WORTHY, Part 2 (The Worthy Series)

by Lexie Ray

  “I’m not sleeping around,” I said, wondering inanely how I could have so many tears in my body. They just kept falling. “I would never do that to you. I’ve only loved you, only been with you. I trusted you, Jonathan, and I thought I knew you, but I now understand why that can never be possible. I can never truly know you.”

  “You know exactly who I am,” Jonathan said. “Exactly. We got to know me at the exact same time. I don’t have any secrets from you.”

  “Your entire past is a secret,” I said, aware that I was repeating Brock. As much as I hated Brock right now, that statement he’d spat at me had rung a little too true in my ears. “The more I find out about who you used to be, the more I doubt who you’re purporting to be.”

  “What do you mean, purporting to be?” Jonathan asked. “Do you think I wanted to lose my memories? To lose who I was? I told you upfront that I didn’t like the things I was hearing about my past, either. Do you really believe that I’m just pretending to be the way I am now?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised,” I said, realizing that I was now channeling what Jane had told me. I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was getting to the bottom of this. I couldn’t keep living in doubt of what my husband was doing while he was abroad, what he really wanted to be doing instead of being with me. “According to some of the things you used to do, this would be about par for the course — playing games of deception with someone who trusts you just for your own entertainment.”

  “I don’t know where this is coming from or how you can think that,” he said. “Do you really know me so little? We shared our lives, Michelle. We shared everything. How is this coming from you right now? Have you always felt like this?”

  “No,” I said. “But after seeing those pictures of you and Violet, I don’t know what to think anymore. I don’t trust you, Jonathan. I don’t think you’re telling me the truth.”

  “That’s it, then,” he said. “If there’s no trust in a relationship, there’s nothing.”

  I thought that this statement would make me cry even harder, but I felt only emptiness inside. Had it really come to this? Was this really happening? I didn’t know what to believe anymore.

  “Nothing,” I repeated.

  “Maybe it’s best if we took a break from talking to each other,” Jonathan said. “Try to let all of this sink in. Try to make sense of it.”

  “Oh, you mean not talk to each other like we already haven’t been talking to each other?” I asked. “I’m used to that. That’ll be fine. When will I hear from you again? A week from now? A month from now? A year from now?”

  “Enough,” Jonathan said. “You know that I’ve been busy. You don’t have to throw it in my face anymore.”

  “Do whatever you think is best for you,” I said. “It’s what you’re good at.”

  Jonathan gave a long sigh. “I just don’t understand the betrayal, Michelle. I thought we loved each other.”

  “I don’t understand the betrayal, either, Jon. I don’t know if I’ll ever make sense of it. Of this.”

  “I have to get going now,” he said. “I’ve left the party for too long.”

  “Of course,” I said. “Of course. Back to your party. Sorry I’ve kept you for so long. I’m just your wife, though for how much longer, I have no idea. You’ll let me know, won’t you? Send me a text?”

  “Stop this,” he admonished. “This isn’t you, Michelle. This isn’t us.”

  “I don’t know what ‘us’ means anymore,” I said. “I really don’t.”

  “We’ll talk more soon,” Jonathan said, and he ended the call.

  I sat on the floor for a full minute with the phone pressed up against my ear, still not believing what had happened. Was this really happening? Couldn’t I just be dreaming?

  I squeezed my eyes shut, then opened them again. No. I was still there on Jonathan’s floor, holding my hot phone to my ear. How quickly my marriage had fallen apart.

  I revisited our entire conversation in my mind, aware of just how crazy it had been. Were we really lying to each other? Had we been lying to each other this whole time? Maybe it would’ve never been possible to be together. There were too many hurdles to overcome. I was a broken little girl, and Jonathan was only half a man.

  There was just too much damage.

  I had just one other call to make to try and piece the rest of this puzzle together. I scrolled through my pitifully short list of contacts and punched the call button.

  “You son of a bitch,” I whispered hoarsely when Brock answered his phone.

  “Good to hear from you, too, Michelle,” he said cheerfully. “Glad to hear you’re doing fine. It’s been way too long since we last spoke.”

  “Who the hell do you think you are?” I demanded.

  “Well, a son of a bitch, if I trust your judgment.”

  “You took photos of me,” I said, each word a razor blade in my throat. “And you sent them to my husband.”

  “Haven’t you ever heard of ‘bros before hos?’” he asked. “Jonathan’s my best buddy, baby doll. He deserves to know if his wife is trying to step out on him — especially if it’s with me.”

  “You told me nothing happened,” I said, wishing I could shriek it. My voice was too spent and my spirit too shattered to let my outrage be known. “You told me all that happened was I tried to kiss you and you put me to bed.”

  “What do you want me to say, Michelle?” he asked. “You looked like death warmed over that morning, and I didn’t want to upset you. You seemed devastated that you would even try to kiss me, let alone what we really did. I didn’t want you to slit your fucking wrists in my condo, is all.”

  “Nothing happened!” I cried. “Nothing happened between us! You told me that!”

  “Well, do you remember anything?”

  “No!”

  “Then in your mind, nothing happened.” Brock’s placid explanation enraged me beyond what I was able to express.

  “But you sent my husband pictures of me — of us,” I said. “How could you sit there and fucking lie to me, you bastard?”

  “Look, I don’t know what truth you want to believe,” he said. “What I believe is that I did the right thing by letting Jonathan know what was going on back home while he was away.”

  “We’re through,” I said. “Does that make you happy? My relationship with my husband is through.”

  “If that’s not what you wanted to happen, then I’m sorry,” he said. “But remember that you dug that grave yourself, Michelle. It’s not my problem that you don’t like the consequences. And hey — if you’re really single now, we should hook up. We’re pretty good together, you and I. Hot stuff.”

  I ended the call, too angry to respond to him. It felt like my heart was about to leap straight out of my chest like something from a horror movie.

  Then, suddenly, all the anger went out of me with a whoosh. I felt nothing except for a tiny bud of knowledge that took up a tentative residence where my heart used to be.

  Even backed into this corner with my heart torn out of my chest, I still had a place to go.

  I’d go back to where I belonged. I’d go back to the cottage, my cottage, in the woods, away from all of this.

  Chapter Eight

  It was a mistake, I realized now. It was a mistake to ever come to the city. I only belonged one place, and that place was the cottage — in the wilderness, away from everyone else.

  That was the only place in the world for me.

  Jonathan being abroad hadn’t been the problem. I’d been alone this entire time. It had just taken the terrible fight with my husband — my soon to be ex-husband, now — to understand that fact. I’d never belonged in Chicago or the Wharton compound. I’d never been meant to marry Jonathan Wharton. I’d known my destiny for years, and it was to live out the rest of my life in the woods.

  I packed a bag of my simplest clothes, laughing at all the finery I had amassed during my time at the Wharton compound. My wedding dress still hu
ng in my closet. Lucy had offered to put it in storage to preserve it somewhere, but I had insisted on keeping it close to me.

  I’d planned on wearing it again when Jonathan returned so he could properly remove it from me, as he’d promised to do before we got married.

  Now, I wanted nothing more than to get as far away as possible from that dress and the life it had made me think I might have. There was no use for that kind of fancy shit in the woods. The woods didn’t require that you put on a face and a pretty dress just to try to be yourself. The woods were simple. That was what I wanted — a place where I could just exist without having to constantly come up with explanations for behaviors I didn’t understand. I thought Brock was my friend, but I’d been wrong about that. I thought that I could always trust Jonathan, the man I’d married, but I’d been even more of an idiot about that.

  By the time I packed my bag, it was well past midnight. I looked around the room, peering into each corner and nook and cranny as if they would give me some answer as to where my life had gone. I should’ve been happier when Jonathan was still here. I shouldn’t have taken those days for granted. I should’ve tried harder to adapt, tried to make him see that I’d do anything for him.

  Maybe then he wouldn’t have turned to Violet for company while he was abroad.

  And maybe then I would never have gone out with Jane and Brock, or gotten as drunk as I had, or done what everyone seemed to be convinced that I’d done.

  I searched my mind hard, clutching my bag of clothes and toiletries, trying to look back at that night, but my memories were severely limited. Brock and Jane kissing. A long alleyway. A swerving car ride. They were the same dreams I’d had trying to sleep off all those shots, and I couldn’t make heads or tails out of them.

  It didn’t matter anymore. Nothing mattered anymore. I just needed to get out of here, to put this place behind me. To try to move forward with my life.

  Before walking out of the room, I checked my phone out of habit and saw a text from Jane. It was time stamped from about an hour ago.

  “Proud of you for confronting this head on,” it read. “Let me know if you need a drink or ten to forget about it. I’m always here for you.”

  A drink was about the last thing I needed right now.

  The house was quiet, but I was still cautious, not wanting to run into anyone unexpectedly. I almost felt nostalgic, knowing it was going to be the last time I saw it. There was the place where Jonathan’s mother made me her personal slave. There was the place I’d sat and allowed myself to be scrutinized by the rest of the Whartons, staring at me like I was some freak of nature who’d laid eggs of evil in their son’s brain.

  Goodbye to all of it, and good riddance. I’d never belong here, and the thought was a comfort.

  I wondered if I would’ve saved myself any grief if I had fled the Wharton compound the first night I’d taken a mind to it. It was right after Jonathan and I had found out he was engaged to Violet and me at the same time, and I realized that I was in too deep. How had I been so clear-headed back then? How had all the shit that was wrong with this relationship been so apparent?

  In the end, Collier had been out in the courtyard to stop me. He’d been able to convince me to give this life a chance because he’d seen the potential within Jonathan to be something great. Collier was a shrewd businessman. I couldn’t help the feeling that I’d been played back then, kept around as some sort of twisted bait for Jonathan to try to do well. Maybe Collier had even told Jonathan that I wanted him to succeed, that I needed him to be the Wharton Group CEO for our continued success as a couple.

  Would Collier do something so callous, so coldly calculating? All I had were theories and regrets. I should’ve just left that night. Jonathan and I wouldn’t be married, and it would’ve been easier to slip back into obscurity at the cottage. Things would’ve been different. I bet I would’ve even been over Jonathan by now if I’d left instead of stayed.

  Tonight, though, the courtyard was empty. I was going to be able to leave, to get away from all this madness.

  I let myself into the open space, shivering a little at the cool air, then took a set of stairs that led to the parking garage. Jonathan’s car was in here, as much as he used it. Everyone in the Wharton family preferred to have someone do their driving for them.

  I, on the other hand, didn’t want anyone knowing where I was going.

  In the private area of the parking garage, accessible by Wharton family and staff only, no one thought anything of leaving the keys in the vehicle. I took what had been Jonathan’s prized BMW convertible — the Jonathan before, anyway. From what I understood, he’d been the only person in the family who’d liked doing things like driving for himself.

  When the engine roared to life, I knew why: it sounded like freedom.

  It had been a long time since I’d driven anywhere, and a longer time still that I’d even had a desire to drive. But driving a car was like riding a bicycle — you never really completely forget how. It took a couple of blocks of grinding gears and inadvertent revving, but I soon had the convertible purring comfortably, pointed in the direction of my cottage in the woods.

  The end goal helped outweigh the fear I felt at driving. It was one thing to give your trust to someone else and ride in a car somewhere. It was another thing to have your life in your own hands, to control each minute movement with the wheel and the gas pedal and the brakes. I drove cautiously through the city, but more freely once I hit the open road. At this time of night, there was almost no one driving but me.

  By the time that I pulled off the paved road and onto the long gravel road that would lead me to the cottage, I was feeling woozy but hopeful. I knew this place. I was familiar with this place. I knew what was expected of me in this place.

  When the headlights of the convertible illuminated the cottage, it looked smaller than I remembered. It looked smaller, and the dark woods around it seemed bigger. For the first time, I was frightened at being by myself, scared of what lurked through those trees.

  Why now? Why had I only just now started feeling like this? What had changed since the last time I’d been here in my place of refuge?

  Even as I asked myself that question, I knew that everything had changed. I’d let somebody into my heart and experienced the damage that he had wrought. If my heart were a china shop, he was the bull, tossing his head and breaking every plate displayed in there. Maybe he was subconsciously just like his mother. I’d seen Amelia’s nostrils flare more than once, thought of her as a creature of destruction too many times to count.

  The cottage and the woods were the same, I realized, peering around. I was the one who had changed.

  When I got out of the car and stood up, stretching after so many hours crammed inside, my stomach gave an alarming lurch. I realized I hadn’t eaten at all that day. My stomach had been too upset for breakfast, and then the rest of me had been too upset to eat lunch after Jane showed me those photos of Jonathan and Violet. I knew I had canned goods and frozen foods inside the cottage. I just had to get to them before I passed out from starvation.

  As long as there hadn’t been any power outages, everything should still be fine. I had kept paying the electric bills, even after I went to Chicago with Jonathan. I always figured I’d see the cottage and the woods again. Just not under these dire circumstances.

  And, if I were being perfectly honest, maybe I’d expected something like this the entire time I was with Jonathan, some abstract need to provide an exit for myself, an escape in case anything ever went wrong. I’d never been more thankful for this kind of planning ahead. I could’ve always stayed in a hotel or something, but the cottage was far better. It was my home, the home I never should’ve left.

  I let myself into the cottage and flipped on the light switch. There was dust everywhere and a musty smell I was sure would be dispelled after a day and night of open windows, but nothing appeared to be too terribly damaged.

  In fact, it seemed more like home than th
e grand Wharton compound ever had.

  I checked the refrigerator before realizing that Jonathan and I had cleaned it out before shutting the cottage and barn for good, back when we were in love and hopeful and curious about the future. I found a jar of string beans in the cupboard and popped it open, chowing down with a fork. My stomach gave a little heave before accepting the sustenance. It had to accept something sometime, or else I’d go hungry.

  I walked around the cottage, doing a quick inspection in the dark — several light bulbs burned out almost immediately after I turned everything on. I’d have to replace them. There were a couple of spots on the floor that told me the roof had developed a leak over the winter. I’d have to get up there and see what I could do to patch them up. The damage was minimal, and I knew it was nothing I couldn’t handle.