Page 55 of Exposing Adonis

“Right?” Hugo agreed.

“Don’t move my things, Joe,” Lea’s voice continued without acknowledging twiddle-dee and twiddle-dum, andJoesmirked triumphantly at me, mirroring the look I had given him earlier. This bastard needed a hard punch to the gut.

Lea walked around me, down the hall, storming past my room. Then she stopped. Turned towards me, and the fire in her eyes made the scar on my shoulder itch with heat.

“Not that I was invited,” she said in a voice that dripped of acidic resentment. “But I won’t be able to attend yourwedding. Congratulations, though. The ring is beautiful,LadyFox.”

Geordie came into the foyer, probably drawn to the yelling. When something was happening with Pippa, he always seemed to appear like a fucking specter, always a witness to my mistakes with her. He crossed his arms and stared between all the women.

Joe trotted up beside Lea and they spoke, exchanging words in their language again. It wasn’t the language that bothered me. We were all multilingual. But they were using it to exclude me. To exclude the rest of us. I made a mental note to learn that language so that this woman could quit keeping secrets. They moved further down the hall side by side. I wanted to rush over and throttle the man by the throat. I wanted to blacken his eyes, and warn him to not come with a mile radius of my woman ever again.

She entered a room at the end, far away from my door, then slammed it behind her.

Thankfully, Joe continued on, disappearing around the corner.Good. Stay away from her, you twat.

I turned and looked at Pippa’s hand where the damning diamond ring still rested on her finger. I remembered buying the thing. I had gone into the first store and asked for the biggest one they had, glanced at it, and paid. That was it. It was acceptable. Just like everything about us. A compromise. A ‘good enough for government work’ standard.

I was a different, more disillusioned man back then. Lonely, fresh from the bowels of Vauxhall Cross, and despising what I had become. But that was five years ago.

“What the bloody hell, Pip?” I wiped my face with my palm.

She looked down at the ring in shock, as if she was surprised to see it still there.

She had been a lovely person. Before she covered up the freckles on her nose. She had spent her time making daisy chain crowns for Chloe in the open field that overlooked a crystal lake that stretched towards the snow-capped mountains of the Swiss Alps.

Five years ago, we had met up as friends in a bar. We drank together like the old days. She was distant, and sad, but we were in the same place. Unhappy. Searching for some connection. So we discussed a merger between our family entities. I thought it meant a friend at my side, but I was wrong. It meant a noose around my neck. It wasn’t her fault, but I still blamed her.

“Why do you still have the ring on, Pip?” I asked her, gently. Trying to summon our years of friendship to calm me down.

“Yeah, Pippa, why are you still wearing the ring?” Geordie echoed my disbelief.

There was something nagging at the back of my head, but I didn’t care to explore it right at that moment. That ring needed to disappear before I could fix anything between me and Lea.

“I just never … thought to take it off.” She whispered it to Geordie. Maybe it was for help? For a sympathetic ear? Was she afraid to look at me? “I didn’t think that this was really over.”

Hugo and Alastair were conferring on the sidelines. Alex was standing, baffled, looking between his guests, his jaw ticking, his fingers ready to rip the buttons from his shirt. The giant bodyguard, Jason, was standing behind him, glowering at all of us.

“It’s not over!” Cabbage stomped her foot. “How could you, Callum? How could you do this to her?”

She came and poked an angry finger at my chest, and I stood my ground, looking to Pippa with a shake of my head.

“How could youcheaton her?“ Chloe ranted, and I let her. She needed to blow off steam. “I would never have thought you could do that. Notyou!”

She slapped her hands on my chest, pushing me in her grief.

I saw Jason crossing his arms and scowling from beside Alex. He gave a subtle nod of his head before his face softened towards Pippa. Did the giant have a crush?

“Chloe …” Pippa meekly stepped toward our little Cabbage. I vaguely heard a door open and close, and footsteps moving around me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the two women. It might make Chloe more distraught, and she was capable of quite a bit of violence when she was in a rage.

“Would you care to explain to her, Pippa?” I demanded, my voice echoing off the room and back at me. I had no business being this harsh, but this had happened in front of Lea and that made my blood boil. “Or should I?”

Pippa looked at me with a pained expression, her lips curling down. Her hand came to her chest, that fucking ring sparkled at me like a taunt.

“I didn’t mean to …”

“And yet here we are,” I interrupted her. “I expected better from you, Pip. Geordie was right, you really have rotted to the core. I’m sorry if I had anything to do with it.”

A tear went down her cheek. She looked like I had just stabbed her. Maybe I had. I had stabbed a nail into the coffin of any lasting friendship between us.

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