The Devil's Storm

by Lorelai Watson

  She had to know. Talking about the divorce was hard enough; having to admit his wife—ex-wife, shit—was very happy with his brother? It would be like having to shove a knife through his own heart.

  “We do,” Emily agreed with a wan smile. “Oh, Lee, I was wondering if you might help me out with something. My date is stuck talking to your pal, Todd Keller, and I might as well be here all by myself tonight.”

  Lee immediately stood, thankful for Emily’s intervention. “I can get Keller off his back,” he volunteered eagerly. If he got stuck talking business with Keller all night, it would be far more stimulating (and safer) than trying to single-handedly fend off Maisy.

  “I’m sure you can beguile your date away from Todd,” Maisy sneered, but Lee was off in a dash, following right at Emily’s heels. At several steps away, he dared himself to look back at Maisy to see if she would be in close pursuit. It wouldn’t at all surprise him, but luckily, she was seated at the table, moving in on the conversations of other Atlanta elite, downing her Cosmopolitan.

  “I cannot thank you enough,” Lee huffed, stepping to Emily’s side as they exited the main ballroom and into the hall. “I owe you one.”

  Emily rolled her eyes. “I can’t stand that Maisy. You better watch yourself around her.”

  “I know. I didn’t think she’d pounce so soon,” Lee admitted, feeling more and more relieved the further they got away from Maisy. “So…where’s your date?”

  “No date tonight,” Emily smiled. “Well, kind of. I’m here with Aaron, my boss. We’re just here to represent the museum.”

  Lee raised a brow and gave her a sly smile. “Are you sure it’s not a date?”

  “Oh God yes,” she scoffed in response. “Aaron has a husband. He just can’t stand these high society functions. I’m the only girl at work with the wardrobe for such occasions, so here I am.”

  “A victim of your own wardrobe.”

  “Yes, I am,” Emily sighed. “The evening dresses and bling just kinda came with that Atwood territory.”

  Lee nodded as they continued to amble down the hall, wandering

  throughout the country club. “Yeah, that’s one downside. Maddie hated that aspect of being an Atwood. I guess she disliked a lot of them, though.”

  “Hmmm...apparently she didn’t mind being an Atwood too bad.”

  Lee shoved his hands in his tux pockets. “So, you know, too.”

  Emily shot him a look of pity. “Lee, everyone knows. I don’t know-how since they’ve all but disappeared off social media, but it’s pretty common knowledge.”

  “Great,” he muttered as his stomach cringed. The divorce hurt. Still, to this day. But everyone knowing that Madeleine had left him for his brother just added insult to injury. “I, uh, think I’m going to go out. For some air. Excuse me.”

  “Care for some company?”

  Lee turned to look at her to make sure the words had come from her and not someone else. Her face had drooped, and she looked as if she were sitting on pins and needles as she awaited his response. This couldn’t have been any easier for her, nothing but insult over injury. “Yeah,” he nodded. “I’d like that.”

  He led the way this time, back through the corridor and through the French doors to the back patio, overlooking the long expanse of golf course green. He took a full breath of air, but the heat sweltered, and he kept thinking of July 12, and how he’d screwed up his one conversation with Madeleine and how much he still loved her and damn, it was hot out. “You know this whole thing is just a bunch of fucking bullshit.”

  Emily turned her back to the green. “It is bullshit.”

  “You miss him?”

  She looked up at him, eyes darkened by a certain sadness. She looked beautiful. Jesus Christ… was that what he had found attractive about Madeleine all along? That undeniably beautiful sadness that made her seem otherworldly and disappointed with this mess she’d found herself in?

  “I do. I mean, I’m over it, and I just want him to be happy. But when I see something that reminds me of him or I’m stuck at an event like this, I always think of how he would have made it feel like Disney World instead.”

  Emily was smiling wistfully, eyes focused on the wall ahead.

  “You still love him,” Lee stated.

  “In a way, but there’s no way I’d ever want to be with him. It was so obvious how much Adrian loved her. Nothing was more important than Maddie.”

  Lee felt his chin drop as a stinging miasma of shock and pain

  swirled through his body. He gave a nervous laugh. “Was it? Because by the time I realized what was going on, they were on their way out of my life.”

  Emily shrugged. “You were a hot mess, Lee. You could barely keep up with yourself, much less notice what was happening.”

  Lee started to defend himself, but instead, looked at the ground and kept his mouth shut. He knew there was no way to defend himself against that statement. It was true, and maybe if he had been sober and faithful, Madeleine never would have left. And maybe if she hadn’t left, they’d be happy by now. His brother would still be his best friend.

  But that train of logic was exactly what Henry would challenge. While he was (or should have been) in control of his actions, that didn’t mean he could control Madeleine’s, and if she loved Adrian, would it have mattered even if he had never stepped a toe out of line?

  “But you’re different now,” Emily went on. “I mean, we’ve barely spoken a civil word before. We never would have been able to have this conversation in the past.”

  “Well,” Lee began with a shrug. “You saved me from Maisy, so I’m now forever in your debt. The least I can do is not be an asshole.”

  She smiled but shook her head. “You don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that you’re actually sober for once?”

  “519 days sober,” he was happy to report. “Although it sucks when you’re stuck at parties where everyone’s got a cocktail, and you can just smell it. Or when your wife rides off into the sunset with your brother.”

  Lee felt her hand grace the back of his shoulder as she turned to face the green. “So you’re in my debt, you say?”

  “God...I’ve said the wrong thing. Again,” he joked.

  “Can you drive me home? These shoes are killing me, and I don’t think I can protect you from Maisy all night long. Plus, it’ll give you a good excuse to get out of here.”

  Lee agreed to it without the slightest hesitation; anything seemed

  a far cry better than avoiding Maisy and lamenting the loss of Jack Daniels.

  Chapter Nine

  “A new book isn’t going to write itself,” Evelyn piped with glee as she painted her nails a deep shade of oxblood red. “Or are you feeling all washed up? Pity. What a short career.”

  Madeleine took both hands and rubbed her face in frustration. A headache was taking hold. Adrian was off doing God-knows-what down in the basement. The last she’d seen him he was playing with his CAD software and like a rush he ran downstairs, a cacophony of muffled sound rising to the first floor. Engineers were every bit as quirky as writers.

  “This was so much easier without antidepressants and a distracting boyfriend,” Madeleine complained. Her eyes watered from the pressure behind them. The sunlight streaming through her office windows advertised a beautiful Sunday afternoon in radiant Savannah, Georgia, free from the worry and care of needing to write another book.

  “You could stop taking the antidepressants and crawl back to Lee. It seems depression is—or was—your muse.”

  “Ignoring that,” Madeleine muttered in response.

  “Don’t you wonder how he is? Is he moving on? Maybe he’s even screwing Brecklyne again. Or is he terribly heartbroken? What if he’s like you and constantly on the verge of throwing himself off a building?” Evelyn posed. “Why, I don’t think I could live with the guilt.”

  “You poisoned your husband and watched him die, clawing at his throat on your bedroom floor while you ate chocolat
e-covered cherries on a chaise lounge,” Madeleine muttered. “And then you slept with his best friend.”

  Evelyn mulled it over for a minute. “Eh, he had it coming. Like Lee, he was a bad man. Always liked that about him.”

  Madeleine huffed. “Lee’s not a bad man. Just…very misguided.”

  “Which one of us is worse? The woman who kills a bad man or

  the one who breaks the heart of a man walking a thin line between good and bad?”

  “Oh for Chrissakes, go away,” Madeleine ordered, and with a flick of her wrist, Evelyn disappeared into thin air. The blinking insertion point on a blank document was almost annoying as Evelyn was, and Madeleine shut the screen of her laptop too hard. She needed to go out for a walk alone. Clear her head. If inspiration wasn’t going to come to her, she’d have to go searching for it herself.

  She’d stop in downstairs and tell Adrian she was going. Otherwise, he’d worry and blow her phone up while she was trying to clear her mind. But the second she stepped onto the landing, Madeleine froze. Adrian was speaking in a hushed tone, and he sounded worried.

  “No…she took like three. All negative.”

  Who was he telling about their pregnancy scare? That was a moment she’d prefer to keep between the two of them. It certainly wasn’t anyone else’s business.

  “Yes, I’m relieved. To be honest, I just don’t think we’re ready for that.”

  Well, she didn’t disagree. But Adrian was the one who acted like he couldn’t wait to have a baby, and it had been over a year. That wasn’t long in the grand scheme of things, but her biological clock was ticking faster than Adrian’s.

  “No, Dad. She wouldn’t do that on purpose. And it’s not like—No. Stop. We said we weren’t going to argue over it—”

  Richard. Of course. He never liked her in the first place and now that she’d left one son to be with the other, she was sure her daughter-in-law approval rating had taken a major dip with the Atwoods. Not that Madeleine felt too fond of them anymore, either.

  “Fine. Either way, she’s not pregnant. You don’t have to worry about the family fortune being squandered by my illegitimate family.”

  The conversation ended. Adrian cursed in anger. The room went silent. A heat of anger rose in her chest as she sat on the steps, but she didn’t know whether to direct it to Richard or herself. What happened the day Richard and Maggie Beth had confronted Adrian about their affair—it was still so damned hard to use that word—was still unknown, but Adrian had never wanted to talk about it much. All Madeleine knew was that the fray hadn’t been pretty and that it had obviously hurt Adrian. She couldn’t help but feel if she had kept her feelings to herself, Adrian would be a year into a happy marriage with Emily, and he wouldn’t find himself separated from his family.

  Regardless, Adrian had no business telling Richard about the possibility she was pregnant in the first place. These days, Adrian barely spoke to his parents, so why would he tell them something so private?

  “How long have you been standing there?”

  Madeleine snapped out of her thoughts and saw Adrian standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Enough to catch the tail end of your conversation,” Madeleine admitted. “Didn’t sound pleasant.”

  He shook his head. “It wasn’t.”

  Awkward, suffocating silence filled the space between them.

  “Adrian, why would you tell your father that? You two barely even speak anymore.”

  “I…” he trailed. Adrian stopped, searching for the right words to say. “It was kind of an accident—”

  “An accident?” Madeleine questioned, skeptical.

  He explained in a nervous spillage of words. “Yeah, Mom called yesterday while I was at CVS and the cashier just had to make a remark about the number of pregnancy tests I was buying. Mom overheard, Dad started in, and the whole thing was just a damned mess."

  “And that explains why you were in such a bad mood yesterday when you came back,” Madeleine interrupted.

  “I wasn’t in a bad mood.”

  “You were nervous before you left, but by the time you got back, you were so… sullen,” Madeleine said, finally deciding on the correct adjective to describe him. “I can’t imagine how you would have reacted if that test had been positive.”

  He laughed, which only infuriated her. “Baby, if you were pregnant, everyone in Savannah would already know because I would’ve shouted it from the rooftops—”

  “You seemed pretty happy to report to your father that we’re not.”

  Adrian narrowed his eyes at her. “Do you want a baby? Now?”

  “Are you kidding me?” Madeleine fired back. “I am scared to death to be pregnant again. I know I’m putting a baby and myself at risk. And I damn sure wouldn’t do it for money I don’t need!”

  “So, let me get this straight…you don’t want a baby now, maybe

  ever—”

  “I didn’t say I never wanted one, just not now.”

  “And I don’t want one right now, either. I want more time with you first, but we’re going to argue because we agree that having a baby right now wouldn’t be ideal?” Adrian challenged. “How is that logical?”

  “Don’t you dare do that to me.”

  “What? Make sense?”

  “You’re acting like I’m completely crazy,” she accused. “You’re the one who not two days ago asked when we’re going to get married when we’re going to have a baby, and yet when the possibility arises, you freeze up and backpedal. I’m sorry, but it’s not exactly comforting.”

  Adrian hesitated, mulling over her words with lips pressed into a hard line. “Just because I mention it doesn’t mean I’m ready now. I want a family with you, but I want more time with you first.”

  “And I agree, but things don’t always go to plan. After Lee, I need to know you’re not going to abandon me when things don’t go our way.”

  His jaw fell. “Why would you think that? After all, we have been through—”

  “Yes, after all we’ve been through, you’d think you wouldn’t freak out over something not quite going to plan. Or that you’d be honest and quit trying to cover the fact that you miss your family like I wouldn’t know.”

  Adrian stopped, placing his hands on his hips and staring down at the floor before answering, but Madeleine didn’t give him the chance. “And I wish you would tell me about that day your parents confronted you about us because I still don’t know the full story and something about it still bothers you.”

  “You know the whole story,” he denied.

  “I know you argued. I know your father must have been angrier than your mother. And of course he was. He didn’t want me married to Lee, and he sure as hell wouldn’t want me married to his favorite son.”

  “Me? I’m the favorite?” Adrian demanded. “If that’s true, why is it I’m the one they won’t speak to? Lee was constantly drunk, had an affair, risked losing control of our company, and all I did was fall in love with you.”

  The last statement doused the fire that had ignited in Madeleine.

  Did he really think falling in love with her was a mistake? Like their entire relationship was a mistake? “Oh… Well, at least I understand how you really feel about it. At least you were finally honest.” Her vision waned with tears, but she wasn’t going to let him see her cry. Not again. She stood, walked upstairs, eyes trained on the front door and the promise of escape.

  “Madeleine, you know that’s not what I meant—”

  She didn’t even turn to face him. Instead, she opened the door and walked right out into the bright Savannah sun, slamming the door shut behind her.

  Chapter Ten

  Evelyn cackled all the way from Gaston Street to Drayton. “One year! That’s all you two lasted! You ruined an entire family for a year together!”

  Madeleine slung the tears from her eyes with the back of her hands, but fighting Evelyn was often impossible. What if she was right? What if Adrian was packing his bags? He obviously mi
ssed his family. She couldn’t blame him for that. He missed them. Maggie Beth and Richard, faulted as they were, had always been a safe harbor for their sons. Her own parents had been nothing but heavy anchors, but Madeleine knew what it was to crave that sense of belonging. And now, she’d taken it away from Adrian, possibly forever.

  “It’s one fight. It doesn’t mean it’s over,” Madeleine murmured out loud. She needed to hear it and hope it was true.

  “Obviously, you didn’t hear him,” Evelyn called from behind her, slow heel clicks marking time against the pavement. “Here’s an elementary-level question for you—what does Lee’s affair, his alcoholism, and Adrian falling in love with you all have in common?”

  “No, no, no. It wasn’t a mistake. He said that just two days ago.”

  “He also asked when you were going to have a baby and get married, but one phone call to his parents changed all of that,” Evelyn countered. “Apparently the soul-enrapturing love you thought you felt for one another couldn’t withstand Maggie Beth and Richard Atwood. It would seem Adrian talks a good game, but he won’t commit.”

  Madeleine felt her shoulders fall. It would make sense. He and Emily dated three years and had seemed like romantic perfection. Until she came along.

  “Oh my God. I’m the other woman now,” Madeleine realized, turning toward Evelyn. “What the hell have I done?”

  Evelyn raised a brow. “What, indeed? He could be happily married by now. You’re the one who kissed him in Tybee. And Adrian’s just a man. Like his brother. Apparently, both of them stray easily. What was that you said to Brecklyne? It didn’t take much to keep Lee interested. Any open set of legs would do.”

  Madeleine shook her head. “Adrian’s not Lee. He’s not. They’re complete, polar opposites.”

  “You did say Lee wasn’t bad. Just misguided.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “And Adrian’s already proving to be a lot more like his brother than originally thought.”

  “No, he’s not. This is different.”

  Evelyn glared at Madeleine. “You keep saying that. A lot. I fail to see how any of this is any different from your marriage with Lee. Maybe even worse.”