Page 44 of Don't Hate Me
“I think there’s something wrong with the business. He keeps talking about this debt Arthur owes him. Have you seen anything while you’ve been there?”
Marc shook his head. “No, but I’m allowed very limited access. I support Trevor with a few accounts, and I mess around with the account your father gave me.” He laughed. “It’s how I got the money for these tickets. How’s that for irony?”
“Somehow my father is indebted to Evan, and everything suggests it’s a criminal debt.”
“I tried to access his client list a few times. You said it was your mother’s birthday, so I tried a bunch of different variations. I never got in.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “If Evan exposes Arthur, then he gets what he deserves. As a father, he’s dead to me. Like I said, Evan is nothing if not practical. He won’t want a scene. He thought I was docile, compliant. He understands now, I’m not.”
“He’s the one who hit you,” Marc said softly. Not a question. A statement.
The memory from a few nights ago washed over me. I had to shake it loose before it brought me too low.
“I hadn’t been feeling well. We were to attend the opening of an opera. I said I wouldn’t go. He wasn’t expecting me to ever say no to anything. He backhanded me. Not with any anger or emotion. More like a cruel owner conditioning his dog to heel. With my fair skin, the bruise was immediately visible. He saw it and knew I couldn’t be seen. So he left without me. Like I said, very practical.”
“Fucking bastard.”
I squeezed Marc’s hand. “We’ll lay low, let whatever is going to happen, happen. Then after a time, when it’s safe, we can get divorced.”
“Divorced?”
I looked at him and thought I couldn’t read the expression on his face. It upset me because I had always been able to read him. But months apart had maybe changed him. Changed us.
“Yes. I wasn’t expecting this to last. It’s only to stop me from having to marry Evan. It’s not real. I know that.”
“What’s not real about us, Ash?” he asked angrily. “That you managed to save a spiraling twelve-year-old-boy from losing his shit? That I nearly killed you with a few mean words at dance? That you sacrificed college for me? That I took your virginity and then I took everything else? What about any of that wasn’t real to you?”
“But we broke up,” I reminded him. “We weren’t strong enough to stay together.”
He glared at me then. “How have you felt these pasts months without me?”
I shrugged. That was easy. “Like part of my soul was missing.”
This time he was squeezing my hand. He bent toward me and whispered in my ear.
“Just remember, I’m never going to admit anything like that. I’m not going to tell you I missed you, or that I was hurt or lonely or soul crushed. I’m not going to say I didn’t, or couldn’t, smile. That I didn’t fuck a single woman in all that time, because I was afraid you were right. That nothing was ever going to be as good as we had it. I’m never going to tell you that. Ever.”
I turned to him and kissed him. Nothing provocative, just a simple reconnection of our lips. It felt like coming home.
“It’s okay, Marc. You don’t have to say any of that.”
Then I rested my head on his shoulder and closed my eyes. Maybe this was going to work. Maybe we were going to be free from everything.
Maybe this time we were strong enough.
* * *
Las Vegas
Marc
It was done. In the eyes of the law, by the power of the state of Nevada, Ashleigh Landen was now my wife.
They’d offered us the chance to buy pictures and rings. We hadn’t bothered with any of that. We only had a single certificate that proved any ceremony had occurred.
Ash thought this marriage was temporary. It didn’t feel that way to me. It felt like we’d taken this next step that would irrevocably tie us together.
Till death do us part.
