saw the little plane there. I guess I’d had my mind on other things.
Here I Go Page 23