by Ali Parker
I craved a second round with him so much I physically ached for it a lot of the time. I would look at him and just need it, fighting my urge to grab him and drag him to the bedroom to show me all the rest of those tricks that he had up his sleeve. I wanted to learn every contour of his body, every moment of his kiss, every single one of his heartbeats, and I couldn’t let myself. I just couldn’t.
I’d heard what he had told me that night we were coming back from meeting with his father and his new wife. He didn’t believe in love that stuck around. I should have known that from the start, as soon as he’d asked me to sign a contract that had secured my place in his life as an asset and not a romantic prospect. He wasn’t that kind of guy, probably never would be, and I had been fooling myself into believing he was.
I still hadn’t signed the contract. He didn’t know it, but I just couldn’t quite bring myself to do it yet. I swore to myself I would, but not signing that thing was the last little semblance of control I had over this mess of a situation. And so, I’d held back. For now. If he could play big business, then so could I. Kristo wasn’t the only one hiding things from people.
But I couldn’t stop thinking about all those times when he’d hinted there was something else to him. When he had taken Jolene out, the way he had kidded around with her and chatted to her and treated her like a real person, the way he was with his family, how much they clearly adored him. The fact that he handed me my favorite beer out of the fridge without asking when I came back from a hard day at work. Sometimes, it felt as though he was papering over the person he really was, trying not to let me see the warmth that lived within.
Could I ignore who he told me he was for much longer? I knew with a sinking feeling in my chest that the answer was just no. He had been open with me, that he was a guy who liked to stay in control. Fuck, I had asked him not to bother with my car, yet when I got back that day, I had seen it sitting better than new in the garage. How much had he paid for that? I didn’t even want to think. And he had done that even though I’d told him not to, even though I’d told him I just wanted to borrow one of his cars. He wasn’t the kind of guy who was going to make this easy for me, and I had to accept that.
I buried my face in the pillow. I was falling for him. I didn’t care that he was stubborn. In fact, some part of me liked that he was as firm in who he was as I was. It was a little bit terrifying, for sure, to know that what I wanted was someone who was as strongly-defined as a person as I had always been. What were the chances that some guy I married while I was hammered in Vegas was going to turn out to be the kind of man I felt as though I’d been searching for all this time?
But it didn’t matter. I couldn’t put myself through this. I needed the money, sure, but was it worth selling out myself and my happiness just for some cash? Money would come and go, but if I let myself get sucked much further into this, I wouldn’t be able to bounce back from it.
The hard part was knowing that he treated me like any husband would. He fixed up my car, he introduced me to his family, and he shared his day with me. Fuck, he’d even picked up ice cream for us and chosen a movie for us to watch, if I hadn’t begged off sick in the bitchiest way I could. He treated me like his wife, except he didn’t love me.
And that one, huge gap in our relationship was eating me alive, tearing me apart. It stung just to imagine, to know that he could walk away from me just like that and not think twice about it. He had me around because I was useful to him. Sure, maybe he thought I was nice or just gullible enough to fall for his seductions, but he still didn’t love me. He didn’t think love could last the way I wanted it to. And I couldn’t handle that.
I needed to tell him how I felt. Get out of the contract. I had no idea how I was supposed to do that, but I would find a way. I couldn’t go on like this, no chance, no way, no how. I pushed myself up off the bed with a huge sigh and went for a shower, hoping the hot water would scrub some of the panic out of my brain.
When I climbed out and wrapped myself in an enormous towel so fluffy I hoped it would be able to absorb the weight of some of my problems, I heard the front door slam. I stepped outside my room and glanced around. Kristo was missing. I felt my stomach clench. I must really have pissed him off. That had been my intention, but now he was gone, and I just wanted him back. I felt like a teenager, changing at random, never able to settle on one mood or emotion. What the fuck was going on with me?
I headed over to the kitchen and went into the freezer. He said he had ice cream for us, and sure enough, when I opened it up, I found it stacked high with a bunch of fancy flavors, sea salt and caramel, double chocolate, green tea. He seemed to know exactly what I needed or maybe he was just good at reading people, a skill picked up from years working as a ruthless businessman. He just understood how precisely to keep people on their toes, to make sure everyone around him kept coming back to him no matter what. Perhaps I was just another one of his conquests, a business acquisition that just happened to leak over into his private life more than others before me had.
If I was going to have to tell him everything, then the least I deserved was something to take the edge off. I grabbed myself a bowl and spooned out a selection of the flavors in front of me and shuffled back through to the bed. Curling up under the covers, I stared off into space and tried to figure out exactly how I was going to tell Kristo about the mess of emotions that had been running through my brain these last few days. As soon as he came back, I would do it. That was, if he came back at all.
23
I got back late that night, just before midnight. The me who’d existed in college might not have considered this late, but the me who had to get up to work early the next day sure as hell did.
I had been out to a club, nothing fancy, just somewhere I could grab a couple of drinks and switch off my brain in the aggressive noise of somewhere loud and cheap. The music and the conversation had been enough for me to get my mind off the worst of the bad thoughts running around my brain, but a few girls had come up to me and tried to buy me drinks. I had found myself wishing they were Amaya. I knew it was crazy, but I knew if I had her by my side, that night wouldn’t have been half as bad as it had turned out to be. We could have danced, got drunk, flirted a little. Maybe she would have dragged me home sooner rather than later so we could continue our dancing somewhere a little more private.
I didn’t expect her to be up. If she was sick as she’d said, then she would want to get an early night and catch some sleep to try and feel better. Only thing was, I was pretty sure she was making that up. Maybe I was hoping to catch her out, or maybe I was just hoping to actually talk to her for a change. The two of us had been dancing around the point for weeks now, and one of us needed to come out and say what we were actually feeling after all this time.
As soon as I clicked the door shut behind me, I could hear the water running. I assumed she would be getting herself a glass of water and was about to offer to do it for her, but then I remembered the way she’d spoken to me before. No. I needed to stand my ground. This woman had come into my house, my life, and I wasn’t going to bend over backward making sure every little thing was perfect for her.
I went to the kitchen and found a couple of cartons of ice cream half-eaten on the counter. Guess her stomach wasn’t feeling that sore. She was cleaning a bowl at the sink. She must have heard me come in, but she was playing like she hadn’t. She didn’t turn around as I got closer, but I could see her jaw tensing slightly as I approached.
“Hey,” I finally greeted her. “You’re feeling better.”
“Yup.” She turned to me, crossing her arms across her chest. She was wearing an old T-shirt of mine, one she’d borrowed a while ago. So, she couldn’t have been that mad at me.
“Where were you?” she asked. “You smell like booze.”
“I was out at a bar,” I replied calmly. “That all right with you?”
She tightened her grip on her arms but nodded.
“Of course, it is,” s
he replied. “I can’t tell you what to do.”
She turned back to the sink and continued cleaning up, and I knew I should have gone to bed and dealt with this in the morning. There was nothing for us to say to each other, and we were only going to end up in another argument. But I couldn’t go to bed with things like this between us. I had to know why, what I had done, why I deserved to be treated this way when I felt as though I had done nothing wrong to her.
“You want to tell me why you’re acting like this?” I demanded finally, voice tenser than I had intended it to be. She turned to me, and I was stunned to see tears sparkling in the corners of her eyes. She quickly brushed them away with the back of her hand and looked me dead in the eye.
“You really want to know?” she challenged me, as though she was giving me a chance to back out. I nodded.
“I wouldn’t have asked if I wasn’t sure,” I promised her. “Tell me. I need to know. I’m your husband, Amaya.”
She lowered her gaze as those words came out of my mouth like they were the last things she wanted to be reminded of. Apparently, I couldn’t do anything right this evening. I waited for her to speak, and she inhaled and exhaled a few times, getting herself in hand. A few more tears leaked out of the corner of her eyes. I didn’t like it when she cried. I wanted to stop her, but I couldn’t do that as long as I had no idea what it was that had upset her in the first place.
“Please, just tell me what the fuck is going on,” I pleaded with her. A million possibilities were floating through my mind. Was she sick? Backing out of this? Was there someone else in the picture? Was she pregnant?
“I’m in love with you,” she finally blurted out, and the entire world came to a halt around me.
“What?” I demanded, but the words hadn’t had time to sink in before I spoke. They spun in the air in front of us, and she looked as though she wanted to scrabble them back, to make it so she had never spoken them in the first place. I knew how she felt. That had changed everything, and now that they were out, it was way worse than it had been before. I wanted to rewind, to go to bed instead of coming in here and talking to her. It was late, she could have been drinking, maybe she didn’t—
“I mean it.” She stared at me, clear-eyed and certain. “I’m sorry, Kristo, but I’m sure.”
I planted my hands on the table and stared down at a spot right in front of me. If I could just stare at the spot on the marble, I would be fine. I could pretend none of this was actually happening and leave it all behind. Because there was no way in hell she could have meant what she said. No way in fucking hell.
“Kristo, I’m so sorry,” she blurted out, trying to fill the silence between us. I could barely hear my own thoughts. They were all crowding in on top of each other and making a mess of the thoughts and memories that my mind was trying to make sense of in that moment.
I started to pace. She might as well have slapped me on the face for the kind of shock this had sent me reeling into. How could she have thought it was a good idea to tell me this? I wasn’t the love type. I wasn’t the kind of guy women fell in love with, at least not for more than a night. If we hadn’t been dumb enough to get married, that was all I would have been to her, a memory, a one-night-stand, a regret. But as it was, I was her husband, and she was standing here in front of me telling me that she loved me, and I had to find a way to handle that.
I stayed quiet for a long time as I tried to think of something to say, and I could feel her watching me the entire time. Finally, I looked up at her once more, figuring that if she had been honest, the least I could manage was to give her the same courtesy.
“I don’t know what to say to that,” I finally admitted. She nodded, looked down, and the tears began to splash on to the marble below her. I wanted to take it back at once, to pull her into my arms and say whatever I needed to in order to make this right, but I couldn’t. I felt like my head had been frozen solid, no thoughts breaking through the ice. I wanted to thaw, but I couldn’t. She left the room, and I wasn’t sure if I should follow her, but a moment or two later, she emerged again with a handful of papers in her hand. It took me a moment to figure out what they were, but then I recognized them, the contracts.
“I never signed these,” she told me quietly, placing the contracts down on the counter in front of me. I didn’t know what to say.
“I was going to, but then I just thought—I guess I wanted to pretend like I actually had some control in this situation,” she admitted. One of the pages began to stain with the spreading moisture of her tears, where she had put it down on the counter.
“I’m sorry to let you down like this,” she continued, and I realized that this was a preplanned speech, one meant to soften me up for a breakup, for her to leave. No. No.
“I’ll pay you back for all the money you gave to the care home,” she promised. “I won’t take anything from you. And for the car as well, if you want.”
“I don’t want that,” I tried to cut her off. “Amaya, I need you to stay.”
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I’m not putting myself through this. I can’t. It’s too painful.”
I stared down at the contracts, and my mind exploded in a hundred different directions as she retreated to her room. If she hadn’t signed them, then she could leave. I would never have asked for the money back. I would have to explain her leaving to my family. I would have to live in this apartment by myself once more. And I would have to—Amaya would be gone. That thought thrummed heavy in my head, and I tried to make sense of it. She would be gone, and I couldn’t handle that. Amaya was part of me now, whether I liked it or not.
She came out of her room fully-dressed and didn’t look at me as she made her way across the room and toward the door. As she passed me, I reached out and caught her arm. It was the only thing I could think of to do. I needed her, needed her to stay, and couldn’t find the words in me to tell her that. She came to a halt and turned to me, and my heart lurched as I looked into her eyes. There was something there, something deep and strong, something I couldn’t give shape to quite yet.
And, as those familiar eyes burned into mine, I searched for something, anything, to get her to stay just one more night. To give me time. I didn’t need forever, just something, something to figure my stupid head out for a change. But I stood there, struck dumb, and she shook free of my grasp and headed toward the door.
“Amaya,” I called after her, and she came to a halt. For a moment, I thought it was enough, that she was going to stay. But then she turned and looked me dead in the eye, face contorted with hurt, and spoke.
“Kristo, I don’t think I can do this,” she finally told me. And, with the sound of my name on her lips fresh in my ears, I watched as she pushed the door open and walked out of my apartment and my life. And I knew there was nothing I could do to stop her.
24
I wasn’t sure how long I was standing there staring at the door after she left. My breath was coming in short, sharp, ragged bursts, tearing in my throat, and I was having trouble keeping myself upright. I wanted to sink down to the floor, to beat my fists against the polished hardwood, to tear down all the pictures we had hung up together a few days before. I wished I could time-travel back to that moment when she’d been laughing and joking with me, when she had looked at me with that soft warmth in her eyes and made something in me feel whole for the first time.
But she was gone. No getting away from that. Just gone. And I was stuck here in this empty apartment staring at the door and willing it, with every fiber of my being, to open once more so she could come back in and tell me this had all been nothing but a bad joke.
But she didn’t, and eventually, I unstuck my feet from the floor and began pacing furiously up and down the apartment. The energy was crackling through my body, and I felt like I could have shot bolts of lightning out of my fingertips. She couldn’t just walk out on me like that. That was why I’d had the contracts drawn up in the first place, to avoid a scenario just like this one. W
ell, fat fucking lot of good that had done me because she just straight-up hadn’t signed them, leaving them on the counter where they could sit and taunt me for the rest of the night.
By the time I calmed down enough to start thinking straight again, some light had begun to seep through the windows and morning was on its way. I would have to go back to work soon, to plaster that happy face on long enough that nobody would guess what the fuck was going on with me, and I had no clue how the fuck I was supposed to do that. Coming back to her was one of the only things that had kept my days rolling, and now she was gone—God knew where—and there wasn’t any legal recourse I could take to bring her back.
That was when the anger really started to burn up inside of me. I stormed over to the bar and grabbed the expensive bottle of vodka Cleo had brought back from her last trip abroad. Where it was from, I had no idea, but as long as it was strong enough to scrub the memories of this bad fucking day out of my brain, I would take it happily. I poured a shot out, spilling a little over the sides of the glass as my hands shook with fury, and tossed it back. It helped a little. I did another. My mind finally focused. About damn time. I needed to figure out what the fuck was going on.
I wasn’t going to go after her. It wasn’t who I was. If she didn’t want to be married to me, then she could get the hell out of my life and stay out. I had offered her everything, money, status, sex, a home, support for her sister when she needed it, and she had turned her back on all of it for—well, because of what? Because she loved me?