Page 11 of The Marriage Bid
I ran out of there, tears blurring my vision. My relationship with my father fractured further after that. He cut me off, and I had to live independently, which was tough to do on a model’s income, while simultaneously putting myself through school. I never forgave him for what he did, and the only satisfaction I got was watching his business fail even after getting a large cash infusion. He died broken, sad, and without the young women he surrounded himself with. Few people came to his funeral. Many were probably elsewhere celebrating his death.
I snapped myself out of the awful memory just as Malaya hobbled into the office. The short brown skirt she had on exposed her bandaged knee. She was wearing sneakers, which must have been painful for her to do even though they went well with her outfit. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the ever-immaculate woman wearing flat shoes unless she was running or in her home. Malaya tried to sit in her chair without bending her knee, and she stumbled, her purse and laptop bag crashing to the floor as she held onto her desk. I rushed over to her. “You should have taken a week off!” I helped her to the chair and collected her stuff from the floor and opened her laptop for her.
“Not after you sent me that text! He rejected us! But Seb assured me the deal was almost signed?”
“Tyler hates my guts, I told you.”
“But Seb!”
“Tyler practically threw me out of the building after I finished the pitch. But not before interrogating me, though. It was a horrible experience.”
Malaya looked at me inquisitively. “But why would he hate you that much? You were a kid when all of that happened.”
I sighed. I might as well come out with it. “That’s because he’s my husband.”
“You’re married!”
If Malaya could have fallen out of her chair, she would have. She was so shocked her mouth remained agape for longer than a minute. She seemed to recover only to say, “You are married to freaking Tyler Hawthorne! Wh-when you say married, do you mean actually married, like said vows to each other and shit?”
I explained everything. Once I started talking, it all came out. My father’s financial woes. Our family’s debts, the marriage auction, my father blackmailing Tyler. When I was done, Malaya was looking at me differently. Her shrewd eyes assessed me.
“Please don’t look at me like that?” I said.
Malaya shrank. “I don’t know. It’s just a lot to take in. Why?”
“Why, what?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
She was hurt. Of course, she was. We became friends in college. She was one of the few people in my class who were as good or better than me, and we bonded over our love for design. When she invited me to her friend’s party, we found out we shared other interests beyond what we learned in the classroom and became closer. Malaya trusted me, and my lies broke that trust.
“I’m sorry. I know I should have said something.”
She sighed. “It’s not your fault; your father sold you to him. An auction! You rich people are weird.”
“Well… that’s just the tip of the iceberg. I never saw it as an actual relationship because after we got married, he practically left me alone. My father took all the money, of course, and left me with nothing. Not that I cared. As for Tyler, he’s been livinglike a single man. And so have I. But now that my father’s dead, I can finally cut Tyler out of my life. I sent him divorce papers.”
Which he’s refusing to sign because of the blackmail. My father was still haunting me from the grave.
“He left you alone? So, you two never?”
“Once. On our marriage night.” Calling it a wedding night felt wrong considering it was barely a celebratory event.
Malaya shook her head. Amazement lit up her face. “If I were you, I wouldn’t be running away from him, like you’ve been doing. Was he that bad?”
“He wa—”
I never finished what I wanted to say because Kalya interrupted us, bursting the door open. She always knocked unless it was something really important or an emergency. Breathless, she said to me, “Mr. Hawthorne is here to see you.”
Malaya and I shared a glance. “Which one?” Malaya said to Kayla.
Kayla’s gaze darted between us. She glanced over her shoulder, twisted the door handle she was holding. “Uh…” She stepped inside and closed the door. “I don’t know…” she twisted her fingers, “which one’s which. I didn’t ask,” and winced. “Does it matter?”
Malaya threw her hands in the air. “Yeah. It does, Kayla.”
“Put him in the visitor’s room and tell him we will be there,” I said.
“He… wanted to speak only to you, actually.” Kayla gestured at me.
