“And that’s supposed to be punishment? Come on, we don’t have all night.”
I brushed my fingers up and down her neck, watching her relax into the bed. “I can’t say what I like about you, but I’ll tell you a few things. When you were seven, Eric broke a lamp, but you took the blame for it—afraid that he wouldn’t get to go to his baseball game, where you cheered the loudest. When you were eight, you lost a tooth and buried it in the backyard so a weird creep wouldn’t walk in on you at night.
“When you were thirteen, you cried because you thought someone kidnapped Oscar the cat…Sorry about that one.” Her lips curved up even more, and I felt everything inside of me fall even deeper for her. “And today you’re twenty-two, wearing my t-shirt, your body under mine, looking up at me. And your eyes lock with mine in such a sexy way that it makes me want to rip off your shirt and just lay with you na**d. It’s not even that I want to have sex with you. I just want to f**king lay with you.”
Her eyes started to glass over with water and I shook my head. “So I’m sorry, I can’t say what I like about you. Because it stopped being ‘like’ a long time ago for me. I stopped liking you at age nine and fell in love with you at nine-in-a-half.”
I watched as a small gasp released from her lips. She wrapped her hands around my torso, pulling me down to rest my mouth against hers. “Thank you,” she murmured.
Picking up the camera, I started taking her photos. The light in her eyes right then and there had to be captured. It was the most beautiful thing I’d even witnessed. It was the best feeling, taking her picture; at least I thought that until she started taking photos of the both of us together.
Best f**king night of my life.
Chapter Thirty-Five
I OPENED MY eyes to the sunlight shining. It was the first good night sleep I’d had in quite some time. Turning to my left, I noticed a body was missing and had been replaced with a note.
I looked down at the cash left on the bed—a one hundred dollar bill. Yeah, because everyone spends that kind of money on breakfast, Cooper. Next to the money was a pair of sunglasses—in case I needed to go undercover? As I went to get out of the bed, I paused. A wave of sickness washed over me. I rushed to the bathroom, throwing up.
Something was wrong. I’d never had a hangover that lasted this long. Splashing water across my face, I stared into the bathroom mirror and a level of concern grew in me. My mind mentally started to check the invisible calendar in my head. Crap. No…
I splashed my face again. All color was drained from my body. I couldn’t be. Grabbing the money off of the bed, I tossed on the sunglasses and headed out of the hotel. I needed to find the closest corner store. When I dashed into one, my mind was working faster than my feet could travel. Where was it? I glanced around the space and found the pregnancy tests. I got three—couldn’t hurt.
What if I were pregnant? Crap…I drank so much the other night. I hoped…Stop. I had to slow down my mind. Too much was going on and I wasn’t even sure if I was…
I paid for the tests, and as I walked out, I was shocked to see the paparazzi standing around me. How did they track me down? “Where are you heading? Where’s Cooper?” they hollered. I remembered what Cooper had told me and kept walking with my head down.“Rumor has it Cooper is with Iris right as we speak. How does that make you feel?” one of the paparazzi guys yelled. I paused when I heard it and shook my head. He was meeting with his manager.
The next person’s question freaked me out a bit more. “Is your name Andrea Evans?” They could probably see how stunned I looked through my sunglasses. I turned to go the other way as they began to feed on my sudden nervousness. “How does it feel to be a home wrecker? They are still married, you know.”
“Is it true you are a prostitute?”
What? That’s ridic—I took off my sunglasses as I saw the photo the fat paparazzi man was holding in his hand. It was a photo of me almost taking taxi money from Cooper the first night at his hotel, but for some reason, that photo made the exchange look a lot shadier than it was.
My heart started to race. I couldn’t go back to the hotel. Instead, I broke into a run. As fast as I could. My eyes filled with tears as I found my way back to my apartment building.
Opening my apartment door, I rushed in, slammed the door, and approached the couch. Next to it was Derrick’s cologne, and I sobbed as I sprayed it into the air. The smell of Derrick filled my body, and I slipped a few inches closer to Chaos. How could this be happening? Where did those pictures come from? Why was Cooper with Iris?
My mind was flashing recent memories of Cooper and me. Within an instant, flashes of Derrick and I appeared. My past was once again controlling my present, with its hands wrapped brutally around my heart. Squeezing it with so many doubts. Filling it with so much sadness that I was almost certain I was dead. There was no way my heart was strong enough to deal with the memories and questions that my brain was dishing out.
My teeth bit down on my tongue as I dumped out the contents of my purse onto the ground. Shifting through it, I allowed the tears to fall, not taking time to breathe, not taking time to feel. I saw it glimmering under a pen and picked it up. My engagement ring was staring me down and I sobbed into my hands, knowing I didn’t deserve the right to ever wear it again.
Everything hurt, nothing made sense. Just last night everything seemed so perfect. Last night everything was right. And this morning…this morning I couldn’t breathe.
Chapter Thirty-Six
I DIDN’T KNOW why, but Kyle had made it completely clear I had to meet with Iris. He said I needed to clear some things up before he and I could start handling the big issues.
I sat in the chair across from her in the apartment. As far away as possible. The last time I saw her, she was blackmailing me to stay married to her, so I had enough reasons to doubt this was going to be a pleasant visit. “What’s going on?” I said with a dark tone. I didn’t have any need to be polite to her.
“I need you…” she said, looking down towards her hands resting on her ever-growing belly.
“Iris, seriously.”
“You never asked me,” she whispered as she looked up at me. “You never asked me how it was after the miscarriages.”
I hadn’t. But I hadn’t been able to bring myself to talk about it. It hurt too f**king much. We dived into work, wrapped our worlds around material things, and forgot—together. Iris never showed any signs of breaking. She kept going strong. Doing her job. Holding up her appearance.
“How was I supposed to know? You never cried, you never talked, you never said…”
“I’m your wife!” she bellowed. “Did it really need to be stated that I was broken? That the one thing I knew you wanted more than anything in this world, I couldn’t give to you?”
I thought of what Walter had told me during ‘Thanksgiving’ dinner—what it took to make a marriage work. The secret is to listen to what she doesn’t say. Iris had been crying out to be heard. She’d been screaming, and I hadn’t noticed. She buried herself into the reality show, never talking about our loss.
See what she doesn’t do. I hadn’t seen her. I had been so wrapped up in my own grief that I didn’t think I could have seen her. How did I not see she was not falling apart? That should have been the first warning sign. No one that went through having two children in their body and having them ripped away could be all right.
And hold her when she doesn’t cry. I couldn’t even think of the last time we’d held hands, unless it was being filmed and the producers had told us to or if the paparazzi were around and we had an image to uphold. Otherwise we’d walked past each other.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I meant it.
“I wasn’t going to tell the tabloids about your dad,” she whispered. “I would never…Cooper. I’m so sorry. I was afraid you would never come back to me after…” She glanced down to her stomach.
I didn’t think she was that evil. She informed me she’d told Kyle that just to make me meet with her. She knew it was low, but she was in a low place. How far would I go to keep the woman I loved around?
Andie…
Hell, I had flown to a different state to keep Andrea. I felt terrible for Iris, but I knew our relationship was over. It had been over for years now; we just never spoke of it. The comforting look she gave me informed me that she, too, knew it was over. She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out an envelope. “Don’t worry. I haven’t been following you.” She smiled as I moved over to the couch and took it from her. Divorce papers. “No sense in dragging it out.” A short laugh escaped her lips.
I took her hands and pulled her into a tight hug. It’d been so long since I’d held her. “Thank you, Iris,” I said as she pulled away and wiped her eyes. I made her promise me she would take care of herself and her baby girl. And if she ever needed anything, money included, she should contact me. She refused. Said she didn’t deserve it.
“You really like this girl?”
A heavy sigh escaped my lips as I nodded, “I really do.” Iris burst out into more tears, sobbing uncontrollably. “Iris. Shit, please don’t cry. I wish things were different…but…” I tried to get my words together. Dammit. I wish English teacher Eric were here to speak on behalf of me.
“No, it’s not that. It’s just…I did something wrong. And you are going to hate me,” she said. Her eyes fell to the ground and she cussed under her breath. When she looked up to me, I saw the way her lips turned down. There was a tiny twitch in the lower corner of her mouth and she said, “I’m so sorry.” I knew exactly what it was she’d done by the sound of her voice.
And I was fucked.
“When does it come out?” I asked. If it came out later, I could somehow do some damage control. I could talk to the right people, and move things around a bit. Not to save my ass, but to save…
She shifted on the couch, uncomfortable, but she knew she had to answer. “They came out this morning.”
They?
“Us Weekly. Star Magazine. And People. I didn’t know what to do! The night we talked and you stormed out, I was still so angry with you and I wasn’t thinking straight,” she said, ashamed.
My mind was on the fast track. I didn’t need Andrea to find out like this. I needed to tell her what was happening before someone else did. I needed her to know the truth behind the magazine articles, not just glimpses of truth she might read in those bullshit tabloids.
I knew there would be some terrible things said in those magazines about me, and I was prepared for that. Hell, I was used to that. If I looked at a person wrong, the magazines tagged me as the next Hitler. But Andrea…
Andrea’s name was about to be pulled through the mud because of something I did.
She was about to be exposed.
SHE WAS GONE when I got back to the hotel room. I wasn’t surprised. I was sure she’d found out by now. I went to her apartment and banged on the door, praying she would open it, but she didn’t. I could hear her sobbing on the other side. Fuck! My forehead fell to the door and I closed my eyes. Praying for her to let me in. “Andrea…Please…” I whispered into the crease of the door. When it opened, my eyes washed over her. First I saw her bloodshot, puffy eyes. My heart was ripping into pieces…I did that to her. Then I smelt his cologne. No words could form in my mouth. This ever-growing feeling that I was losing the one damn thing that made sense in my world took over me. My palms became clammy as I saw the last thing—I saw her wearing his sweatshirt and pants again. “Andie…no…”
She was closing herself off. She was retreating back to the land of Chaos all because of my f**ked up issues. She didn’t say a word, but her lips parted. I watched as her bottom lip began to quiver and her knees began to shake. She moved her lips again but choked on the air as a wave of fresh tears started to pour out. My arm reached for her, but she shook her head back and forth.