Unfortunately, that vow was the worst thing I could do to them in here. Physical violence wasn’t an option, despite how badly I wanted to punch someone.
With a resigned sigh, I ordered a single-malt whiskey, knocked it back, and then ordered another to take back to my table. Someone sidled up to me as I did, and when I looked back, I seriously reconsidered making physical violence an option.
“Luna the little florist, huh?” Landon smirked as he nudged my elbow on the counter with his. “Great fucking lay for a peasant, isn’t she?”
“Excuse me?” I cleared my throat, my grip on the empty crystal glass tightening to the point where I was afraid it would break. “What did you just say about my wife?”
Landon paled, but his eyes darted around like he was aware that people were starting to watch us and didn’t want to be seen backing down, even if neither of us could be heard by anyone else as of yet.
I supposed it was the principle of being seen backing away from me that made him stupid. With a sneer on his pathetic face, he shrugged. “You heard me. She’s a fucking great piece of ass, but she’s just not good enough to really make it permanent. I don’t know what you’re really doing with her, but I’d be willing to bet you’re only playing with her, too. Just like I was.”
“She’s my wife, asshole.” My voice rose along with my temper. “If you ever talk about Luna that way ever again, I will come after you personally and I will fucking destroy you. You hear me, Parker?”
The blood that had remained in his cheeks drained from it when I got in his face, literally vibrating with rage. A small hand on my shoulder pumped a sense of calm through me, and when I turned, I wasn’t at all surprised to see it was Luna who’d had that instant effect on me.
“I mean it, you fucking coward,” I growled at Landon before grabbing Luna’s hand and walking out with her.
Just before we hit the exit, I heard Samantha screeching in front of everyone. “You fucking cheated on me? You bastard!”
Chapter 33
Luna
Cyrus looked smug as all hell as we walked into the bar on the rooftop of our hotel. “I’m glad we decided to have drinks. I could use a couple to unwind after all that.”
“Yeah, it was quite something.” I was still trembling slightly, nerves and adrenaline over confronting Landon’s wife not quite draining out of me as fast as the fight had. “I can’t believe I did that, but I really felt like she needed to know.”
If Landon had been my husband, like he almost had been, I knew I’d have wanted to know. No matter who she was to Cyrus, she was still a woman and we had to stick together. If she decided to work through it with her husband, that was her business. I’d done my part and given her the information she needed to make her own informed decisions.
“Samantha might not be the best woman in the world, but I’m proud of you for standing up and doing something to the guy who made you feel like shit.”
“Yeah, I guess there’s that, too.” I licked my dry lips and a waiter came by as if summoned by magic, dropping off a complimentary bottle of wine and one of water. “Is that really free?”
Cyrus laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “Considering how much the room rate is here, nothing they serve is really free. As for whether it’s going to show up on our check this evening, no. It won’t. Let’s just say it’s included.”
“That’s…” I trailed off when I spotted a familiar, ravishing woman walking in. She marched up to the bar, her long, red-tipped fingers swiping underneath her eyes as her shoulders shook.
Slamming her silver clutch down on the counter of the bar, she held up four fingers as she spoke to the bartender.
“Wow. I guess she’s all for drowning her sorrows tonight.”
Cyrus frowned when his gaze followed mine and he saw his ex standing at the bar. “Yeah, it looks like she is.”
“I wonder where Landon is,” I said. “I’d have thought he’d at least come after her after the blowout they just had downstairs.”
“He’s probably still down there, trying to fix his reputation and telling more lies,” Cyrus said distractedly.
I shifted in my seat so I was more in his line of vision but without making it obvious what I was doing. “That sounds like him. Have you known him for a long time?”
“Yeah, I guess you could say that.” He dragged a hand through his hair, bringing his gaze to mine. The expression in his eyes was almost absent, though. “If I’d known he was your ex, I never would have asked you to do this.”
“That’s okay. It felt like we both kind of got our own back, you know?”
“Sure, yeah.” He laughed, but the sound was humorless, and his eyes tracked back to where Samantha was sitting at the bar.
In fact, regardless of how many times I tried to drag him back into conversation with me, he kept one eye on Samantha the whole time, and at a point, he even let out a small sigh.
When I’d first realized he’d booked us each our own room, I felt discarded. Like he was treating this as nothing more than a business transaction, and that had stung but not nearly as much as the realization I had as I watched him now.
He’d brought me here to make her jealous. I knew that, but what if there was more to it than that?
What if he’d known all the time that Samantha and Landon would get into some kind of fight if he brought me, even if he hadn’t known about my past with Landon, and he’d brought me specifically so they would fight?
What if he’d wanted them to fight so he’d be able to find her once she was alone after and that was also why he’d gotten us separate rooms? So he could take her to his and make love to her after their big fight?
It was pretty diabolical, sure, but I couldn’t put it past him. I’d seen how ruthless he could be firsthand and, over the last few months, had learned that there wasn’t much that could stop Cyrus from getting what he wanted.
If that was his ex, it was entirely possible he’d planned this whole thing out. It was unlikely he’d known what their fight would end up being about, since I really didn’t think he knew about my history with Landon, but his ex had seemed like a catty, jealous type when I’d confronted her.
Cyrus showing up with a wife had been enough to set her off as it was before I’d even opened my mouth to her about Landon. The things she’d said to me just because she’d seen me with Cyrus and had obviously noticed a ring on a very specific finger had been unwarranted, to say the least.
She’d snarled at me and very obviously staked a claim on him, making it sound like he was still an option to her and like she’d be his first choice even though she was married to someone else.
It was disgusting actually, considering that she really was married to someone else, but I felt like she deserved to know the truth anyway. It had just made it easier to tell her once I’d learned she wasn’t some sweetheart I’d been a party to hurting.
If Cyrus had known all that about her, which I had to assume he did, given that he’d been married to her, it wasn’t unthinkable that he could have orchestrated all this to trigger her, make her jealous, which was guaranteed to cause a fight between her and Landon, then take her up to his room.
There were a lot of what ifs, but I knew Cyrus, and if anyone could make it happen, it was him. With the way his eyes were tracking her every move, watching the curve of her throat as she swallowed back some shot or another, it really wouldn’t have surprised me if even his ulterior motives had ulterior motives.
Since I’d dealt with my fair share of ulterior motives when it came to relationships, I wasn’t keen on being part of the ulterior part of the motives any longer. Angling myself so my elbow was on my armrest and my body was now smack in the middle of his view of her, I waited for him to look at me.
When he did, there was a slightly hazy look in his eyes that made me feel sick for the second time tonight. Oh, God. He wants her.
“You told me to tell her the truth because you knew they’d fight, didn’t you?” I asked, fighting to
keep my voice from cracking.
He cocked his head at me, sitting back with his hands in his lap and one ankle crossed over the opposite knee. Oh, ew. No. He’s definitely trying to hide what going on in his pants.
With the urge to vomit making blood roar in my ears, I barely made out his response. “Well, I knew there was a decent chance they were going to fight after you told her. It was pretty obvious.”
“Pretty obvious, huh?”
He frowned at me but nodded. “Sure. Of course, it was going to happen.”
Well, there you have it, ladies and gents. Confirmation of his intention when he told me to tell her the truth.
I’d inadvertently done the dirty work for him. Tears closed my throat, but I cleared them away. I wouldn’t let him see me cry. I couldn’t.
“You and I are just friends, though, right?” I asked.
When he nodded, I stood up and grabbed my purse. “Well then, you go do what you need to do. I’m tired and I’ve had enough of all of this. Good night, friend.”
Cyrus opened his mouth to say something, but I didn’t stick around to hear what it was. Walking as fast as my insanely high heels would allow without literally needing someone to lean on, not that I’d ever literally or metaphorically lean on Cyrus ever again, I left the bar.
I didn’t know exactly when my feelings toward him had changed, but they had. I’d been feeling the shift for some time now, but things became crystal clear in that moment. The way my heart cracked open as I headed down to my room and let the realities of what was going on here really dawn on me told me that I’d missed my exit point somehow.
I didn’t know how I’d let it happen when my eyes had been wide open all this time, but I’d sure as heck missed the exit and was speeding along the freeway to the majestic yet heartbreaking city of “Fallen for Him.”
Because I had. I didn’t know how I could’ve been so dumb, but somewhere along the line, I’d let him charm me into believing that this could be real. In the meantime, I’d also thrown my last bit of caution to the wind and had decided to trust him with my heart.
To be fair to him, it was a heart he’d always been clear on not wanting. At least now I knew the real reason why. It wasn’t because he was too hurt by his ex. It was because despite everything, he still wanted only her.
It had never been only me he wanted, despite what I’d let myself believe. It had been her all along, and tonight, he was finally going to have her again.
What sucked even more was that he was going to have her in the room right next to mine, while I cried my eyes out over him and hoped to everyone who might be holy that this hotel had thick walls. If it didn’t, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.
But clearing out my bank account and skipping out of Italy in the middle of the night was one option. Even if it meant not fulfilling my end of the bargain by pretending with him for the rest of his trip.
All I knew was that despite our deal, nothing would be the same after tonight. Whatever real friendship might have developed beneath it all was gone. I would never be able to look at him the same way.
I didn’t know if I was going to be able to look at him at all.
Chapter 34
Cyrus
When Luna marched away from me without so much as a backward glance, I was truly baffled. I’d thought we’d definitely been the couple to come out of that gala on top, not that I was really counting on it, but I didn’t get what she was angry about.
I’d just poured us each a glass of some of the finest Italian wine. The moon and the city lights were reflected on the surface of the canals. It was fucking beautiful up here. Why the hell did she leave?
Everything had been okay when we’d left the ballroom, I was pretty sure. When we’d sat down, she’d seemed fine. But then Samantha had walked in and everything had changed.
Just before Luna had stormed off, I was pretty sure I’d even seen tears in her eyes. What the fuck?
As I got up to go after her, a dainty hand planted on a red-clad hip blocked my path. I didn’t need to look up to know who those things belonged to. “Samantha. I saw you hit up the bar.”
She sat down in the chair Luna had just vacated and the thought of her sitting in it instead left me feeling slightly revolted.
I inclined my head at her. “I didn’t say you could sit.”
“I didn’t ask.” She pouted when I looked up at her, blinking her soft green eyes as if she was trying to hold back tears. She wasn’t.
Samantha wasn’t capable of crying. It was a little known secret, but it was also a fact.
“I should never have left you for him, Cy,” she simpered, crossing one knee over the other and leaning forward. She knew what she was doing, all right.
Sitting the way she was, she was offering a fantastic view of her tits. If it was any other man sitting in front of her, he’d undoubtedly have dropped his eyes. Even if just for a second.
Samantha had a fantastic fucking rack on her and she knew it. But it wasn’t any other man sitting in front of her. It was me.
Not only did I know exactly who and what she was, but I also had eyes for only one pair of breasts, and they sure as hell weren’t here. “What do you want, Samantha?”
“I want to talk to you.”
“Why?” I held my glass to my lips, my eyes on hers. “What could you possibly want to say to me?”
“Why are you being so combative?” she asked almost demurely. “I just want to talk.”
“You never ‘just’,” I put finger quotes around the word, “want to do anything. You’ve had years to talk to me. Why now?”
“You’re married,” she said, her eyes never leaving mine as she dropped the seductive pose and relaxed back in the chair like she owned the place. Although considering who she was married to, I supposed it wasn’t impossible.
I’d invested in a few hotels around Europe myself. Parker might have done the same. If he hadn’t, it wouldn’t be a bad—
“Are you even listening to me?” Her shrill voice cut through my thoughts.
When I refocused on her, I shrugged. “I’m not really sorry to say I wasn’t.”
“I just told you your wife has been sleeping with my husband. Does that not bother you?”
“She’s not sleeping with him. She has slept with him. It’s very much past tense.”
“So you married my husband’s ex?” That knowing gleam I hated entered her eyes. “Were you that desperate to get my attention, Cyrus?”
“No, but if that was what you were so desperate to talk to me about, I’m out of here. I would suggest going to find your husband and talking to him about it.”
“No, I—” She released a sigh. “That’s not what I wanted to talk to you about.”
“What is it then, Sam? As you pointed out, I’m married. I should get back to my wife.” There was nothing I wanted to do more than to find Luna and figure out why she’d left before we’d even gotten around to having our nightcap. And why she’d seemed pissed off when she had left.
“I was so stupid to have left you for Landon. I never should have done it.” Emotion cracked in her voice, but I didn’t buy it.
Even if it was real, it wouldn’t have mattered. Whether or not she genuinely believed that she shouldn’t have left me for him was irrelevant. Because she had left, and just as surely as she had, I was over it.
Seeing her tonight had solidified it for me in a way it had never been before. I’d realized that I had never really loved Samantha. The knowledge was as terrifying as it was empowering because I’d married a woman I hadn’t loved.
What was it that Luna always said about doing it for the right reasons? Because I was sure now that I hadn’t. Everything she, Peter, and Jenny had said to me about marriage and why they believed in it was swirling around in my head, making me question if I’d been right about the institution after all.
What had happened with Samantha was what had disillusioned me about it, but if I hadn’t loved her, if I really had married
her only because of infatuation or in some desperate attempt to cling to one more person, to make a family with her just so I’d have one again, maybe I needed to re-evaluate.
I swallowed a lump in my throat, but it wasn’t tears that had put it there. It was all the unsaid shit that needed to be said to Luna and yet Samantha was standing in my way of getting it done. Or sitting in my way, more accurately, but she was the reason I wasn’t with Luna right now.
“I have to go,” I said abruptly.
“No, just listen to me for one minute,” she begged, and it was only the glassiness of her eyes that made me agree. Because whatever she needed to get off her chest, if there was any chance it was going to keep her away from the bar for the rest of the tonight, she needed to say it.
I wasn’t a monster, and only a monster would leave if it meant driving her to drink even more than she already had. With her family history...
“Fine.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “You have one minute. Go.”
“Leaving you was the worst mistake I ever made,” she started. “Landon’s an asshole. You wouldn’t believe the things he’s done to me. I should have known cheating wasn’t something that would be off-limits with him. He’s terrible.”
She sniffled, and I almost genuinely believed she was about to burst into tears. Even so, I felt nothing but a pang of empathy for a fellow human being. No regret, no want or need to have her back. Just that one little stab of empathy.
I remained silent, though, as I mostly had since this conversation started, and I motioned for her to continue. Again, not a monster. An asshole, maybe, but not a monster.
“You should hear the way he speaks to me. It’s like I’m a piece of shit who should be grateful that he’s speaking to me at all. He parades me around like a show pony, but as soon as the attention of the room shifts away from us, he’s gone.”
Say You Do Page 22
