KristoI 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,
KristoI 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 b
KristoWell, she wasn’t coming back, and I was going to make damn sure of that. I ripped the pages in two, all of them, and tossed them to the floor of the apartment, letting them splay wildly across the floor. I watched them as they drifted out in front of me, and I ran my hands through my hair and let out a grunt of annoyance. I wanted to yell at the top of my lungs, but even the booze hadn’t got me losing control that much.I slumped down against the counter and then slipped down against the floor. She was gone. Nothing was going to change that. The worst part was that some small part of me had been wondering since the moment she’d moved in if there could have been something between us. Sure, the start was unorthodox, but maybe, just maybe, we could have made something work.I shoved those thoughts angrily to the back of my head. Nothing would have worked between us because she was just a gold digger, a liar who had taken me for a ride and wrung me dry. I was lucky she had left aft
AmayaAs I drove down to see Jolene, I felt as though there was a damn war going on inside my head. I couldn’t make any sense of my thoughts, but I knew seeing my sister was going to help remind me what exactly my priorities were right now.“I’m here to see Jolene.” I put my hand down on the reception desk, and the woman slowly raised her gaze to meet mine. She looked tired. I knew the feeling. I had barely slept all night, tossing and turning back in my own bed once I’d made it back to my apartment.“Go right up,” the woman replied, waving her hand toward the stairs after she checked my credentials. I headed up to Jolene’s room and opened the door, plastering a big smile on my face so she wouldn’t guess the turmoil that was running through my head right now.“Hey!” she exclaimed, wheeling over to me at once. “How are you?”She wrapped her arms around me, and I swiftly hugged her back, closing my eyes and leaning down to inhale the sweet scent of her hair. This was why I had done this
AmayaBefore I knew it, I was sitting at a table surrounded by a half-dozen women, all of whom were piling on question after question, so fast that I could hardly keep my head straight.“How long did you know him before you guys got married?”“Don’t you think it’s a little fast?”“Where is he now?”“What do you do?”I held my hand up, and they fell silent. I almost giggled at the amount of power I had over the lot of them. I wondered if any of them had ever imagined what it might be like to marry Kristo themselves, to wed into this rich, successful family once and for all. I could see a couple of them looking at me with something close to envy, and I understood where it came from. Had I been in their position, I would have been envious too. But they didn’t know the dark side of it, the bleak side, the one that burned me up as I sat there surrounded by women who wanted to know my secrets while I kept the biggest one of all from the lot of them.“We met while he was on a business trip,
KristoI watched her as she climbed out of the car, eyeing me warily as she did so, and she slowly made her way to the door like she half-expected me to lunge out at her out of the blue. I crossed my arms over my chest as she tried to walk around me and into the apartment, but I stepped in front of her.“Amaya, I need to talk to you,” I told her firmly, but she shook her head. Her eyes were focused on the ground, and I didn’t blame her. But I had found some time to think, and we needed to discuss the ins and outs of this relationship before she blew it up.She threw her hands in the air and glared at me, the first time she had looked me in the eye since she had climbed out of that car.“What do you want?” she demanded. “Seriously, what can I do for you?”“I want you to finish out the rest of the contract,” I replied smoothly, carefully, playing professional. As long as I kept feelings out of this, I might be able to convince her this was the best choice for the two of us. She rolled h
KristoI should have gotten her to sign a contract with all the money I’d already put out, but I couldn’t do it. Fuck my life if it blew up in my face again, but I couldn’t.She looked over her shoulder at the condo and winced as though remembering how tiny it was in there, remembering all the space she had in my apartment. I wanted her back there, filling the space. I still wasn’t sure exactly what it was that made me want to keep her around, but it was there and undeniable, and I never found myself lacking what I wanted.“I need you to be the buffer between me and my dad’s new wife,” I went on, pushing hard, knowing I was close to getting what I wanted so badly. “I need someone there to make sure I can actually remember her name. She likes you better than me, remember?”“You’re a total asshole, you know that?” She rounded on me again, but there was defeat in her voice. She knew how this was going to go, just the same way I did. I grinned.“Sure, I do,” I replied. “But that doesn’t m
AmayaI pretended to be asleep in the car as we pulled away from the house. I just didn’t want to talk any more, not about what I’d just agreed to, not about what I’d said when I’d walked out the night before, not any of it. Even though I was exhausted and could probably have used the rest, I found my mind racing at a mile a minute as I tried to make sense of what the fuck I had just done.Why had I taken him back so easily? He had pretty much just had to turn up on my doorstep, pull those sad eyes, and remind me of how little money I had and how much I needed this and I was crawling back to him. Maybe not crawling exactly. I had laid down some ground rules at least, something to keep him at bay, but even as I sat there right afterward, I was doubting my ability to keep my attraction and my feelings for him at a decent low. I just wanted him, wanted this, wanted everything that came with being with a man with his kind of status and attitude and, fuck, all of it.It was for Jolene. Tha