by C. A. Harms
He’d seemed fine the entire evening as he joked around with his father and brother and showered affection on his mother. But now it was as if the entire evening hadn’t happened.
Turning in the seat enough that I could see his reaction, I asked the question I’d been wanting to ask since we left his parents’. “Did I do something wrong?” I wanted to be angry with the way his mood had shifted, but fear was overriding my irritation.
He pulled to a stop just outside my apartment and didn’t even place the car in Park as he looked over at me. “I’m just tired, Kiera,” he said, leaning his head back against the headrest of the driver’s seat. He may have been looking at me, but he didn’t see me. His eyes were blank of all emotion, as if he was in a daze.
“I’ve gotten used to you sleeping by my side,” I confessed, feeling my throat burn. I didn’t want him to leave. I wanted him here with me, happy and smiling.
“I know” was all he offered me before tracing my lower lip with his thumb. I couldn’t shake the feeling that the gesture felt like more than just a simple good-bye.
“Good night, Kiera.”
His dismissal hurt more than I’d anticipated. It wasn’t like him not to walk me upstairs and make sure I was safely inside. It wasn’t like him not to kiss me good-bye and make promises to see me tomorrow.
But instead of questioning him further, I exited his car and stood just inside the entrance of my apartment building, watching as Ashton sped off without hesitation. The longer I stood there, the more I regretted not demanded that he tell me what in the hell had come over him. I didn’t deserve his brush-off.
I had no idea how much time passed after he drove away, but people passed me as I stood there. A few asked if I was okay, yet all I could offer was a nod. When I did find the strength to move my legs, my movements were robotic.
When I reached my apartment door, I couldn’t remember how I got there. Everything was a blur; all I kept seeing was the dismissive look on his face just before I climbed out of his car.
I couldn’t sleep that night as my mind came up with reason after reason for his behavior, each one worse than before.
I couldn’t sleep, and the hours passed by torturously slow as I sat on my couch staring at the television, unable to focus on what was playing. At one point I’d grown irritated with the happy demeanor of the characters and pressed Mute on the controller. Soon, I just turned it off.
Once again I found myself staring off into the darkness, with what felt like a permanent knot lodged deep in my stomach.
I jumped when a loud knock ricocheted throughout my apartment, and looked at the clock on the wall in my kitchen. It was a few minutes after two in the morning.
I moved quietly toward my front door and looked through the peephole to find Ashton standing on the other side.
I quickly unlocked each lock, and when I yanked open the door, my stomach dropped. In all the time I’d known him, I’d never seen him look more unsettling. I couldn’t decide what upset me more, the angry look in his eyes or the way his nostrils flared with each breath like he was having a hard time controlling himself.
“All of it was lies,” he said as he held up an envelope. “From the very beginning you’ve lied to me, and for what? So I would fall in love with some illusion you created?”
He took a deep breath and stormed into my apartment. “What kind of fucking game are you playing, Kiera? Kinsley? Whatever the hell your name is.”
At the mention of my real name, I swear my heart skipped a beat. I tried to interrupt him, but he held his hand up and shook his head angrily. Seething, he pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes tightly.
“I’m sorry—”
He moved toward me so fast that I jumped backward, bumping against the arm of the couch and almost falling to the floor.
“Just forget it.” The angry look on his face had been replaced with one of pure disgust. “Save the explanations because it doesn’t fucking matter. It’ll just be more lies. I don’t care why you chose to play me like some fool. All I care about now is that you get the hell out of my life.”
He flipped the envelope at me and the items inside slid out. The papers fluttered toward the floor like leaves falling from a tree being pushed around by a gust of wind. As they came to rest at my feet, they felt like a metaphor for the pieces of my now-shattered heart.
There were so many pictures from my past: photos of me and Jase at our wedding, and some of us in college when we were in love. I looked happy in them, which must have made the story I’d told him about being in an abusive relationship hard to believe. There was also a copy of our marriage certificate, my birth certificate, and my diploma all in the name of Kinsley Palmer and later Kinsley Hellman. The stories I’d told of my mother living back in Buffalo Grove with my father were all lies, and the big, bold letters confirming her death were just another indication of that. Her death certificate was mixed in the mess of other papers, as if it was screaming out at me in disappointment.
But the item that hit me the hardest was the one with my father’s name. Without a second thought, I lowered myself to the floor and began moving the other papers aside to reach it.
I lifted up the copy of my father’s death certificate and stared at it blankly. Until that moment I’d never seen it in black and white. It was a confirmation of his death, finalizing the fact that I would never again see his face or hear his voice. I’d never be able to hug him close and tell him just how much I loved him and always would. I couldn’t cry on his shoulder and confess all my wrongs as he assured me everything would be okay.
Because none of this was okay.
Jase had made sure nothing would ever be okay again.
I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach, and suddenly I was finding it hard to breathe. I was spiraling out of control, and no matter how hard I tried to fight it, I felt like I was drowning.
I looked up through tear-filled eyes at a man who only a few days ago vowed he would never hurt me. Who had promised to protect me.
That man wasn’t the one staring back at me now. I’d already lost him.
“It’s not what you think,” I whispered as the first tear fell.
He stepped backward, looking down at me as he retreated. “No,” he replied. “It’s worse.”
I had the fleeting urge to grab hold of him and beg him to stay so I could explain, but I was too lost in my own sadness to act on it.
I sat on the floor of my apartment in a mess of papers and heartbreak as he walked away.
ASHTON
I’D PAUSED MORE THAN ONCE as I walked toward the car idling alongside the curb in front of her building. I wanted to go back and hear what the hell had possessed her to lie to me the way she had.
But then I remembered the conversation with my brother. No matter how hard I tried to stop it, it played on repeat over and fucking over in my head.
“Is this your girl?” Beckett asked as he held up what looked like a missing-person flyer.
My heart felt like it had been ripped from my chest as the gorgeous woman I knew as Kiera Masterson stared back at me. She had the same cheekbones and smile and the same blue, mesmerizing eyes. The same eyes she tried to hide using the shit excuse of just wanting a change. The only difference was that the woman in the photo had flowing, blond hair instead of brown and her name wasn’t Kiera, it was Kinsley Hellman.
“She’s married, Ash, to some big-shot. Apparently he reported her missing over six months ago.” Beckett began laying the pictures he’d found on the desk that separated us, and I couldn’t look away. “There’s more.”
Wasn’t what he’d already shown me enough?
“She’s not from Chicago, she’s from Miami. Her parents are both deceased. The mother died when Kinsley was six years old, but her father passed about nine months ago.” I looked up at Beckett, and he passed me copies of the death certificates of Arthur and Francine Palmer.
“Apparently her father was the only thing keeping her in Mi
ami.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why would she want to leave her husband when she needed the support of her family the most? It doesn’t make sense.”
“I need you to give me more time to look into this further, Ash. I know there has to be more to this story than what her husband is saying.” Beckett looked back at me with a serious expression.
How could he ask me to do that? Now that I knew even this much about her, the only thing I wanted to do was confront her. I had to find out why the hell she lied and continued to lie every moment we were together. If Beckett had been in this situation, he would have done the same.
As Beckett began to gather the documents and pictures, I snatched them from him.
“Ash,” he said in warning.
“I wanna look through them some more.” I felt like this was a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from. I’d never suspected that Beckett would find the things he found. She lied about who she was, her name, where she came from. Hell, she even lied about her parents. And if that wasn’t a big enough mindfuck, she was also married. This was the biggest mess I’d ever been a part of.
The name Jase Hellman practically glowed on the marriage license that lay on the top of the pile I held securely in my hands.
Beckett reluctantly released his hold on the documents and I lifted the envelope and slid the papers safely inside.
“Just give me a few days and I promise I’ll have all the answers you need,” he assured me, but his reassurance did nothing to tame my anger. I just wanted to ask her why. I wanted to know how she could deceive me into feeling so deeply for her without a shred of guilt.
Mindlessly I stood from the chair, still looking down at the envelope in my hands.
“I truly am sorry, Ash. I’d hoped from the beginning that you were just being paranoid.” I looked up to find my brother looking back at me with regret. The three of us were close, and we hated it when one of us was unhappy and we couldn’t do anything to help.
“I know, Beck.” I did my best to show him my appreciation, only it was hard with all the thoughts rolling around in my head. “We’ll talk soon, okay?”
I left his office, hoping I had the strength to do as he asked. But the moment Murray asked me where I wanted to go, I rattled off her address and turned to stare out the window as the car pulled away from the curb.
I chose not to go to the office the next day.
Instead I logged into the office calendar from my cell and postponed all my appointments, then sent each person an email letting them know that unforeseen circumstances had forced me to reschedule. Then I shot an email to Lex to let him know I had decided to make my business trip to L.A. a weekend getaway to the same location.
I sent one more text, then turned off my phone and drowned myself in a bottle of scotch to escape all the fucked-up shit I had stumbled upon.
KINSLEY
IT HAD BEEN HOURS SINCE Ashton left me with my lies spilled out on the floor before me.
Hours since I was left with nothing but emptiness.
None of this was fair.
Jase.
My life.
The loss of my father.
And now the loss of Ashton.
I sat in the center of my living room floor, unable to cry and trying to feel something, anything, other than the anger rippling through me.
I told him from the beginning that he and I wouldn’t be good together. I tried to push him away and make him understand that my life had no room for a man.
But he persisted, and his determination to make me see that we could work out had finally won me over. Now here I was, a pool of regret, as everything I’d predicted turned out to be right.
And I was angry.
Damn it, he should have left me alone.
I pushed off the floor and walked toward the kitchen in search of my keys.
I left my apartment without a backward glance and with one goal in mind. And nothing would stop me from giving that arrogant, domineering, pushy bastard a piece of my mind.
“I don’t care if I need the passcode to get through,” I seethed as I stared back at the night security guard that was looking at me as if I was a homeless person. I should have worried about him calling the police and having me arrested, but I was past the point of caring. “I’ve been here a number of times,” I assured him. “Call up to Mr. Montgomery’s penthouse and tell him I’m not leaving until he tells me to, face-to-face.”
“Ma’am—”
I narrowed my eyes in irritation. “Do not call me ma’am.” What the hell? “And you heard me. I am not leaving.”
“I can’t call Mr. Montgomery.” He squared his shoulders and crossed his arms over his chest, widening his stance. Just another asshole using that familiar tactic of intimidation, but I was immune to it.
“Why?” I asked, placing my hands on my hips and squaring my own shoulders.
“Because he left for the airport over an hour ago,” he said with a smirk.
And just like that, the fight in me faded.
He left.
It didn’t matter how hard I tried to fight it. Being tossed aside without any further thought was the worst feeling I’d ever had.
I just wanted a chance to explain. I should have told him everything before he found out from someone else, but damn it, I never once thought that would happen.
I stumbled into the streets of New York City and walked away from his building. Each person I passed look at me in curiosity, or pity. One older woman tried to give me a twenty dollar bill, and I stared back at her without speaking a word before looking down at myself. As I noticed the way I looked, I started laughing.
I was in my pajama pants and a tank top.
And if that wasn’t embarrassing enough, I was wearing my slippers too.
I was a mess.
By the time I made it back to my place, my head was clearer.
I’d left ready to blame Ashton for everything, but I now realized it was my fault.
I caved when I shouldn’t have. I gave in to the temptation of his advances. I became too comfortable and began to enjoy the freedom Ashton gave me.
This was all on me.
I searched my apartment for my cell, my heart racing and my hands shaking.
I had to get out of here.
I couldn’t face the mess I had created.
But once I found my phone tucked just beneath the edge of the couch and saw the awaiting message, I collapsed to the floor and for once let the tears fall without fighting them.
Ashton: I hate you for making me love the woman I thought you were. Good bye.
Why couldn’t I have met Ashton years ago? When things were simple and I had nothing to hide.
Me: I’m sorry I lied, but I never pretended with you. The woman I was when I was with you, that is Kinsley. You gave me back the woman I once was. I’m so sorry I hurt you, but never did I ever pretend to feel something I didn’t. I love you, Ash. For all the things you’ve given me and all the times you made me feel as if nothing from my past could ever hurt me again.
I’d hit bottom, and I had never felt so lonely.
ASHTON
THE MOMENT I BOARDED MY jet, I did something I rarely do. I decided to keep my phone off. I needed one weekend free of bullshit. One weekend to sort through my thoughts without anyone attempting to make me feel any different about everything that had taken place.
I’d deal with the consequences on Monday. This weekend was for me.
I arrived at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel and didn’t even take the time to go to my room. Instead I paid the bellboy an extra hundred to take my things up and secure them in my suite while I went straight for the bar.
I told the bartender I wanted a scotch and to keep them coming, because I planned to drink Kiera out of my mind. Kinsley, Kiera, fuck, I honestly had no idea what I should call her.
I couldn’t get the image of her hunched over on her floor, staring down at the death certificate in her hand out of my head. It nearly broke me. And
now it was threatening to bust through my anger at her lies and deception.
I closed my eyes tight and downed the tumbler of Macallan scotch. The burn felt amazing. Welcomed, even.
The glass clinked against the bartop when I lowered it, making me open my eyes in surprise. Apparently I’d lowered it harder than I had intended to.
Within seconds the bartender brought over the bottle and began refilling my glass. “Leave the bottle,” I said without meeting his eyes.
“Sir, this is a two hund—” I slid my black card across the bar. “You got it, sir,” he said happily.
He took my card and scanned it through the machine only a few feet away. When he turned back to me, his smile only annoyed me more.
“Is there anything else I can get for you?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I said, meeting his stare. “You could leave me and my bottle of scotch alone. If I need you, you’ll know. But I can assure you, I won’t.”
With a quick nod, he backed away and moved down the bar to check in with his happier guests.
One drink bled in to another, and my mind started to haze over into the oblivion I was in search of.
But as I remembered the heartbroken brunette kneeling on the floor, I was jarred back to reality.
“Hey, handsome,” someone cooed at my left. As I turned to face the speaker, I wobbled a little and a hand pressed against my chest. “Wow, you’re smashed.”
That was one way to put it.
“You’ve been here alone for hours. I’m hoping there isn’t someone waiting for you upstairs,” the woman added as she stepped in a little closer, placing her slim hips between my parted knees. Her hair was deep brown, like dark chocolate. And it held a strong resemblance to the hair of a certain woman I was trying to forget.
“There’s no one waiting for me,” I assured her, and her smile grew more flirtatious as she bit down on her lower lip and slid her hand up my thigh, getting ridiculously close to my cock.
“Well, that is some very good news,” she whispered. “My name is Loren.” She moved her hand a little farther, creeping dangerously close to her target. “I’m in town for the weekend, and I’d say I just became the luckiest woman in this hotel.”