by Tia Louise
On my way out, my eyes landed on a stack of envelopes sitting on the small table by the front door. The mail! I paused only briefly to spread them out, and my breath caught when I saw it—Aunt Bea’s check! It came! I nearly burst into tears at the sight of it. The envelope restored the tiniest bit of hope I needed. I was going to survive this. I was going to be okay. I might be alone, but I was going to make it through.
I snatched it up and walked out the door not looking back. I would never look back.
We lifted my huge suitcase into Elaine’s car and jumped inside. I watched as she guided us out of the long driveway away from the Reynolds mansion, but when we reached the main road, I put my hand on her arm.
“Wait before we get going.” My chest ached with what I was about to ask my best friend, but I didn’t have a choice. I had to have closure. “There’s something I need to do first. Will you help me?”
Her brows drew together, but she waited. “Of course, what is it?”
I pulled out the three pages that included Derek’s email and Sloan’s response. “I printed this off Sloan’s computer. Would you read it to me?”
Elaine was still frowning, but she took the sheets from me. “To [email protected]...” Instantly she lowered the pages and looked at me. “Is this… Derek?”
“Please just read it,” I said, every muscle in my body clenched.
“Derek, I hope you remember your old mentor Sloan.” She stopped again, taking a breath and staring at me, brows clutched.
“Keep going,” I whispered.
“I found you online, and I hope you might be willing to do a favor for an old friend. Of course, I’ll pay you well.” Again she stopped. “Oh, Mel. I don’t think I can—”
“Please, Elaine.” My voice was sharp now. “Just read the damn email.”
She took a deep breath and continued. “I’m afraid my wife is having an affair, and I need someone I can trust to verify this for me. Attached is her photograph and information. She is somewhere this week. She wouldn’t tell me where. I think it might be with him.”
A knot tightened in my throat, and again Elaine paused. But instead of speaking, she took another deep breath and continued. “As you can imagine, this is very sensitive and quite humiliating. I hope we can keep this off the record.”
My head dropped at the phrase. It was the same thing he’d said to me after Patrick had revealed the location of their offices. Off the record.
“Your friend, Sloan Reynolds,” she finished. Then she lowered the pages to her lap.
His friend. I couldn’t speak. I had gone numb and nothing felt like it made sense anymore.
“He was spying on you?” Her voice cracked high with disbelief. “Was Patrick in on it, too?”
I shrugged, blinking slowly. Then I forced the words. “He responded. I printed out the whole exchange.”
She lifted the pages again and folded the first one back. “Dear Sloan,” then she glanced at me, but I was still sitting frozen, unable to feel. “I’m sorry to hear of your marital difficulties. I did observe your wife this week. She was with another female at the Cactus Flower Spa in Scottsdale, Arizona. But I have to confess, I did not observe her with any male guests. As far as I could tell, she was alone the entire week. Sorry not to be more help. No payment needed. Cordially, Derek.”
At that she stared at the printout, her brow lined. She flipped the pages back and forth, then she turned to me in her seat. “Weren’t you and Derek…?”
For a moment, all I could do was stare at my lap in stunned silence. Then I slowly nodded, finding my voice. “We were together,” I said softly.
Her eyebrows flew up. “You slept together?”
“Several times.”
“But he said…” She looked out the front window a moment. “I don’t understand.”
I reached for the door handle, lifting it, and getting out of the car. I went around and opened the hatchback, unzipping my suitcase and digging through the file folders I’d placed on top until I found the one I was looking for. I walked back to the passenger’s side and got in, pulling the door closed. Then I reached down by my feet and dug out the small silk pouch I’d hidden in my bag.
“Would you please do something for me, Elaine?” I looked at my friend with such seriousness, she immediately nodded. “I need you to drive us to Princeton. There’s something I have to do.”
Her jaw dropped. “But—”
“Please? Sloan can’t call the shots any more.”
I watched as she chewed her lip. Then she grasped the steering wheel and turned her car toward Interstate 95.
Chapter 15 – The Humiliating Truth
The Alexander-Knight office was easy to find using the directions on my smart phone, and we were pulling into the corporate entrance in less than two hours. Neither Elaine nor I had spoken much on the drive over. She had turned on talk radio shortly after leaving Baltimore and withdrawn into her own private thoughts. I could only assume she was processing like me, and I welcomed her silence. I wasn’t sure how well she was keeping up with Patrick since our trip to Scottsdale, but I was almost certain he hadn’t told her about this.
As for me, I was still reeling from my discovery, and I’d spent the entire time thinking and re-thinking what I planned to say. Derek had lied to me, slept with me, known the entire time I was dealing with a pending divorce and a suspicious husband, and he’d never said a word.
Sloan called him his friend. The very thought of them being friends made me sick and angry and nauseated and… miserable. I wanted to believe Derek didn’t know the extent of Sloan’s atrocities, still if he thought of himself as a hero, a gallant fellow who’d protected my honor, I wanted to be sure he knew the full extent of how he had helped his “friend.”
Elaine pulled into the front parking lot and sat in the car looking up at the building. The exterior looked exactly as it did on the company website—limestone and blonde brick, silver windows, four floors. It was one of several office buildings clustered in a pentagon formation and sharing a common entrance and courtyard. In keeping with the season, it was decorated in orange, black, and purple, corn stalks and autumn wreaths. Someone had hung what appeared to be a witch smashing into the trunk of one of the trees. Stuffed arms and legs were splayed on either side of it along with a wrecked broomstick. I was sure it was meant to be funny, but nothing in me felt like laughing.
“I don’t think I can go in there,” Elaine whispered. “I can’t see Patrick right now. I still haven’t decided what I want to say to him.”
“Well, I know exactly what I want to say.” I grasped the door handle and stepped out of the car. “Wait here. I won’t be long.”
I had the two manila folders in my hands and the small silk pouch. What I intended to do would take less than fifteen minutes.
Stepping into the lobby of Office Building A, I scanned the directory until I located them on the fourth floor. The only thing I hadn’t considered was they might be out to lunch, but I wasn’t letting anything slow me down. I was acting on pure adrenaline now.
The elevator opened to a sleek, glass and stainless suite. Their entrance had the names Alexander & Knight lasered into the glass doors, and a receptionist’s desk was situated right in the center of an open foyer with white leather chairs placed near a low, mahogany table.
Copies of Forbes, Time, and oddly an OK! magazine were arranged on the table. I stalked out, headed straight for his door. The blonde receptionist said something I ignored. I scanned the plaques outside each until I found the one reading Derek Alexander. I didn’t even knock before entering his huge, corner office. He was turned in his black leather desk chair looking out a wall of windows, but when he heard the door, he started speaking.
“I don’t know how you do it, Patrick,” he breathed, turning the chair around as he finished. “I can’t stop thinking…” His eyes locked on mine. “About her.”
Derek stood quickly, and seeing him again for the first time since that week,
dressed in grey slacks and a dress shirt unbuttoned at the top, blue eyes glowing beneath his dark brow, I had to fight all the emotions warring in my chest. The physical longing, the anger, the betrayal, the unbelievable, gut-wrenching pain. I ignored all of it—including the weakness in my knees at the blaze in his eyes when he saw me. I forced my mind to focus on what he’d done.
“Melissa,” he said. “What—” He started around the desk toward me when I cut him off.
“Don’t come any closer,” I said. My stomach was in knots, and seeing the expression on his face—the frown melting into joy going back to a frown at my words—it took everything I had to control myself, to take it slow and be a professional. To handle him the way he’d handled me.
He stopped. “I don’t understand. I’m so happy to see you. I-I want to—”
“Just hold that thought,” I said, my hand extended as I walked to the opposite side of the desk from him. “I’m here for a reason.”
“To see me, I hope,” his voice was soft and low. It made my eyes burn.
My jaw clenched against any display of emotion. I’d had enough of men and their games. “It seems you know my ex-husband Sloan. You did some work for him a few weeks ago? In Scottsdale?”
Instantly his shoulders dropped. “Oh, Mel,” he exhaled. “I can explain—” he started toward me again, palms out.
“Not until I’ve said what I came here to say.”
His hands dropped and he studied my face. Then he nodded as if he understood, but I was pretty sure he didn’t. “Will you sit?” he asked, going back around to his chair.
“I won’t be that long.” I pulled out one of the manila folders I’d brought, opening it on his desk and taking out the first document—the printout of their email exchange. “You confirmed for him that I was at the spa resort, but you saw no signs of me with a man? I suppose that was to cover your ass.”
“No,” he started. “It wasn’t. I wanted to let you decide what you wanted—”
“Save it to the end,” I continued, pulling out the next sheet. “I guess he told you his side of the story. That he didn’t know why I was trying to leave him, that I must have another man somewhere. Maybe that I was crazy? I know he repeatedly told the staff such lies, and he always wondered aloud how I could throw away our life together.”
Derek’s lips pressed into a line, but he didn’t speak. He waited for me to finish.
The next print out was a copy of the confirmation from the first escort service. “He wasn’t so worried about our life together when he started fucking prostitutes.”
I pulled out another contact, then another. One by one, I put the sheets on his desk, and Derek lifted them. I watched the muscle in his jaw flex as he quickly scanned their contents.
“The first time he said it was the long trip,” I continued. “He was missing me, horny as hell, I think he said. And with a prostitute, it didn’t count, right? She was just a faceless whore.”
His eyes traveled back to me, but I could tell he was waiting, letting me say what I needed to say.
“After that, I couldn’t sleep with him anymore.” My voice wavered a bit. It was the first time I was saying all of this out loud. And to the one person I had mistakenly thought I could trust.
“That was about a year ago, right after we moved to Baltimore. Six months ago, he decided he was tired of waiting for me to get over it. Marriage counseling wasn’t working, and he wanted to fuck his wife, goddammit.”
At that, I pulled out the photo I’d guarded so closely. The one I’d never wanted anyone to see. The humiliating truth I still couldn’t get my mind around. It had happened to me. To me! And I’d always believed I was smarter than that, a better judge of character. Seemed I was wrong twice.
I paused, studying the glossy print a moment, my throat tightening. Then I placed it in front of Derek, shame radiating through my chest.
“Of course, I fought him.” The thickness in my voice made it difficult to speak. “And he fought back.”
Derek only glanced at the photo before his eyes closed, his hand formed a fist on his desk. The picture showed my battered face. My lips swollen and purple, my black eyes, the cut at my hairline that really should’ve gotten stitches. It didn’t show the bruises covering my torso.
I only had this picture because I’d called Elaine in hysterics. She’d dropped everything and drove all night, six hours to find me in the hotel room. She’d insisted, no, demanded I go to the police. She wanted to call her dad, her brother, every male we knew to beat the shit out of him. But I wouldn’t. I didn’t want anyone to know what had happened to me.
So she’d insisted I let her take pictures. “For when you come to your senses,” she’d said, “and want him dead.”
It was the one bit of evidence I’d held onto in case the asshole, bastard, son-of-a-bitch loser I was living with decided he wouldn’t let me go.
“The next day,” I continued speaking to Derek. “When he saw what he’d done, he laughed and said something about how it wasn’t so long ago, raping your wife wasn’t even considered a crime.”
Derek stood quickly then, eyes blazing. “Melissa, you have to believe me. I didn’t know about this. I never wanted—”
“To hurt me? To fuck with me? Well, I guess you did fuck with me. Several times.” I walked to the window and looked out. “That’s the part I don’t understand. Why did you do that? Was it a little something extra for you? Tap the wayward wife?”
I heard him exhale deeply. “I told you why,” he said, jaw clenched. “I cared about you. I wanted to be with you. I still do.”
“Were you even there for the conference?”
His lips tightened, and I realized the answer. The conference was just a lucky coincidence. A convenient lie.
I shook my head. “Thanks, but no thanks. You’re no hero. You’re a liar. And if you were trying to hurt me you couldn’t have done a better job.”
I stepped back to his desk, turning the photograph facedown and sliding it and the other papers together and into the folders, preparing to leave. But then I remembered. I turned back and placed the silk pouch on the smooth desk’s surface. In it was the necklace with the floating heart he’d given me in Scottsdale.
“I almost threw this into the ocean,” I said, holding my voice steady. “But that didn’t seem harsh enough. Now I simply don’t want it anymore. Or you.”
His eyes were pleading as he tried to approach me again, but I stepped back, clutching the folder to my chest. My voice shook as I said my final words, and I was afraid I’d over-stayed my ability not to cry. “Don’t ever come near me again.”
I went straight out and closed his office door, pausing for a moment to lean against it. I exhaled a trembling breath, closing my eyes, but when I heard him approaching on the other side, I quickly walked to the main entrance and dashed out, taking the stairs down instead of waiting for the elevator.
It was over. Nothing he could say could make it right. He’d lied to me. The entire time we were together in Arizona had been a lie. He’d known every time he’d slept with me why he was there, why I was there, and he’d never said a word. I could never trust him again.
All I wanted was to get as far away from him as possible—from all of this. I wanted to go back to Wilmington, back to my old life, and never, never remember my time in Maryland. Ever again.
Chapter 16 – The Road to Anywhere
Sitting on the shore outside my new home, I watched the sun set as the tide gently rolled in against my feet. In the three months since I’d been back, it felt like I had almost completely regained my life. Yes, there were a few scars, a few old wounds, but I was healing. Now I could actually see a time when I’d be whole, unlike before when I was only sinking further into despair.
My old friends were waiting with open arms. Of course, all of them except Elaine got the modified version of why I’d left Sloan. The most I was comfortable revealing was that he’d had an affair. And while there were a few people who didn’t u
nderstand why I couldn’t just forgive him and put it behind us, more people seemed to support me.
Restarting my marketing business proved easier than I’d anticipated. I’d been afraid my old clients had moved on or forgotten about me, but they hadn’t. Taking over Mrs. Reynolds’ positions on the Baltimore boards had been more beneficial than I’d realized at the time, and now that I was off my “sabbatical,” as I framed it, many of them referred new clients to me. In less than a month, I was adding to the spreadsheet of names I’d started that night in my old room in Sloan’s mansion.
Only one name had been removed, and I was doing my best to forget it.
I hadn’t asked Derek what to do about his childhood game, when the thing you were holding onto for survival was taken away. I supposed the answer would be to simply survive. To keep going. Push through the pain and carry on. Wait for the day when it no longer hurt. He said the pain always ended. I had to believe in this one thing at least, he was telling the truth.
That entire drive back from Princeton, I’d held on with all my might. Seeing him again for the first time that way, after longing for him so hard had been like a million kicks to the chest and stomach. But knowing what he’d done, how he’d deceived me, only twisted all that pain even tighter into a bitter knot.
When I’d finally gotten my keys from the realtor and signed the papers on my new home, I’d thanked my best friend, who had to get back to her work at school, and I’d allowed myself to cry for a long time.
The delay in moving back to Wilmington had given me time to have all my services connected and everything set up from Maryland. My one-bedroom, single bath condo was small, but it was gorgeous, designed for the discriminating beachcomber. The floor-plan was open and airy. It had a gourmet kitchen—complete with brushed stainless appliances and fixtures—a dining area, and a study with a window seat. I even had a private, screened-in porch.