“We got married for nothing,” he said, the hope of becoming a father crushed beneath the weight of his heart.
Her voice hitched. “Our wedding night didn’t seem like nothing.”
“No, but it was something we shouldn’t have done.” The glittering warmth, the romance, the sex. Even now he longed to do it all over again, even if he knew it would only make matters worse. Taking fulfillment in Lizzie’s body, holding her close, burying his face in her hair—none of those things was the answer. “We messed up.” Mired in his grief, he kept looking at her. “If we hadn’t slept together, we wouldn’t have been so uncomfortable around each other, and then Losa wouldn’t have figured us out.”
Lizzie’s voice hitched again. “She said that she was suspicious of us from the beginning.”
“I know, but with the way we were acting, we gave ourselves away. We didn’t seem like a real couple to her.”
Still wrapped in the fetal position, she rocked in her chair. “We aren’t a real couple.”
“Everyone else believed that we were. Everyone except Losa.” The person who had the power to take Tokoni away from them. “I can’t believe that she turned us down. That Tokoni is never going to be ours. I wish she would have told us who the other applicants are. At least then—”
“We’d know who we’re losing him to? How is that going to help?”
“I don’t know. But they must be happily married or she wouldn’t be considering them.” He analyzed the strangers who might become Tokoni’s parents. “What if their marriage breaks apart at some point? What if they end up divorced, too? It isn’t fair that she’s blaming us for not being in love. Who even knows what it means, anyway?”
A choked sound escaped from Lizzie’s lips. “I don’t want to talk about the definition of love.”
“I’m just saying that—”
“Please, I can’t do this...” She unfolded her arms and put her feet on the ground. Then, as quick as that, she ran toward the beach, on the verge of crying again.
Max’s gut wrenched. Should he leave her alone? Or should he chase after her? He knew how fiercely she was hurting. He hurt, too, so damned badly.
He took a chance and headed toward her. She looked so lost, facing the water, the hem of her pale summer dress fluttering in the breeze. Was she blaming herself because Losa had put the initial burden on her? Did she think that she’d botched their phony presentation of love more than he had?
He came up behind her. The air smelled of salt and sea and sand, of tropical flowers and leafy foliage, of everything that reminded him of this trip they’d taken together. Their phony honeymoon, he thought.
“Lizzie?” He said her name, letting her know he was there.
She turned around, drew a breath. “Yes?”
He gently asked, “Do you think it’s your fault because of what Losa said to you about not seeming like a true bride?”
She nodded. “Yes, but it’s more than that, so much more.”
“Tell me.”
“I can’t.” Behind her, the ocean turned a foamy shade of blue, rolling its way onto the picture-perfect shore.
“Yes, you can. I’m your BFF, remember? You can tell me anything.”
“You won’t understand.”
“Yes, I will. You can confide in me.” If not him, then who would she reveal herself to? “That’s what we do, Lizzie. Tell each other our secrets.”
“Then here it is. I want to be what Losa said I wasn’t.”
Too confused to make the connection, to let it sink in, he blinked at her. “That doesn’t make sense.”
“Yes, it does,” she said, in a ghost of a whisper. “I want to be your true bride.”
He shook his head, shook it so hard his brain rattled. “You don’t know what you’re saying. You’re sad, you’re agonizing over Tokoni, you’re—”
“I’m in love with you, Max.”
Recoiling from her words, he flinched. His mother used to tell him that she loved him after every beating, every cigarette burn, every painful punishment.
Trapped in his memories, he pushed his feet into the sand. Beneath the surface of the thick white grains, something pierced his skin. The edges of a broken shell, maybe. Or a tiny shard of glass or something else that didn’t belong in a beach environment.
“I knew it was going to freak you out.” Lizzie spoke quietly, cautiously. “It freaks me out, too. I was so afraid I was going to fall in love with you, and I did.”
He snapped back into the conversation. “You’ve been afraid of this? For how long?”
“Since the day when you first showed me the garden.”
Her deception punched him straight in the gut. “You’ve been stressing about this since before we got married, before you slept with me?”
“Yes. But I’ve been fighting my fears. On the night we were together, I prayed to survive it.”
Max wasn’t surviving it. Already he could feel the monsters coming to get him. The two-faced creatures lurking in the closet with the door barred shut.
“I think my fear of loving you is what Losa was seeing in my eyes,” Lizzie said. “The shadows she mentioned. I doubt she knew that’s why I didn’t seem like a true bride, but she still sensed that something wasn’t right.”
Shadows, he thought. Monsters. He glanced up at the sun, then back at Lizzie. “My mother could have been her. Anog Ite.”
She squinted at him. “Double-Faced Woman?”
He nodded. The being who was condemned to wear two faces for seducing the Wi, the sun. He gestured to the sky. The setting sun was turning red, as if it was fused with fire, as bright as Lizzie’s hair. “My mother had two faces. She was beautiful like Anog Ite, but ugly, too. Some people say that Anog Ite isn’t evil. That she’s just a figure of disharmony. But to me, she’ll always be evil, like my mother, like the love she used against me.”
“Love isn’t evil, Max.”
“No, but it makes people hurt.” He reached out to touch Lizzie’s hair. The beautiful redness. The fire. “Look what happened with Tokoni. We lost him, even though we loved him.” He lowered his hand. “But maybe it’s all just a smokescreen, this love that you think you feel for me. Maybe it isn’t even real.”
“It’s real.” Her voice broke. “What I feel is real.”
“I don’t think it is.” He didn’t want to believe it, couldn’t let himself believe it. “You just think you love me because you got caught up in the fantasy of being a wife. But that’s not you. You aren’t the wifely type.”
“My dad said that I was going to make a good wife.”
“Your dad? He barely knows you. But I know you, Lizzie.” He thumped a hand against his chest. “I know who you are.”
“You don’t know me anymore.” She argued with him, defending the person she claimed to be. “I’m different. I’m changed.”
He fought the urge to grab her, to shake her until she admitted that she didn’t love him. But he wanted to hold her and kiss her, too. Max was a mess, more emotionally wrought than he’d ever been. “You were supposed to be my friend, my partner in parenthood. I trusted you.”
“But you don’t trust me now?”
“I don’t know.” He didn’t know anything anymore.
“You can do whatever you want,” she said. “But I’m going to pack my bags and catch the last boat to the mainland, before it gets dark.”
He tried to stop her. “You don’t have to do that.”
“Yes, I do. I’ll get a room on the mainland and take a commercial flight back to the States in the morning or whenever I can arrange it.”
“I understand that you want to go back early. I do, too.” The pretense of being on a honeymoon was over. “But we can take my jet and return together.”
“What for? So you can keep trying
to convince me that I don’t love you? I need for you to believe me, to trust me.” She turned and walked away, leaving him alone.
As he watched her go, he knew it was just a matter of time before the monsters reappeared.
Smothering him in the dark.
* * *
It took Lizzie three days to get a flight, and by then she suspected that Max was already home.
While riding in an airport limo, en route to her condo, she thought about the wedding dress she’d left in the guest room at his house. She couldn’t bear for it to be in his possession.
So what was she going to do? Text him and ask him if she could come and get it? Oh, sure, she thought, just pop over to his mansion to collect her gown, as if there was nothing weird or painful or foolish about that.
Nonetheless, she did it. She fired off a text. Deep down, she knew this was just an excuse to see him. She could have sent a delivery service for the dress.
Max replied quickly, accepting her excuse and agreeing it was okay for her to stop by. But they didn’t keep texting. Their communication was brief and choppy.
She gave the driver Max’s address, and he plugged it into his GPS and headed for their new destination.
When they reached the security gate, Lizzie squeezed the handles on her purse, clutching the leather between her fingers, her nerves skittering beneath her skin.
After they were admitted onto the property, the car glided up the circular driveway and parked out front.
The chauffeur opened her door, and she said, “I won’t be long. I just have to pick something up.”
“Take all the time you need,” he said.
What she needed was her husband to accept that she loved him. But she couldn’t say that to the stranger who’d brought her here. So she merely smiled and thanked him. He was an older man, probably around her dad’s age.
He returned to the limo, and she took the courtyard path to the front door. Lizzie rang the bell, trapped in a situation that she’d created. Was coming here a mistake? Or would it make things easier?
Max opened the door, and they gazed awkwardly at each other. He wore a pair of faded jeans with one of his prized Star Wars T-shirts. She almost smiled in spite of herself, but then she noticed the depiction was of Luke Skywalker battling Darth Vader, the latter with a bloodlike redness behind his black-helmeted eyes.
Good versus evil. Love versus pain.
“Come in,” Max said.
Silent, she entered the mansion. She wanted to take him in her arms and make his pain go away. But she couldn’t mend his ache, any more than she could cure her own.
She noticed that he was still wearing his wedding band. But she suspected that he was keeping up appearances and protecting his privacy, rather than face the questions people were going to throw at him if they saw him without his ring. He’d probably even told his pilot a phony story about why he’d returned from their honeymoon without her, citing a business emergency or something.
Lizzie hadn’t taken off her ring yet, either. But she wanted to stay married. Her reason was better than his.
“I’ll just go get my dress,” she said, crossing the foyer and heading for the staircase.
He fell into step with her. “I’ll go with you.”
They made their way to the second floor, and once they reached the landing, she glanced in both directions, remembering the choice she’d made on their wedding night.
He appeared to be thinking the same thing. But neither of them said anything. They continued to the guest wing.
They entered the room where she’d left her dress. Her gown was on the bed, with the accessories that went with it, including the earrings Max had given her.
He stood off to the side, looking dark and brooding.
“It’s as pretty as the day you wore it,” he said, about her dress. “With all its silk and lace and shiny beads.” After a long pause, he added, “If everything hadn’t gotten so messed up, you would have been moving into my house instead of dashing over here to grab your gown.”
She wasn’t running out the door yet. For now she was having a painful discussion with him. “Even if the adoption would have gone through, I would have left eventually with us getting divorced.”
“That’s what we agreed on.”
“Until I bent the rules and fell in love with you?”
“It’s not love, Lizzie. You just think it is.”
“I can’t see you again after this.” It hurt too much to be near him, to keep hearing him deny her. “I shouldn’t have even come here today.” It was definitely a mistake.
He pulled a restless hand through his hair. “I know that we need to stay away from each other. But damn it, I’m going to miss you.”
She couldn’t begin to express how much she was going to miss him. She sat on the edge of the bed and touched a lace panel of her dress. “Nothing is ever going to be the same again.”
He came forward and lifted one of the earrings, turning it toward the light. “Love was never supposed to be part of the deal. That’s why our marriage and divorce was supposed to work.”
But none of it had worked, not even the adoption. “When are you going to tell your family and friends about us?” Eventually he would have to remove his ring and face the music.
“I don’t know. I just need a bit more time for now.”
“Me, too.” To hole up in her condo and cry. “When you’re ready to deal with it, you can file for the divorce.” She couldn’t bring herself to end their marriage. They’d already lost the child who was supposed to be their son, and now they were losing each other, too. Just thinking about it made her want to crumble.
Turning away from him, she headed for the closet to retrieve the garment bag that had come with her wedding dress.
While he stood silently by, she placed everything inside the bag, zipping it up, shutting out the memory. The broken dream, she thought, of a marriage that never really was.
* * *
Max walked through his garden. He’d been spending countless hours here. He’d been going to the gym every night, too, but he always increased his workouts when he was stressed. Of course, immersing himself in plants and flowers was a whole other form of therapy. Or torture or whatever the hell it was.
Two weeks had passed since he saw Lizzie, since she collected her wedding dress, and he couldn’t get her out of his mind. This was the worst era of his life, the absolute worst. And he’d been through some horrendous stuff when he was younger.
Yeah, he thought wryly, like the time his mom had abandoned him in their rathole of an apartment for three excruciating days. He’d survived on a half-empty box of cereal. No milk. No juice. No loving, caring parent. The TV had kept him company: cartoons in the morning, game shows in the afternoon, sitcoms and whatever else he could find that didn’t scare him at night. Being alone was scary enough. And now he lived in a gigantic mansion, all by himself.
Hoorah for the nerd. The rich, single bachelor.
The monsters were back with a vengeance, just as he’d suspected they would be, keeping him awake at night, creeping and crawling into his brain. Hideous shadows in the dark. He couldn’t shake them, no matter how hard he tried.
He kept walking through the garden, and as he approached the foliage that had been planted in honor of Tokoni, he stopped in midtrack. Mired in his loss, he wanted to pull every damned one of those plants out by their roots. But he would let them thrive instead, hoping and praying that Tokoni thrived in his new life, too. But it still tore him to shreds that the Creator had taken the boy away from him and Lizzie.
Lizzie. Elizabeth McQueen, his beautiful, faded friend. Even her name suggested her station in her life. She’d always been royalty, even before she’d become a high school homecoming queen or a grown-up likeness to Lady Ari.
Why did she have to misconstrue her feelings into what she thought was love? Why did she have to fall into that kind of trap?
He strode over to the gazebo and went inside, thinking about the moment they’d first kissed. He envisioned her with that luscious red lipstick, her mouth warm and pliant against his.
He missed her beyond reason. But why wouldn’t he? Normally when Max needed someone to ease him out of an emotional jam, he called her. She was his go-to, his dearest, closest friend, his comrade in arms. Sure, he had his brothers, but he always chose Lizzie first. He’d shared his secrets with her, things he’d never even talked to his brothers about. Garrett and Jake knew that Max had been abused as a kid, but he’d never opened up to them about it, not like he had with Lizzie. He’d told her everything, how it felt to be beaten and burned and scorned by his mother, how he used to cower in the closet, how he’d cried himself to sleep, but most of all, how his mother had insisted that she loved him.
Sharp, jagged, bloodthirsty love.
Lizzie knew that he’d never wanted to hear another woman say those words to him again. And now she claimed to love him, feeding the monsters and making his heart hurt from it.
Max twisted the ring on his finger, warning himself to remove it, to let Lizzie go, to divorce his wife, as soon as he could summon the willpower to do it.
Twelve
Lizzie couldn’t stop thinking about Max, every minute of the day, every hour of the night.
She glanced at the microwave clock and saw that it was almost 7:00 p.m. On a Wednesday, she noted to herself. But that didn’t matter because one day blurred into the next.
God, she was lonely without him.
She prepared a cup of hot tea and carried it into the living room. She hadn’t been out of the house since they broke apart. But being a recluse wasn’t all that tough. For food, she ordered groceries online and had them delivered. She’d had a few take-out meals brought over, too. But mostly, she didn’t feel like eating.
Paper Wedding, Best-Friend Bride Page 14
