BLISS: A Wedding Enemies to Lovers Alpha Bad-Boy Billionaire Romance

by Marr, Maggie

“Why now? Why are you telling me now?”

  “Because crazy Kendall said she’d out your identity to the world if I didn’t tell you the truth.”

  Tara looks away from me. She crosses her arms in front of her and rubs her upper arms with her palms.

  “I...Jake, I did it then for a story, but I wouldn’t do it again. I love you. I’m in love with you.” Her gaze locks to mine. “I gave up my book deal for you. Even told Weston I wouldn’t do another article on you. I’ve—”

  Her gaze is locked with mine. There is a plea in her eyes.

  “Please,” she says. “I can’t imagine my life without you.”

  “I feel the same way,” I say, my heart pumping out equal parts love and anger. “But you still have to go.”

  Chapter 56

  The silence after losing Tara is deafening.

  Before, with Susie, there was chaos after her death. Chaos and tragedy and family and friends, and a funeral. Out of that chaos came a need for silence, which was granted to me. Losing Tara, saying goodbye to the relationship we tried to build, despite the lies and omissions, was not externally chaotic. It wasn’t loud, but it was deafening in its silence.

  I walk into Mom’s new residential facility. The air is cool and slams against my face. I pull off my sunglasses and my gaze sweeps the front entrance, which is determined to look like the front room of a home.

  “Hey, I’m Mrs. Reynold’s son,” I say.

  The man sitting at the front desk nods and pushes a button so I can enter the home. The lock is a precaution so that the residents don’t wander away, and after Mom went missing a few months ago. I understand the precaution, but my heart hates that my mother is in a locked facility.

  I walk through the living room, past the dining room and kitchen toward the hallway. Three doors down on the left I stop and knock. The place is small and each resident’s room is a mini-suite with a front room, bedroom, and bathroom.

  “Come in,” Mom calls.

  I open the door.

  “Uncle Jake!”

  Lily runs toward me. Daisy bounds after her. I bend down and hug Lily and give Daisy a pat on the head. Lily wraps her arms around me.

  “I miss you Uncle Jake. When are you coming over to see me?”

  I glance at Rachel. Her lips form a severe line and the muscle in her jaw flinches. Her gaze darts from me and Lily back to Mom.

  “We were just going,” Rachel says. Her tone icy. She bends down and kisses Mom on the cheek.

  “Thank you for watching Rachel,” Mom says. “I should be feeling better soon.” Rachel presses her hand to Mom’s shoulder and squeezes. “No problem.” Big sis fights back tears.

  “Hi Mom.” I set a box of See’s truffles on the table by the front door and walk to her.

  “Richard, how do you get handsomer every time I see you?”

  I smile and kiss her cheek. I look at Rachel. “Don’t go on my account.”

  She pulls at the collar of her shirt. “We’re not, Lily has a music lesson tonight.”

  “No I don’t,” Lily yells from the far corner.

  “Yes you do,” Rachel snaps.

  “You can’t avoid me forever,” I say quietly, so only Rachel can hear.

  “Why not? Weren’t you going to keep this a secret forever?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Right about that,” Rachel says. “One is good for my mental health and Lily’s, the other puts my entire career in jeopardy.” She leans forward. “And makes me question your mental stability.”

  Rachel’s eyes flash with anger and concern.

  “We need to discuss this,” I say. “I think that you’ll understand if I can just explain what I was doing and why I—”

  “No. I don’t want to know.” Rachel holds up her hand. “The less I know the better.” She turns toward the front of Mom’s room where Mom and Lily are playing with Daisy. “I need you to get anything you want out of Mom’s house. I’m putting it on the market.”

  “No you’re not,” I say.

  Her gaze cuts me like a hot knife through butter. “Yes, I am. I don’t want that place. I don’t want the memories of the past, especially since our future is going to be so different.”

  The words she says, combined with her tone, shock me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that if you have that much disregard for me and my job, and potentially even Lily’s safety, then I don’t know you at all and I have no intention of letting a person that selfish and...and....wanton be a part of my life.”

  “I’m sorry,” I say

  “For what?” Rachel shoots back. “For fucking that many women, or for putting me in charge?” Rachel’s gaze glances from me to Mom. Her bottom lip quivers and she fights back tears.

  “Rachel you three are the only things I have in my life. Can’t we...can’t we get together tomorrow to discuss this? Please, let me tell you what happened. Let me tell you why—”

  “I can’t jeopardize my career and Lily’s future while you get your shit show in order, OK? So no, we can’t get together tomorrow, and to be fair, it may be a long while before I feel differently.”

  A knot the size of a melon forms in my throat. These are the women I love. These three are my life and I’ve disappointed the one woman that our entire family looks to for love and guidance. Rachel is our touchstone, our matriarch, the foundation of our family ever since Mom’s mind fled the jurisdiction. I’ve disappointed her and the idea that I might be banished from the warmth of this family saddens me.

  My chest tightens. I fight the tears that press into my eyes.

  I walk to Lily. I scoop her into my arms and press my face into her curls. I love her. I love Lily with the kind of love that is amazing and pure and heals me in more ways than I ever could have imagined. She saved my life when she was born. She saved our family. I will not cry. I will not give her a bad memory because she doesn’t know...she doesn’t know that I’ve fucked up in what could be an unforgiveable fashion, and that quite possibly, her mother, my sister, may not let me see her again for a very long time.

  I look at Rachel and Mom and Daisy and Lily, who plants a kiss on my face, smiles, and wiggles out of my arms so that she can play with Daisy. I pet Daisy and look into Lily’s eyes.

  “Call me whenever you want and if Mommy says it’s okay. Bye, Lily.” I force myself not to cry. “I’ll see you and Daisy soon.”

  The tears are about to win and I don’t want that. I turn to the door because an exit is the only way. My niece will never know how badly my heart is breaking.

  * * *

  “You’ve broken up with Tara, the only woman you can sleep with?”

  I nod.

  “You aren’t speaking with your sister or seeing your niece?”

  I nod again.

  “Your mother was just put in an assisted living facility.”

  “Residential care.”

  Vida raises an eyebrow. “Excuse me, residential care.”

  “Yes.”

  She taps her pen onto her pad of paper. “How long before your head explodes?”

  “That’s why I come to you.”

  “Right, but Jake, you have to work with me a little. I mean these are all some major changes.”

  “I don’t know how to fix any of them or if I want to fix the thing with Tara.”

  I do. I desperately want to fix the thing with Tara.

  “Are you being honest with yourself?”

  “Honest with myself? Yes. With you? No. Look, here’s the thing, I want Tara. I love Tara, I know that. But I can’t trust Tara. I know that too.”

  Vida nods and scribbles a note on her pad of paper. Looks up at me.

  “Okay, but then how were you able to trust Susie?”

  I sigh.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I didn’t? Maybe I couldn’t trust her either, but I was just so fucking obsessed with getting what I wanted that I was willing to be with her no matter what she did. Maybe I thought eventually I co
uld love her through it, maybe I thought....” The light clicks on in my head. “Maybe I thought I could save her.”

  Vida’s gaze is locked onto me as though she’s willing a child to take his first step.

  “And Tara doesn’t need to be saved.”

  “That sounds plausible,” Vida says.

  “Still doesn’t solve my problem because I absolutely do not trust her and I don’t know if I ever will.” I shift on the couch. “Or if I can.”

  “Is that a fair assessment?”

  “She lied about writing the article and stole the numbers from my phone.”

  “They are egregious offenses,” Vida says. “What about your side of this? Are your hands clean?”

  I lean back against the couch. Are they? No, not really. I slept with Tara, ditched her, didn’t tell her that she’d slept with a man who slept with hundreds of women as his vocation, then invited to be one of those women, left her crying on a couch....

  I lean forward and put my elbows on my knees. “I...I can’t see a way to bridge that gap.”

  “Okay, what about Rachel and Lily?”

  My heart yanks and twists.

  “She won’t speak to me.”

  “She feels betrayed.”

  “By the person she trusted.”

  Vida nods.

  “You may need to give Rachel time. She loves you and you love her, which is obvious based on the relationship you’ve built. She simply may need time to work through her feelings.”

  “Right. Patience isn’t my strong suite.”

  “And yet often, patience and time are the only things that can get us to where we need to be both emotionally and in our inter-personal relationships.”

  Vida’s words resonate with me but still don’t fix the fucking pain traveling through my chest. All I have left is Mom. And reports from Fletcher, the dog trainer once every couple of days on how Lily is doing with Daisy. Yes, Rachel lets me Facetime with Lily and Daisy, but she doesn’t invite me over, nor does she talk to me.

  And Tara.

  My heart twists tighter. Tara seems to have disappeared again. That is her MO when things aren’t working between us. This time I won’t chase her. This time I won’t go to Malibu and look for her, nor will I go to Warren and tell him not to transfer her. This time she can go. In fact, maybe that would be the best thing that could happen. Maybe I should tell Warren that Tara needs to go and work in the San Francisco office.

  “Our time is up today. You know your six months is up today,” Vida says.

  “What are you talking about?” I stand and turn to Vida.

  “The court only requires six months of anger-management therapy. You’ve completed that requirement.”

  A tiny smile pulls over my face. “So I’m well. Like mentally, one hundred percent?” I ask in a teasing voice.

  “You’ve done good work here. I’m not sure any human is ever ‘well’ when it comes to mental health because I don’t know that we’re ever broken. I can say you’ve confronted a number of problems and the requirement is complete.”

  She smiles and she pushes a strand of silver-gray hair behind her ear.

  “I’ll see you next week,” I say, and turn toward the door. “I’ve still got a whole lot of stuff to work through.”

  “No problem,” Vida says. “Next week then.”

  I walk through the door, confident that there is at least one woman in my life that thinks I’m making progress, still speaking to me, and that I’m not completely insane.

  Chapter 57

  Richard, come and feed the birds with me.”

  A breeze ruffles Mom’s hair and she walks out the back door of her residential facility into the giant backyard. The sun streams down. It’s nearly fall in Southern California. The backyard is filled with shade and this place is located closer to the ocean than Mom’s place, so it is cooler too.

  She walks toward a tree and sprinkles bird seed on the ground. I follow behind.

  “Do you remember the hummingbird feeders you used to put out every spring in the backyard?”

  I remember Dad doing that.

  “I loved those.” Mom smiles. She sits beside me on a wooden bench in the shade. We watch the birds swoop and dive and then peck at the bird feed she’s sprinkled by the tree.

  “How is it going with Tara?”

  I whip my gaze toward Mom and in this moment there is lucidity. A wicked-sharp gleam in her eyes, like the picture from Dad’s desk drawer, as though Mom is completely present. I want to weep because we’re getting nearer to the end of her lucidity. The other day she held her toothbrush in her hand and had no idea what she was supposed to do with it.

  “We...we broke up.”

  “Ah,” Mom says. “But it was different than Susie, yes? I mean she didn’t have…”Mom glances away from me. “She didn’t have that same type of problem, did she?”

  “No.”

  Irony strikes me dead in the face, because in this scenario, it is me who had the problem, not Tara. The need to subvert my emotions by fucking every woman I possibly could. By fulfilling my vocation.

  “I...she did something I can’t forgive.”

  “Can’t or won’t?” Mom tilts her head and that sharp-eyed gaze that I desperately miss, focuses on me.

  “Can I take your picture, Mom?”

  I slip my phone from my pocket and point it in her direction.

  “Jake, this is silly,” she says, but pats her hair, tilts her head, and smiles.

  I know as I press the button this will be the final picture of my mother with her sharp-eyed gaze knowing everything about where she is and who she is with. I feel this to my core. In fact, if I can let my heart believe it, this will be our final conversation.

  “I love you, Mom.”

  Wanting her to take that with her on the journey I know she will leave for soon, the journey, that while her body will remain here with us, her mind will be unreachable by me and Rachel and Lily.

  “Hey, want to see the picture of you with Lily, Rachel, and Daisy?”

  Mom smiles and nods and I turn my phone to her. Again with the damn. fucking knot in my throat and the tears threatening to careen down my cheeks. I pinch my nose.

  “Darn allergies,” I say and smile. “Lily looks so much like you Mom.”

  I try hard to keep my voice from cracking. “She loves you so much. We all do.”

  “I love all of you too.”

  She looks at me and squeezes my arm. For a second, I see it. I see that she knows that she’s missing giant chunks of time from her memory, but can’t bear to speak about it, not in this moment, not in what could be her final moments with me.

  “Jake, you deserve to be happy. We all deserve to be happy in life. There was a time that I was unhappy with your father—”

  “Mom you don’t—”

  “No, please, let me. It’s...it’s important to me.”

  She looks into my eyes and I know she must say these words to me.

  “I didn’t think I could ever forgive him, or trust him, or even if I’m completely honest, if I would ever love him again. Especially after what happened between us. But Jake...I let him back into our home and into my heart because he said I could trust him, and I could love him, and that he would do anything he could to prove that to me”

  Mom smiles and leans forward.

  “I took that leap of faith and I’ve spent the rest of my life grateful that I could be that brave, and some would say foolish. But life is full of risks and sometimes those risks are worth the fear.”

  I turn away from Mom and look across the yard toward the sun setting. A deep breath fills my lungs.

  “Mom I do love her. I’m afraid. I just...”

  I turn back and the sharp gleam in Mom’s eyes is gone, replaced with a blank look of child-like happiness.

  I don’t cry. I fight that urge. Instead, I reach my hand out to my mom, or the woman that looks just like her but has no memory of her life or me. I grasp her hand and smile at her, e
ven while I want to cry.

  “Thank you, Mom.”

  She smiles and turns toward the birds, and I don’t even know if she remembers my name.

  * * *

  I walk into Rachel’s house because the door is unlocked.

  “Hey, I’m here.”

  Lily tears down the stairs with Daisy hot on her heels. All big puppy paws, she tumbles after Lily, the two of them an adorable pair. Rachel walks out of the kitchen and looks at me.

  “Lily and Daisy have puppy school.”

  “I know.”

  I bend down and scratch Daisy’s head. She’s so happy her entire backside wiggles. “Fletcher’s already in the backyard.”

  “See you when we’re finished Uncle Jake.” Lily bolts through the house to the yard.

  “Why are you here?” Big Sis says to me, her arms crossed.

  “We have to talk.”

  She sighs and even though she’s tough, she knows I’m right.

  She turns toward the kitchen and I follow her. From this spot we can watch Lily, Daisy, and Fletcher in the backyard.

  “So talk,” she says.

  She opens a cabinet and pulls out a glass, uncorks the wine bottle on the counter, and pours herself a drink.

  “It started about a year after Susie died. It was consensual, word of mouth, and never commercial, in any way.”

  “No money. Not ever.”

  I shake my head. “Not ever.”

  “Perks. Gifts. Meals. Travel?”

  “No, not generally. But if there were take-out meals I paid. Hotel rooms all paid for by me. I did receive one gift from a woman I saw for nearly five years.”

  Rachel swirls her wine and takes a sip. “But that was the anomaly, not the rule.”

  I nod.

  “Fine. So you’re a sex addict like Susie. I wish I’d known sooner. Maybe I would’ve judged her less harshly.”

  “This wasn’t about the sex.”

  “It wasn’t about the sex for Susie either.”

  I scrub my hand through my hair and look at Rachel. “This was because of what happened to Susie. I never wanted any woman to feel like she did. Like there was nowhere to turn. And I....I needed the physical intimacy and even the emotional connection, but in a way that I could control. A way that didn’t put me at risk. A way that allowed me to feel safe. That what happened between me and Susie, that I would never fall in love again, and it worked—”