Page 20 of Claiming His Wife
“All I see is a woman who is determined to move on. She left everything, her father’s money and her husband, to start life again without any support. Now, she is here, she has fallen in love with someone else, and the only reason she is here is to get her marriage annulled. I am sorry, dude.”
“I hope you are going somewhere with this.”
“Give her the annulment and move on.”
“Not happening.”
“By giving her what she wants, you’ll be free to meet other women and move on yourself.”
“What Kalilah and I once shared can’t be explained, it was unique; it was pure, it was deep, it was true love. I know for a fact that what she has with this new man doesn’t hold a candle to what we had together. I could feel the chemistry between us and even though her mind and lips will deny it, I know her body and heart won’t. A love like that doesn’t just go away, Gabe. Kalilah and I belong together, and I am going to work hard to make sure I win her back. She is my future.”
“Damn, dude, I hope it works out for you, but I don’t know.” Gabe said, hitting the golf ball into a hole. The two men spent the remainder of the afternoon playing golf and discussing business. Finn heard everything Gabe said, but he chose not to dwell on it. His intentions remained solely on winning his wife over.
CHAPTER 6
ON THE RIDE TO HER PARENTS’ HOUSE, she thought back to everything that transpired during brunch. She didn’t expect for their first date to go so well. She would be lying if she didn’t admit that she was happy she had impressed Finn. When she’d asked him about work, Kalilah had expected him to pick up the ball and go with it. She expected him to extol himself for the next thirty minutes or so about how awesome he was at his job. Finn had merely smiled, and she fancied she caught sincerity in his smile.
When she’d met with her parents yesterday evening, there was no question of work; in fact, it was already decided that she was going to be the perfect trophy wife, who could hold conversations on diverse topics. However, Finn praised her for finding her passions in life. She was genuinely surprised by his demeanor, although she didn’t understand why. This man was the man she fell for years ago. He hadn’t changed, she surmised. She had; she was more cynical. And that realization threatened to send her into a tailspin.
The sincerity in his words touched her heart, and she soaked it all up like she had been waiting forever to hear them. The biggest shocker came when he showed proof that he was going to come back for her. And she wondered what she would have done if he showed up to her apartment. She would’ve been so unprepared, which would have given him the upper hand.
She was the one who had left him. Left their marriage. He’d always been here waiting. Waiting on her. In her heart of hearts, she knew that simple truth, but she couldn’t get past his betrayal.
She’d loved him so much, and he’d hurt her so terribly. But the pain from that betrayal didn’t sting as much as it had when she’d first learned of it. She wondered, again, what that meant for her future.
***
There were a few things Kalilah was sorry for. Three things, maybe four.
One, she had allowed herself to love the wrong man and, in the end, had cultivated pain from falling hard for him. The second was allowing her parents to railroad her and thus steal precious moments of her life. The third was waiting to take back her life. She always advised her women in the shelter to seize control of their life, and to not allow selfish people to steal away their joy. Some tried, but it wasn’t easy. She had not been able to fully embrace the desire to do so until Jonathan came along and questioned why she kept her life on hold.
At the time she didn’t think her life was on hold, since she was living her dreams away from her family. When he had finally questioned her about the two of them building a future and starting a family, she began to question herself about why she was still legally tied up with Finn. She supposed that in the depths of her heart, where that naïve girl still resided, she had always held out a sliver of hope for her and Finn. And that legal connection made it so that they would always have a connection. She couldn’t hold out on living her life any longer. Taking control became paramount.
The fourth regret was her sister. Probably her biggest regret. The past five years had been so tumultuous that Kalilah’s relationship with her sister had been affected too. Of course, they still spoke, but it was never meaningful. The extent of their conversations never went past‘Hey, what’s up? Nothing, you? Nothing.’
She was embarrassed to say the least and being the older sister by five years didn’t help soothe the guilt for not making more of an effort. She should have made more of an effort, considering how cold their parents were. She had convinced herself that her sister’s strong-willed personality would see her through, and that their sibling bond would be okay. She had issued several invitations to her sister to come up to Seattle and have a fun-filled girls’ weekend, but it never happened. Her sister had spent a whole year in New Brunswick when she was seventeen, and she never found out why. It was her mother who had informed her, while she was at college, about Kaiya’s move to a new province. However, when her sister did return to Quebec, both her parents and her sister never bothered to give her any explanations as to why she’d moved away. The last time they had spoken, Kaiya didn’t divulge any information about herself, so she figured it was her own way of telling her not to delve into her affairs.
They were like two sides of the same coin. Her sister was the cheerful one, with a charming personality and liked by everyone. Kalilah was the opposite, she was the more studious one who never broke the rules. However, they were both passionate about their interests in life.
Kaiya had always loved dance, and Kalilah had always been drawn toward helping people who got referred to as NH. Nonhuman. Kaiya had always done ballet and had joined the cheerleading squad at their private secondary school. She was exceptional at both.
Lilah on the other hand, was the brainiac who always scored high in academics and lived to please her parents. Lilah had thought of Finn as her salvation. How foolish she had been.
Growing up, Kaiya had gotten less attention from their parents, and it made her a bit wild. Kaiya played pranks on the staff and snuck out at fifteen, with Kalilah’s ID with her best friend Jalissa, who Kaiya had met in seventh grade. Kaiya never really got reprimanded. With Kalilah however, everything was monitored and controlled. Because of their age difference, they grew distant when Kalilah became a teenager. She knew her sister had changed after returning to Quebec from her mysterious New Brunswick move. She became more withdrawn and focused on her dancing.
She had given her sister space and rationalized that she would find out what was going on when she returned to Montréal. But then she became busy with her school, the shelter, and working on her thesis. Self-condemnation threatened to be her undoing as she felt tension building in her muscles. They hadn’t spoken with each other in over a year, and that was a long time.
Guilt may have propelled her to tell Owen to drive her to her parents’ house, but sisterly love had her lifting her head to smile as Kaiya walked out the front door, before she had the chance to step out of the car.
“Hey, gorgeous,” Kalilah said in a cheery tone. Kaiya’s head snapped up when she heard the voice and looked around until she found the caller.
“Oh-em-gee! You’re back!” Her sister squealed. Kalilah got out of the car and the sisters ran toward each other. They collided in a full-body hug mid-run.
“Hey silly bird, want to hang out with me today?” Kalilah asked her sister, hoping from the smile on Kaiya’s face and the excitement in her voice that she’d come with her. When she’d left, her sister was shorter than her, now she towered over her by a few inches.
“Hello, yellow.” The belated nickname from childhood seemed very inappropriate right now.
From up close, her chestnut skin glowed. Despite the beauty of her skin, her once-lively light brown eyes seemed hollow. Kaiya’s hands tightened with a kind of desperation around her. It was as if Kaiya was afraid that if she let go of her sister, she would miraculously disappear. The way she had done for five years. That damn guilt… Kalilah winced. This wasn’t the same playful sister of hers who always bustled with life.What broke her spirit?Kalilah thought, perplexed.
