The Amendment (Arrangement #2)

Chapter 15

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

AINSLEY

“ A lright, guys. What movie are we watching tonight?” I asked as I cleared away the last of our plates from pizza and ice cream.

“I think I’m just going to go to bed,” Dylan said with a yawn.

“What? No family movie night?” Peter crooned. He’d worn the same dumb, sickly satisfied grin since we’d had sex hours before. Deep inside myself, I was fighting the urge to slap it off his expression.

Something had changed between us, but I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. I’d always put up with Peter’s lies, knowing I could discover the truth easily enough. As much as he’d like to think otherwise, he was a terrible liar. But this time, this lie—hiding the true reason for his coworker’s visits late at night—had flipped a switch inside of me.

It was exhausting.

Constantly chasing the truth, wondering when and why the next lie would come …

Spending time worrying about his lies when I should’ve been focusing on our children, who had obviously noticed my distraction.

Why had I put up with it for so long? Why wasn’t I good enough to see the real him no matter how hard I tried?

“Nah,” Dylan said. “I’m tired. Julie’s coming down tomorrow morning, so I want to be rested.”

My back tensed. “What? Julie’s coming here?”

“Yeah?” Every eye in the room was on me, and I realized I’d said that entirely too loudly. “Why?”

I stared at my son. “I thought we’d agreed this weekend would be just for family.”

“She’s not spending the night. Her parents are going to drop her off for the day and come get her after dinner. Dad said it was fine.” He jutted a thumb to a bewildered-looking Peter.

“I did?”

“I asked you when we were loading everything into the car this morning, and you said it was fine.”

Peter was slow to nod, and I knew he wasn’t actually recalling any such conversation. “Right. Yeah. Sorry, yeah. I did say that.”

Liar.

“Why does it matter?” Dylan asked. “She’s just coming to hang out with me. It’s not like she’s going to bother you.”

I teetered between punishing him and letting it go. Was it worth the fight? “It’s not that. I just wasn’t planning on having company. I was hoping to get the three of you to myself this weekend. How long’s it been since it was just the family together?”

“Like…every night? Come on, Mom. It’s bad enough we had to come out here with no service. You can’t honestly expect me not to talk to my girlfriend for three days.”

“Oh, come on, now. Don’t be dramatic,” I said, setting the plates back on the table. “You talked to her this morning before we left and you’ll talk to her Sunday when we get home. I think you can handle one day without talking.”

“You can’t honestly expect me to un invite her now. Dad said it was fine! I’ve already told her she can come.” He was on his feet then, his voice high-pitched and panicked.

I sighed, wanting to fend off any argument if I could. “Fine, Dylan. It’s fine. Whatever.” I waved my hand in the air and picked the plates up again, starting to walk from the room as I realized Peter wasn’t planning to back me up in the slightest. “What time is she coming in the morning? Does she have any allergies I should know about? I was planning to cook pancakes for breakfast. Is that okay?”

“Could you make them gluten-free?” he asked, wincing.

I shook my head. “It’s fine. We’ll do eggs. Any other requests for tomorrow?”

Maisy and Riley shook their heads gently as Dylan trudged from the room.

“What about you two? Are you going to stay up and watch a movie with me and your mom?” Peter asked .

“I was planning to go to bed early and read,” Maisy said. “I need to finish my summer reading list before school starts back.”

“I think I’m just going to go to bed,” I said before Riley could answer, though judging by the look on his face, he was planning to decline the invitation, too.

“Don’t do that,” Peter protested.

“It’s fine. I need some rest anyway. The sun zapped me.” I gestured toward my sunburned arms.

Riley yawned from where he lay on the couch. “Are you sure?” Peter asked, appearing conflicted. I nodded. “What do you say, bud? Want to watch a movie with your old man?”

“I’m tired too,” he said. “Dylan said he’d take me fishing early in the morning before Julie gets here.”

“Oh. Well, okay then.” Peter stood up begrudgingly, kissing each of their heads.

“You don’t have to come with me,” I told him. “You can watch a movie if you want.”

“No, you’re right. We should turn in.” He flicked the TV off as the kids began to stand, making their way toward the bedrooms. “Good night, you two. We’ll see you in the morning.”

“Night.”

“Good night.”

Peter waited for me to finish up, but once I’d put the plates into the sink and washed my hands, I led the way toward the bedroom. I changed into my pajamas in silence and fluffed the covers, checking to be sure there were no spiders or other critters hiding in the folds of the sheets .

“Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t warn you about Julie. Dylan did mention it to me, but I was distracted. I forgot all about it.”

“You’ve been distracted a lot lately,” I said simply, slipping under the covers and turning my back toward him as he changed for bed.

“I know. I’ve had a lot going on.”

“Well, that’s news to me.”

He didn’t notice the sharpness in my tone. “It’s no big deal, really. Just work stuff, you know?”

“Mhm.”

Cool air hit me as he pulled the covers back and lay down next to me. “Everything okay?”

God, sometimes he is so oblivious.

I rolled over to face him, staring at him for a painful few seconds before I spoke. “Peter, why are you with me?”

His expression said I’d caught him off guard. He glanced around, as if he expected he was being pranked, then leaned forward, brushing a piece of hair from my eyes and tucking it behind my ear. “Why am I with you?” he repeated. “What do you mean?”

“Why are we together? Why did you want to marry me? Why do you want to stay with me?”

He gave a dry, confused laugh. “Um, because I love you. Where is this coming from?”

“But do you? Do you love me?”

“Of course I—”

“Because it seems like we just keep coming back to this place of secrets. Over and over again. And I’ve done all I can to prove to you that you can trust me, to prove that I’m here for you and going to stay here through whatever. I think I’ve been more than understanding about it all—”

“Is this about Julie?”

“God! No, it’s not about Julie. Can you just listen to me?”

“I’m trying, Ains. You’re not making any sense.”

“Because you haven’t let me finish,” I said through gritted teeth. “For goodness’ sake, just shut up. Stop thinking about how you’re going to react or lie your way out of this and just…just listen to what I’m saying.”

He inhaled sharply, then released it slowly. His nod was serious. “Okay. Alright. I’m sorry. I’m listening.”

“You’re lying to me about your friend from the other night.”

He blanched, but didn’t speak. He was waiting to see what I knew.

“I don’t know why he was there, but I know he wasn’t there to ask you for relationship advice. What could he possibly have been there to talk to you about that made you unable to tell me the truth? With all I know about you, all you’ve confessed to me, what could be worse than that?”

He visibly deflated and flopped onto his back, staring up at the ceiling. “You’re right.”

I knew I was, but I didn’t need to confirm that.

“Jim wasn’t there for relationship advice. The truth is, I couldn’t tell you why he was there.”

“Why’s that?”

His mouth twisted in thought before he groaned. “Because I was embarrassed.”

“Embarrassed, why? ”

He lowered his voice, still not meeting my eyes. “I just found out some of the people I work with were questioned about me when Stefan went missing before. During the investigation.”

My blood ran cold. “What?”

“Yeah, actually, Jim was the one who mentioned it.” This was one of the rare times I couldn’t tell if he was lying. His cheeks were pink, but perhaps it was due to embarrassment after all. “And so I’ve been trying to warm him up to me, to find out what exactly he told the police. What exactly they asked.”

I masked my inner turmoil with a deceptive calmness. As usual, he had no idea the degree of fear that was raging through me. “Why didn’t you say anything to me?”

“Because I was panicked and I didn’t want to upset you until I’d figured out whether or not we should be worried.”

“But it was back then, right? Not recently.”

“Yeah,” he said quickly. “Yeah, from what he’s said. That was why I didn’t want you talking to him. I didn’t want him to slip up and say something to you before I’d had a chance to tell you myself. Maybe it was wrong, but I was trying to protect you.”

“That still doesn’t explain why he had to come over in the middle of the night.”

He kept his eyes trained on the ceiling, as if he were reading a script. “Well, the first time he came over, it really was because he had to get paperwork for the job. That was when he mentioned that the police had been to see him. I’ve been trying to catch him alone to ask him about what they said, but there hasn’t been a good chance. So, I asked him to come over and bring me a few of those papers back just so we could talk.”

It made sense, I supposed. In a Peter sort of way.

“And what did he tell you?”

“Just that they asked if he’d ever seen me acting in a way that seemed suspicious. He said he told him no, that I’m a great guy. They asked if I’d ever mentioned Stefan and he hadn’t heard of him. And I think they asked about our marriage, if I’d let on that we were having problems, but Jim was kind enough not to mention that.”

“So you don’t think there’s anything to worry about, then?”

“No.” He breathed out a sigh of relief, kissing my forehead. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth sooner. I was only trying to protect you.”

I allowed him to feel good about himself for the moment, then said, “I don’t want you to protect me, Peter. I just want you to be honest with me. I’m trying to do better about being controlling—really, I am. But you have to be up front with me when I ask you about things. We’re a team. That’s what we agreed.”

“Understood.” He ran a hand across my cheek again. “Promise.”

My eyes danced between his as I tried to decide if I could trust him. I wanted to so badly, and I knew that was my downfall. I’d always wanted to trust him, even when he’d proven to me why I shouldn’t.

“Why do you want to be with me , anyway?” he asked, and I found my eyes blurring, then refocusing as I thought about the question. “You asked me, but you’ve never told me your answer. Why do you stay with me after everything?”

“Because I love you. And I love our family. And our kids. I don’t want to disrupt that. I won’t lie to you and say it hasn’t been difficult. But I’ve had time to process and I believe we can get better. If you want to. I believe everything can be fixed.”

“But what if I can’t?” The vulnerability of the question didn’t carry over into his tone. It felt more like a challenge than anything.

“You can. You are.”

But was he? The unspoken question was obvious to us both.

“Have you ever thought about leaving me for someone easier?” he asked, reaching out and twisting a strand of hair around his finger.

We were silent for a moment, both staring at each other in complete silence. Finally, I took a breath and said, “When I met you, I thought you were perfect. You charmed my parents, charmed me. You made me laugh. Made me feel safe. You were ready to settle down when I was. You gave me Dylan. You were— are —the best father to him. I have so many good memories of who we used to be. Do you remember how we used to go to restaurants and order our favorite food for each other? Or when we spent the summer exploring every waterfall in Tennessee?”

“Sure.” He smiled wistfully.

“So, when I found out what you were doing when you were supposed to be working late all those nights, when I found out what you were capable of—it shook the foundation of the world I knew. I couldn’t rationalize how the man I knew, the man I loved, was capable of such terrible things. But it didn’t mean I stopped loving you. I stopped understanding you. Maybe I stopped respecting you. But I still loved you, Peter. That never faltered.”

Thinking back to those days—watching him playing with our children, helping me clean up after meals, and doing the yard work side by side—all while knowing what he’d done, it was as if I was existing in two alternate realities at once.

For me, so much stayed the same, while at the same time, everything had changed.

It reminded me so much of the early days after bringing Dylan home—our first baby. The moment when our entire world flipped. Everything was simultaneously the same, and yet, completely different. We were the same people, but we’d never feel the same again.

Finding out the truth about the man I’d married put me in an identical foggy state for months, if not years.

Sometimes, I wasn’t sure I’d ever left.

“When I was in high school, there was a boy I thought I loved.” I rolled my eyes, remembering the feeling well. “My parents hated him.”

Peter snorted with a small laugh. “Good.”

I narrowed my eyes at him playfully. “Which only made me love him more. You know how my parents are—they make my parenting look lazy.”

“That’s not true—”

“Oh, but it is. My mom picked out my clothes until I graduated high school. She determined what I did and when, who I hung around with, what sports I played, what I ate, what I wore, what color my nails were painted…”

I’d told Peter most of this, but I hadn’t completely laid out a picture of how controlled my childhood was before. “For the longest time, it was just easier to go along with whatever she wanted. But when Ryan came along, it was different. It was the first time I’d ever rebelled. They tried everything to keep me from seeing him: grounding me, taking away my phone privileges, calling the school to ask that we be kept separate. They took away my car and started driving me to and from school again. It was a whole thing, but that only made me more determined to see him. I snuck out constantly, I skipped school… I stopped caring about everything but him.”

“You’ve never told me any of this before.”

He was still playing with my hair, and I gently took it from him, needing him to focus on what I was saying. “No. I didn’t think it mattered before. It was so long ago.” I tucked both my hands up under my cheek on the pillow. “But after we’d been dating for a while, Ryan started getting into trouble with drugs and drinking.”

“How old was he?”

“Nineteen at that point. I was seventeen. Watching him going down that road was…terrifying, to put it mildly. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so out of control. I did everything I could to bring him back, but I couldn’t. He wouldn’t listen to me… There was no reasoning with him. He thought he could take care of himself, but anyone could see from a distance it was going to end badly. And it did. He overdosed just before his twentieth birthday. ”

“I’m so sorry,” Peter said, drawing in a breath. “I had no idea.”

“That was when I realized why my mom tried to control me as much as she did. Because to her, control was love. She was keeping me safe. As much as I hated it then, I wished I’d been more like her when it counted. I thought if I’d been better at controlling him, I might’ve saved him.”

His eyes softened, giving me a pitying look that made me feel sick. “You know that’s not true.”

“I know I couldn’t have saved him, yes, but then I met you, and I later discovered your secret and it was like my chance with Ryan all over again. I don’t think I ever put it together until recently. I just kept thinking about him—not because I miss him or wish I was still with him, but because this situation makes me feel like I’m reliving all of that. It’s like my second chance.”

I stared at him, wondering if I was making any sense. “All I want to do is save you, Peter. From yourself. That’s why I am the way that I am. That’s why I’m with you. Because to walk away, to leave you with your demons until you destroy yourself…” I trailed off, shivering. “I’m not sure I’d survive it.”

He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me in close. “You’ll never have to, Ains.”

I rested my cheek against his chest, inhaling his scent. This was where I was the happiest. The safest. Despite all our issues, Peter was the only place I’d ever felt at home.

“Which is why I want to create a new arrangement.” My voice was muffled against his chest, and I felt him stiffen, then pull back .

“What? I thought we’d agreed that was a horrible idea.”

“Not like before. Well, sort of like before. An…amendment to the arrangement.”

His hand slid down my arm, his expression skeptical. “I’m listening.”

“I want to do it with you.”

“Do what?” One brow drew down.

“ It, ” I stressed, trying to force myself to say the words that had been swirling in my mind for the past few days. “Instead of sleeping with other people, I want to help you kill other people.”