He stopped a few feet away but didn’t speak.
“I always knew,” she whispered, shaking her head softly as she glared forward. “The way you tried to talk him out of taking me on our first date freshman year. The way you tried to ruin my wedding. Encouraging him to cheat during the bachelor party. Filming it so you’d have evidence if he decided to listen to you and stop making the biggest mistake of his life. Bet you were sick to your stomach when he didn’t. Always getting him trashed on boys’ nights out in hopes he’d do something I couldn’t forgive. Telling anyone who’d listen that I was a spoiled princess, untethered from the realities of the world and that he deserved a “partner” not a “spoiled daughter” in the hopes that word would get around about me and persuade him to leave me out of shame. I always knew that, deep down, you didn’t just dislike me, but you hated me. And if someone hears something enough, over and over, they start to believe it. And listening to you, over and over, he believed it too. I always knew you were the one who convinced him to go, but the more time I spent with you, the more I fell for you, the less I was willing to believe it. I didn’t want to believe it. I guess love really is blind huh?”
“Stella—”
She sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, her watery orbs flying to his. “I want you to go.”
He was already ghost-white, but somehow he went even paler as his mouth fell open. Every vein in his eyes had gone beet red, the crimson tone nearly erasing the green in his irises completely. His bow tie hung open at his collar, with most of the top buttons of his shirt undone, and the product in his hair had made its exit long ago, leaving his hair in disarray on top of his head.
“I want you to pack your bags and leave tonight. I’ll take care of the rest and have it FedEx-ed.”
“Baby, can we please at least talk about this?”
“There’s nothing to talk about!” She leaped up when he stepped toward her, taking several steps away from him before swiveling on her heel to face him again.
His face grew horror-stricken, big hands trembling when he held them out at his sides. He tried to speak, but no words would come, and his hands collapsed at his sides once more like a man defeated, dropping his head and making wisps of his hair fall into his eyes.
“You know what the worst part is?” she whispered, tears spilling down her eyes. “The worst part about that saying ‘when you tell someone something over and over, they start to believe it?’ The worst part is that, eventually, I let myself believe it too. You told me, over and over, that I was the reason Troy felt he had to go. That he had no choice. You really had me believing it was my fault… because I was such an ungrateful, spoiled monster, he had no choice but to take the money on offer and go back over there to that… to that hellhole…even if he knew the region was more dangerous than it had ever been before. You really had me believing that I forced him back to that lion’s den, even after I’d begged him—begged him—to stay for me, and our baby. You let me believe that—even when you knew it was you all along.”
“Because I knew he was gonna die over there, Stella?” he roared, his voice rising so high, so fast, it caused her to jolt, his eyes gleaming with emotion. “Do you really believe I could ever be that callous, that sick, to encourage him to take a flight that would be the last flight of his life? To walk a path that would be the last path he ever walked? To meet a demise I didn’t even know was waiting for him on the other side of that water until it was too late? He had the heart and strength of a lion to me, Stella. The only hero I ever knew in my whole fucking life. I thought he was untouchable! Invincible! I never thought he could die because he was a God to me!”
She sniffled as the tears in her eyes jetted down her cheeks. “Where did you get that note?”
Rocco straightened, eyes widening. “What note—”
“The note, Rocco, the note! ‘Please take care of Stella and Blue’… where did you get it?”
He shook his head rapidly as if his mind was going a mile a minute. “The secretary of the army. He said Troy wrote it and gave it to a commanding officer. Said it was for my eyes and my eyes only.”
“Did he know he was going to die?”
“No,” he breathed. “They said he wrote it a few weeks… few weeks before the bomb.”
Her teeth chattered. “And you kept it all this time. You slept with it… curled up in your hand. As a daily reminder.”
His eyes shrunk, as he seemed to realize where she was going. “Baby… Please.”
“So that’s the real reason you gave up everything. The real reason you emptied every retirement and savings account in your name. You felt guilty.”
“No…”
“That’s the real reason you wanted me to buy the spa. You needed to make sure Blue and I could survive on our own once you chucked the deuces.”
“That’s not true, baby.”
“So why did you re-apply when the FBI re-opened the application? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”
He stumbled, slamming his eyes closed.
“That’s why you had to keep Troy’s note in your back pocket, all these months. To re-read it every day. To remind yourself why you were still tolerating us. To give you the push you needed to continue performing a task you found unbearable. ‘Most men who’re deployed would do anything to get back to their wives, but Troy should do anything to get away’, right?”
“Stella, I was a different man. I didn’t know you. Not like I thought I did. I didn’t know shit. I didn’t love you and Blue with every—” His voice broke. “With every fiber of my being then.”
“Deep down, you still wanted to leave.”
“No.”
“Take the clean out.”
“No.”
She looked down at the ring in her hand, sniffling, her fingers shaking the entire time.
Upon seeing the ring, he crossed the room in a flash and covered her hands with his, his touch setting something off in her and causing a sob to race up her throat.
“Stella, stop. Stop. Please stop, baby.” His voice came shaking and shattered with every second she continued fighting to get her hands back. “Please don’t do this to me.”
“I’ll only bring any man who tries to take care of me down in flames. So let me do you the favor.” She gasped when he finally let her snatch her hands out of his hold, shoving the ring into his chest.
He pressed his hand against hers, trying to hold them against his racing heart, but she ripped them away, leaving nothing but the cold weight of the ring locked between his hand and his heart. The pain in his eyes was so poignant she swore his green orbs were speaking to her in plain English. Writing out a detailed letter of just how much she was ripping him apart. Painting her a vivid picture of his insides as they shredded to pieces on scrap at a time.
Just as quickly as deep anguish had taken over his face, however, his nostrils flared, his eyes protruded, and his breathing quickened. Noisy. The color returned to his face like a tidal wave of blood rolling under his cheeks, burning them red as he clenched his teeth.
“You’d give up on me this easily?” he growled, tears filling his own eyes. “After everything I’ve done for you?”
“You didn’t do it for me. You did it for him,” she spat. “You did it for yourself, to ease the guilt in your heart.”
“If you can really think that low of me…” Hand still over his heart, eyes widening a little more every second as if seeing her for the first time. “Then maybe I will take the clean out.”
She nodded. “Yeah, maybe you should.”
He curled the hand over his heart into a claw, as if trying to dig the aching muscle out of his chest, but then that claw transformed into a fist as if he were seconds from banging through his ribcage to get to it.
Unable to look at him for another moment, Stella charged forward, shouldering him on her way to the staircase. “Get out of my house. Don’t be here when we wake up tomorrow—don’t be here ever again!”
She broke into a run
on her way to the stairs, taking them two at a time, holding back the sob that was burning her throat until she’d raced into Blue’s nursery—the only place she believed would calm her—closed the door behind her, and burst into stomach-curling, gut-wrenching tears.
——
“Papa Wak!”
Stella woke up the next morning to the sound of Blue’s squeals and giggles, lifting her red, swollen eyes from where she was curled up on the pink fuzzy rug on the floor of her nursery. Blue hopped up and down inside her crib, the springs of the mattress disagreeing with her feet, big belly protruding over the waistband on her diaper and she screamed with glee the moment their eyes met.
“Papa Wak!” Blue cried with each hop, the way she always did the moment she woke up every morning until Rocco eventually turned the corner of her nursery with sleepy eyes, causing her cries to move to ear-splitting screams of excitement. Like a super fan seeing her favorite artist appear on stage for the first time at a rock concert. “Papa Wak! Papa Wak! Papa Wak!”
Stella pushed herself up, supremely uncomfortable since her purple party dress had shifted on her body during her sleep just enough to make her feel like the stiff fabric was suffocating her.
She smiled softly up at Blue, but in the next instant, the smile vanished. The night before came racing back to her in a flash. The blowout in the study. Ripping Blue out of Corrine’s arms at Table One, much to everyone’s confusion, before racing out of the fundraiser with Ivy. The shattered look in Rocco’s eyes when she’d shoved her ring into his chest. She could still remember how hard his heart had been beating.
The memory made her shoot up to her feet, fly out of the nursery, and jet down the hall, throwing open the double doors of her bedroom.
“Rocco!” she called, throwing the front door of the guesthouse open.
Silence.
Her heavy breathing ground to a halt, when she found the three dresser drawers she’d given him, open and empty, with a few random articles of clothing he’d chosen to leave behind hanging over the edges. His watch and badge were gone from where he usually kept them on top of the dresser, next to the Savannah wood cut out, and so were all the shoes and the duffle bag he’d kept in the closet. All his necessities in the bathroom: toothbrush, toothpaste, hair supplies—gone.
Stella collapsed against the bathroom door and slammed her eyes shut, placing a hand over her heart. She was frozen for several moments, and when she finally managed to push herself to a stand, her limbs felt like jello. She could barely feel herself moving when she trudged back out into the hallway where she could still hear Blue chanting ‘Papa Wak’ as the passed the nursery. She didn’t even feel herself plodding down the stairs, her numb legs making her feel as if she was floating on air and not stumbling about like an extra on the Walking Dead.
She floated all the way to the kitchen island, where the purple clutch bag she’d had with her at the party awaited her, fishing her cell phone out desperately.
But as she jammed her finger into the power button, she was met with a black screen. Cursing under her breath, she snatched up the charger that always stayed plugged into the outlet on the wall of the island, her heart churning at the realization that the charger was actually Rocco’s, and plugged her phone in.
The moment the picture of a red, depleted battery with a lightning bolt in the middle popped up on the black screen, however, the sight of something moving in her peripheral pulled her eyes to living room window. The growl of the red Porsche pulling into her driveway entered her senses next.
And she nearly screamed.
The blood gushing through her veins felt like it’d gone to a boil, enough to melt through all her skin and bone and reduce her to a puddle on the floor. Instead of melting, however, she rebounded. The hot adrenaline racing through her suddenly made her limbs—which had previously felt like jello—feel like shiny, solid steel. Steel that could move at the speed of light as she raced for the front door with a growl, threw it open, and stomped out into her front yard as fast as she could go, her matted hair flying behind her in the gentle morning breeze.
The passenger’s side window of the Porsche rolled down in anticipation of her arrival, the gleam of the sun still rising overhead flashing across the slick glass as it did.
Stella took hold of the doorsill and bent down, spitting into the car with clenched teeth. “I told you I never wanted to see you again.”
Mr. Devereux didn’t give her his usual kind, unruffled smile. The kind a kindergarten teacher would give to a spoiled child who’d done something naughty. Instead, his eyebrows pinched above the rims of his silver designer sunglasses, which served as a perfect compliment to his steel grey suit.
“I didn’t like how we left things.” His buttery voice floated across the car. “The way I spoke to you was rash. Unnecessary…”
She pressed her lips together at the memory of their last exchange at the spa. When he’d shaken Rocco’s hand, and Rocco had introduced himself by name. A chill raced down her spine at the reminder that this animal knew Rocco’s full name. The fact that Mr. Devereux had all but fallen off the face of the earth since that day at the spa had given her some slice of foolish hope. Hope that he’d decided to leave her alone once and for all. That this could all be over.
But the soft smile that finally lifted his lips from the driver’s side told her this was far from over. “I just hate being lied to, Stella, and I reacted abruptly. It was… unbecoming of me. I hope, tonight, you’ll give me the opportunity to make it up to you, and I can ensure you’ll wake up a wealthy woman tomorrow morning. A million dollars richer, since I am a man of my word.”
He lifted a rectangular sleeve of paper that he held between his pointer and middle finger a moment later. The sunlight booming into the car from behind her highlighted the Four Seasons calligraphy printed across the white paper.
Her heart fell to her feet.
“Room 1901,” he waved the keycard. “Say… 8 o'clock?”
“I’m not going to your fucking hotel room.”
“Oh, I think you are.” His smile brightened. “Or Rocco Wolfe might just be in for the surprise of his life the next time he speaks to his commanding officer—”
She reached into the car with a gasp and snatched the keycard from his fingers before he could finish, every bone in her body shaking too violently to even allow her to speak another word through her clenched teeth.
“I’ll see you tonight.”
He began rolling up the window while she was still in it, causing her to pull back to avoid being eaten alive in the process. The growl of his engine rose into the air and then he was reversing out of her driveway, giving her a two-fingered saluted and another stomach-turning smile through the windshield as he reversed.
Stella watched him roll away with her stomach at her feet.
25
Stella drew in as deep a breath as her swollen nose would allow, taking in the scent of rain pattering down on the mansion’s winding driveway from the black, muggy sky overhead. The scratchy fabric of her knee-length black raincoat irritated her skin since she wore nothing but a red lace garter and panty set underneath. Blue’s bright yellow ducky raincoat was zipped as high as it would go with the hood pulled over her curls as well, fast asleep on Stella’s shoulder.
Stella lifted her hand and knocked for a second time, louder, waiting for the butler to answer the door.
When Corinne’s blue eyes came into her view instead, seconds after the door flew open, wearing a terry cloth white robe and matching slippers, Stella sucked in a stunned breath.
“Stella!” Corrine beamed. “Darling, we’ve been so worried about you since the party yesterday. Are you feeling better? DJ said you were deathly ill and had to go straight home!”
Tears burned Stella’s eyes. DJ hadn’t told her parents about her and Rocco. It gave her the tiniest twinge of faith. Faith that she hadn’t lost her best friend forever. That, one day, DJ actually could forgive her.
Now she only had
to worry about how she could ever forgive herself.
“Can you watch Blue?” was all Stella could say in response, hearing the way her voice shook, hoping Corinne would assume it was a reaction to the cold she’d lied about having.
Corinne blinked rapidly. “Of course, you know we’re always happy to take her.” She accepted Blue when Stella handed her over and snuggled the sleeping bundle to her bosom. “Stella, are you sure you’re alright?” she asked, even though Stella hadn’t even confirmed she was alright the first time.
Stella tried to answer like a normal human being, but something inside her had switched, making her feel like a robot that could only speak in the most basic terms and respond to the most basic commands.
“Can you watch her until tomorrow?”
“Stella, what’s wrong? Come inside—”
“Can you?”
Corrine faltered, her blue eyes widening as she cradled the back of Blue’s head to her chest. Once upon a time, Stella knew that was a question that would never need to be asked of Blue’s grandparents. The real question had always been, “Hey, can I get my baby back?” But, at that moment, all Corinne could do was give a quick nod, her eyes still soaked with concern.
Stella didn’t even thank her, turning on her heel and making her way back out to the tattered 99 Honda Accord being assaulted by the rain in the driveway. The Honda Accord she’d fought tooth and nail against when Rocco had traded it for her Range Rover. The Accord that now brought hot tears to her eyes as the memory of that day—any day she’d spent with Rocco for that matter—came swooping down on her like a black cloud that gave the real black clouds in the sky a serious run for their money.
She climbed back into the driver’s side of the car and slammed it shut, gazing toward the front door of the house just as Corinne had finished easing it shut.
Her eyes flew to the clock on the dashboard.
7:25 p.m.
With trembling fingers, she took her cellphone out of her jacket pocket and dialed the same number she’d dialed a million times that night.
Forbidden (War Book 1) Page 30
