Chapter 2
two
Kamirah
A few months later
Itwirled the ice floating in my lemonade.
Sitting out here on the patio while watching the afternoon sunlight dancing on the surface of the glassy pool was supposed to be relaxing.
Instead, all it did was remind me just how alone I was out here.
Chris was working out—he’d been doing that a lot—and I was sitting here.
Waiting.
I had no idea what I was waiting for, but that was all I seemed to do of late—sit around and wait for something to change. Months after TMZ broke the news, and the tabloids were still printing headlines about us.
When would it end?
Whenever one of us went out alone, there were rumors of a divorce. When we went out together, the paps questioned whether we’d mended the rift. God forbid we went out with what few friends we had left.
The headlines were a farse—“Chris Minns: Newly Single and Ready to Mingle?” and “Seeking Solace From friends? Kamirah Minns Mourns the Marriage She Destroyed.” My personal favorite was: “Forgive but Never Forget: Chris Minns Gives His Cheating Wife One More Chance.”
The Seals’ trip to Australia was supposed to give us time for things to die down so we could move on, but apparently not addressing the false rumors gave the media license to make up whatever shit they like. Who would have thought?
Hux came back from that trip in love.
Chris came back miserable.
I’d gone into hiding. Months later, I wasn’t sure I’d come out of it. I was a shadow of my former self.
When I saw that Gauthier, the team’s captain, got married in Vegas, I’d hoped it would redirect the press to focus on them. But they went to ground, hiding out in the paradise of their ranch.
I… didn’t even know what to feel anymore.
I was bleh. Everything was grey. Nothing excited me.
My passion—my charity work—had dried up.
No one wanted me to spearhead anything while the media questioned my morals.
I got it. I would have made the same calls myself.
Not being able to defend myself sucked donkey dick.
It was the one thing Chris and I fought about, and we were constantly fighting—the tension between us was so thick it could be cut with a knife.
Gone were the days of us laughing together or even having a conversation without sniping at each other. We’d lost the spark between us.
The thing was, even though I was angry at Chris, I knew his reasons for not coming out. I’d accepted them when we were teenagers, and despite the circumstances, I hadn’t wavered. I just wished his fear wasn’t so deep-seated that it blinded him to the fallout I’d been hit with.
I was angry at how he handled things.
The whole thing was a mess. My sister no longer answered when I called and never returned my messages.
Chris’s family barely tolerated me. His mom was polite enough not to hang up, but only just. We used to speak every few days, but she was cold and distant now.
Both our fathers told me how disappointed they were in me, that I’d let the families down and betrayed my vows—the most sacred of oaths apart from those given to God.
Now I was afraid of actually breaking my vows—not because there was a risk of me cheating. It was because I didn’t know whether we would actually stay together. We were drifting apart.
We were struggling.
I loved him more than life itself. He was my everything.
It would utterly destroy me to lose him.
But I might as well be trapped in a barrel, bobbing along river rapids and about to get tossed over the impending falls—and not just itty bitty falls, but one the size of Niagara—for all the control I had.
The drop in my gut before the inevitable crash had already hit me.
Our relationship’s last legs were about to give out.
I was heartbroken.
I’d never been more alone.
***
“Can we talk?” I asked Chris when he closed the door to the mudroom.
My voice sounded small and uncertain. But I was buoyed after meeting Carina, Gauthier’s new wife.
I liked her, and while she was protective of Hux, who’d started dating her daughter, she also didn’t seem to judge me.
She appreciated that we had reasons for staying silent.
It was the first time I’d experienced even that small level of acceptance from anyone since this whole dumpster fire happened.
The visit to Gauthier’s house had given me something else to think about. It was the first time in months that I’d felt hope, like maybe one day we might get past this.
“O-kay,” Chris mumbled, hesitating where he stood.
“Carina said something today, and it got me thinking. I think maybe we need a break from all this—”
His eyes widened, and he hustled over to me, his voice wobbling with panic when he said, “Kam—”
“I mean a vacation,” I rushed to clarify. “You and me together—just the two of us.”
Chris took my hands in his shaking ones and squeezed them, his palms clammy and his pulse point hammering.
“Somewhere we can switch off and just be without all the pressure and the media scrutiny. No cell phones, no internet, no speculation. Just… us.”
“Let's do it.” He smiled, his gaze full of relief. But then he sighed, the sound weighted. He added quietly, “You scared me. I never would have been scared if you’d said something like that six months ago. Proves we really do need this, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.” I paused and ruminated on his words. We really had reached a crossroads. But I wasn’t going down without a fight. I’d paddle against the tide to stop us from going over that waterfall for as long as I had strength left in me. “Where should we go?”
Chris didn’t hesitate when he answered, “Fiji. You’ve always wanted to go there, and we’ve never gotten around to it. So let’s do it. I want to take you there.”
My heart swelled, the shattered pieces pulling together like a marionet on a string. Our relationship wasn’t mended—it was still barely holding together—but he’d finally picked up the controls.
Chris pulled me into his arms and pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I love you, baby. I want us to get back to what we were. If going away will help us do that, let’s go tomorrow.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist and held tight, breathing in his familiar scent and feeling the steady beat of his heart against my cheek.
This, right here, was everything I wanted.
Chris was right when he said, “Who cares what other people think?” because in that moment, I still had it all, no matter what the outside world thought about us.