Fated: An Alpha Male Romance

by Walker, K. Alex

  “Alexandra, if you keep frowning like that, you’ll mess up your makeup,” my mother scolded, sweeping a powder brush over my face.

  “I don’t care, Mother,” I answered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I don’t care what I look like. I don’t care about any of this.”

  She pulled a chair up in front of me. “What are you talking about? That it doesn’t matter what you look like, as long as you get to marry Roderick?”

  I rolled my eyes for the first time in what felt like decades. “Oh, you just do not get it.”

  “Then, explain it to me.” I was surprised at the harshness in her voice. “Explain to me what I just don’t get. Does this have anything to do with the doctor? Ethan?”

  “Somewhat. Mother, I don’t love Roderick.”

  “Marriage isn’t always about love, Alexandra. Sometimes, it’s about security. The best option for the success of both parties.”

  I had no idea what planet this lady lived on, but Roderick and my father had to be among its congressional elite.

  “I’m in love with Ethan, Mother,” I revealed.

  The brush suddenly stopped flitting over my face. “What?”

  “Ethan’s the man that I would marry in a burlap sack in the middle of a burning building if I had to.”

  She looked at me as though she was actually listening. “So, why are you marrying Roderick?”

  “Isn’t that what you guys want?”

  “Well…yes. We want you to be well taken care of, but,” she looked around the room, “excuse me, but I would like a private moment with my daughter.”

  The flurry of people around us looked up and she repeated the request until they made their way to the door. Once the last patron had left the room, she set down the makeup brush.

  “So, you actually do love this man?” she asked. “This wasn’t some kind of, I don’t know, sexual fling?”

  My mouth gaped as I’d never before heard my mother utter the word “sexual.”

  “No, it’s not,” I answered.

  “Well, why didn’t you say anything?”

  “Wait…what? You guys are completely against me being with anyone but Roderick.”

  She put away the brush and delicately stroked a finger across my cheek. “I’m sorry, honey.”

  I didn’t hide my confusion. “About what?”

  “About all of this. Sometimes, when we get older, we forget about the things that happened in our younger lives. The things that we wanted. Then, we turn around and push on our children those same things we didn’t want for ourselves.”

  She searched around the room and then found her purse laying on a table in the corner. She retrieved it, opened her wallet, and pulled out a small photo from behind a hidden flap. It was a photo of a handsome young man who looked to be in his mid-to-late teens.

  “I didn’t land myself a doctor,” she said, tracing her thumb over the photo. “We were still fairly young when we met.”

  I was growing even more confused each minute that passed. The young man in the photo looked nothing like my father.

  “Who is he?” I asked.

  “Timothy Welling. I met him at a fair. He was a worker there. He worked that machine where you would hit it to try to ring the bell at the top. It was a job that he took on every summer to help his family out. His mother was disabled and his father was pretty much a rolling stone.” She pointed to the picture. “Look at those eyes. He had some of the most gorgeous eyes I’d ever seen. I remember the first time I laid eyes on him, he was putting up those big, fluffy teddy bears that people could win if they actually hit the bell. He was holding a pink one that was probably half my size back then. When he looked up at me, the world stopped, Alexandra. Everything just crashed. Then when he smiled, I was taken. So, I sauntered over to the booth and did what any sixteen year old girl would do: I pretended that I wasn’t interested.”

  Watching her tell her story, my mother’s face was the complete opposite from what I’d seen at the banquet. She was animated, happy, and even her skin had flushed. She looked like me talking about Ethan.

  “I’d already met your father by then,” she went on. “My parents would allow him to take me on dates and it had taken a lot of begging to convince them to allow me to go to the fair and do something fun for a change. The minute I laid eyes on Timothy, I realized that something was very wrong with the relationship that I had with your father.”

  “So, what happened to him?” I asked. “Why’d you end up with James Miller instead of Timothy Welling?”

  She faced me. “Timothy and I fell deeper in love with each moment we spent together. Unfortunately, I got the bright idea that I would tell my well-to-do parents that I was in love with and wanted to marry a man that had little to nothing to his name. I made the mistake of thinking that they would understand that I was in love because I’d assumed that they’d also been in love, but my mother put the brakes on that immediately.

  “Alexandra, I proudly walked across our immaculate foyer with Timothy’s hand in mine. I was wearing designer labels from head to toe; the stitching in his clothes barely held the pieces of fabric together, and he looked as though he’d spent the last several hours on a construction site. I noticed none of it. All I ever saw when I looked at Timothy were those eyes of his. And his gorgeous smile. To be honest, the only reason I even remembered what he was wearing was because my mother had pointed it all out as she’d had him tossed, literally, from our home while banishing me to my room.

  “Later that evening, she sat next to me on the edge of my bed and said that same rubbish to you that I just spewed. She said that marriage wasn’t about love and that if I’d married Timothy, he would have only led me on a path to ruin. Then she said that if I wanted to retain the prestige with which I was familiar, I had to marry someone from the same background.”

  A head peeked in the door to see if the wedding prep party was permitted to return, but my mother shook her head and they eased back out. I, on the other hand, was thoroughly intrigued by the Romeo and Juliet-esque story.

  “What happened after that?” I prodded.

  “At seventeen, I accepted James’ marriage proposal,” she replied. “It was the high society event of the year. The months before the wedding, my mother ‘prepped’ me to be a wife while constantly reminded me that my relationship with your father wouldn’t be about love. Love was fleeting; James would give me a good life. Beautiful children. And by all means, he did. But, I’d still felt so empty that I snuck out the night before the wedding and went in search of Timothy. As far as I’d known, he’d had no idea about my getting married and I just wanted to know that he loved me. I felt like, no matter what my mother said, a foundation could be built out of love.”

  Her head fell and a curly ringlet partially hid her face.

  “I didn’t find him,” she said. “The house that he’d lived in stood vacant. The next day, as fate would have it, he was part of the wedding catering crew. By the time he spotted me in the wedding dress, the ceremony had already taken place. I was already Mrs. James Miller. He’d been holding a platter of braised sea scallops and I turned around when I heard the platter drop to the floor. We stood watching each other for what felt like an eternity and I could feel the pain that I saw on his face. The shock. The total betrayal. I started towards him, but he shook his head and backed away. After that, I never saw him again.”

  She heaved a sigh and then pinned me with somber eyes. She probably had no idea how much her story sounded like what had happened between me and Ethan, which made me wonder if Timothy had been her true match. Grandma Evelyn had talked about the pain of seeing an impending crash but not having the ability to do anything to stop it. She had to have seen that with my parents, which was probably why she’d been so adamant about not letting it happen with me and Gia. I was looking at myself a few decades into the future and the misery on my mother’s face was unmistakable. It was misery I never wanted to experience.

>   “I didn’t realize that you loved him,” she seemed to be apologizing. “I thought that it was just a fling. Another circumstance of your grandmother’s meddling. The day of my wedding, she’d pulled me to the side and said something about the mistake that I’d made since Timothy had been my true match. I’d brushed it off as voodoo talk. Now, I think I get it. Ethan is to you, what Timothy was to me. The only difference was, where my father had been passive as my mother pushed me into a union with James, I can’t stand by and let the same thing happen to you.”

  I walked over to her. “Then, why were you guys so hard on Gia? Gia married for love.”

  “Gia is as frustrating as they come,” she said with a laugh. “Gia is, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, who I’ve always wished that I could be. Good Lord, I’m jealous of my own daughter. If I’d had Gia’s spunk, I would’ve told my mother to ‘kiss it’ and run off with Timothy. I could have spent the last thirty years as a happy woman. With you, Alexandra, I saw a lot of myself in you. I felt like if I could mold you just right, then you’d be proof that I hadn’t made a complete ass of myself by going along with the plans my mother made for me. If you could find happiness with Roderick, then I could justify that I hadn’t completely screwed up my life by choosing your father.”

  Like I’d always imagined, I’d been their little robot. A clone of them both. They’d literally tried to mold me into what they wanted like some sort of research subject.

  “So, you’re encouraging me not to marry Roderick,” I clarified.

  “I’m encouraging you to follow what’s in your heart, not mine or your father’s.”

  She then went back to powdering my face as though our entire exchange had not taken place, and nodded when the prep party peered in a second time. They filtered back into the room to continue fussing over my hair, dress, and makeup. I took a deep, steadying breath. There was no longer a chance for me and Ethan, but there was still a chance for me, Alexandra, on her own for the first time.

  Chapter Sixteen

  * * *

  Alexandra

  Entirely too many people were in attendance. I saw political aficionados ranging from local and state government to members of Congress. It was easily a five-hundred person guest list which was a rough guess since I’d had no part in the planning or execution. Everything had been handled by my father’s “people,” right down to the couture Elie Saab gown that I was wearing. The venue was bursting at the seams and my stomach felt as though I’d just jumped into the seat of the world’s most convoluted roller coaster.

  The wedding party marched out in front of us dressed in lilac-colored, floor-length dresses. The only people I recognized were my mother, Grandma Evelyn, Gia and Elliott; the rest were extras that the network sent in order to make the affair seem larger and more extravagant. My father was standing next to me with a grasp on my hand that would slacken and tighten periodically in response to my own nerves, reminding me of his open threat to Ethan’s career.

  He looked down at me. “Alexandra? Are you ready?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “And you remember what we talked about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good.”

  A velvety, red curtain drew back and I was thrust into the spotlight. Five-hundred pairs of eyes turned and the scrutiny instantly began. My father smiled and straightened his frame while I searched the room for familiar faces. The symphony orchestra belted out a near perfect rendition of the wedding march which commenced our walk towards the altar. Roderick was waiting at the front and looked admittedly handsome in his tux, but he wasn’t sharing in my father’s smugness. Instead, with the way he constantly contracted and extended his fingers, he actually looked a bit uneasy.

  I caught Gia’s eye standing at the altar with the rest of the bridesmaids. She raised both eyebrows and tilted her head slightly to the side. Silently, she was telling me that I was crazy for still going through with the wedding.

  On the right, Eli watched her before his gaze traveled to me. He shook his head, very slightly, and I felt my father’s grip tighten as though he’d seen the gesture.

  My father handed me off to Roderick and we turned to the officiant, a Supreme Court Justice and good friend of my father’s. I could feel Gia’s glare continued to burn a crater in the side of my face.

  Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to join —

  “Ethan Stewart.”

  Every head in the church turned towards a sudden burst of light that exploded into the room. The double doors in the back of the room had opened, and when I saw the person’s outline walking down the aisle towards me, my heart stopped. Gasps and murmurs emanated around the room, but I no longer possessed the will to pay attention to them. Ethan, who was supposed to be in Florida, who’d said that there was no longer any chance for us, who I absolutely adored, was here. In Louisiana. Crashing my wedding.

  “…and Alexandra Miller in holy matrimony,” he finished. “Alle, I’ll be damned if I let you stand up there and get married to another man.”

  The chattering increased and I stepped down from the altar mound, once again on autopilot as I walked towards him. I didn’t care about the long train of the dress dragging behind me as I tugged the veil from my head. The only thing I was concerned about was getting to him as soon as possible, just to see if he was real.

  “Ethan, what are you doing here?” I asked. I really didn’t care about the answer to the question, but it still came out anyhow.

  “It’s a long story,” he answered, wrapping his arms around me and pulling me flush to his body. “Let’s just say that two delayed flights and a nine-hour drive weren’t going to stop me from being here today.”

  I ran my palm over the roughness of his cheek and then pressed my cheek into his chest. The feeling of having my arms wrapped around him and embracing him for everyone to see felt as though I’d finally closed the open edge of a massive circle.

  “I’m so happy to see you,” I told him, honestly and openly. “I wasn’t going to go through with it anyway.”

  I felt his warm lips against my forehead. “You weren’t?”

  “I couldn’t have ever been happy without you, E.”

  Suddenly, I felt my father’s foreboding presence approaching me from the back and heard his angry footsteps on the plush carpet. For the first time, I noticed the looks on our guests’ faces: about a third were confused, another third looked horrified, and the final third were actually smiling.

  “You’ve sealed both your fates, Alexandra,” my father threatened. “Love dies. Love doesn’t pay bills. Love doesn’t even last forever. You want to throw away the foundation that your mother and I have built for you over love? Security!”

  Ethan stepped in front of me.

  “I said, security!” my father repeated.

  Two men wearing suits and earpieces walked over to us. Ethan turned towards them and each man grabbed one of his arms.

  “Let me go,” he ordered.

  “Take him out of here,” my father growled.

  “Drag me out of here if you want to, but I’m not leaving without my woman,” Ethan asserted. “I didn’t go through all of this to give her up, and I promise you that I’ll never give her up again.”

  I turned to my father, but my mother’s voice broke through, more vocal than I’d ever heard it in all the years of my life.

  “You want her to have a life like ours, James?” she asked, walking up. “You want her to have a life filled with emptiness and infidelity?”

  Grandma Evelyn rose and followed her. The men’s eyes darted between my parents. I shook my head, and they slackened their grip enough for Ethan to shrug out of their grasp.

  My father shot my mother an angry glare. “Janice, be quiet.”

  “I’m sorry, James, but I can’t stand by and let my daughter make the same mistake that I did when I married you.”

  At that admission, I was sure that ninety-percent of the people in attendance gasped. The other ten-p
ercent were children who had no idea what was going on.

  “You don’t know what you’re saying, Janice,” my father warned. “I gave you a good, comfortable life.”

  “And you’re saying that I’ll somehow ruin that?” Ethan jumped in. “Look, I could somewhat justify your opposition to my relationship with Alexandra if I didn’t have anything to my name. But, I have damn more than that. Why are you so against this?”

  My father redirected his glare to Ethan. “And what makes you think you have the authority to speak to me?”

  “Because you’re a red-blooded human being,” Ethan answered. “That and the fact that I can talk to who the fuck I want to. You think your title makes you better than me? You think you can just shit on whoever you want to because you’ve had a position in the government?”

  I could feel the anger flowing through Ethan’s veins like molten lava. My father once again tried to use his looming presence, this time to intimidate Ethan, but Ethan didn’t even remotely budge.

  “This, is who you want to be with?” my father asked, pointing at Ethan but looking at me. “This foul-mouthed baboon?”

  “So, you would rather that I marry your choice for you,” I answered. “You’d rather I marry someone who explicitly told me that he wouldn’t care if, years into our marriage, I got some action on the side, rather than the man who said he would prefer to give me up rather than be with me without love?”

  He grimaced. “Stop saying that word.”

  “What? Love?” I asked. “What do you have against it?”

  “It’s not real,” he contended. “Alexandra, I laid everything out for you. Roderick would have given you a good life. I know this about him. I don’t know this man, this Ethan Stewart. I can’t vouch for the life he’ll give you. I can’t promise that you won’t show up at the house in the middle of the night crying because he broke your heart.”