Chapter 9
STELLA
I obsessively checked my phone for the millionth time, my knee bouncing beneath the fancy tabletop as I prayed for that notification.
It had barely been a week since I’d poached my husband’s mistress, and I’d put Heather to work immediately. First, I sent her on the most outrageous errands. With the travel and wait times, she barely made it home within daylight hours.
Sure, she tried to push back, grumble and complain, but I couldn’t deny that I got a certain pleasure watching that frustration build.
Heather was not one for subtlety. When she was specifically peeved, I could see those dark thoughts processing behind her eyes, secrets swirling on the tip of her forked tongue as she contemplated the benefits of throwing their affair in my face.
Hmm, a little premature, honey.
I needed her to keep that confession wrapped up tightly until I was well and truly ready. Plus, she was a key player in my grand scheme of revenge, and she hadn’t reached her maximum potential yet.
And what type of boss would I be to not help her reach that peak? Well, a different type of peak than Felix, but one no less satisfying and euphoric—for me anyway.
However, that was all riding on one night. The setting was immaculate, the players situated perfectly. And I placed all bets on those two neanderthals doing what they did best—cheat, fuck and go against company policy.
Jake was a second-string running back for the East Coast Cyclones.
He already had a horrid reputation for being a disrespectful shit.
To the point that the board wanted me to find a way to break our contract and drop him as a client.
I also had it on good authority that he enjoyed more of a risky scene when it came to sex, and his dwindling cash and syruped lies weren’t the only things he liked to pass around.
After I gave Heather her latest assignment, her bratty attitude changed dramatically.
To know she was to escort an NFL player to another city and broker a deal for his brand sponsorship was one thing.
But to provide her with a company card with unlimited funds in the same instance… She was practically frothing.
The poor girl even sputtered a genuine thank you before she left to pack for her overnight stay. I was the one who should have been thanking her.
Especially when my phone finally pinged with an alert from the bank, letting me know that a transaction had been processed.
My rib cage slowly deflated as the breath I was holding hissed out through clenched teeth—my plans were coming to fruition.
I love being right.
“Stella? Did you listen to anything I just said?” Curtis asked.
I was thrust back into the present, my best friend sitting across from me as we held our “business meeting” at one of our companies’ common restaurants. Really, I just wanted an excuse not to have lunch with my overbearing husband.
“Shit, sorry. What did you say?”
Curtis smirked before he shook his head. “Nothing important, it seems.”
I flicked his bicep with the back of my hand. “Hit me.”
He caught my fingers in his, squeezed for a moment, then laid my palm flat against the table ever so gently. “I thought we established this, Smelly Stella. You don’t hit people when you’re frustrated.”
I rolled my eyes at his teasing tone as my thoughts travelled back to our childhood days.
We were both seven and placed in the same class when Curtis, the popular kid, thought he’d dub me the illustrious title, Smelly Stella.
However, with my rambunctious nature and winning personality, there was no other way to answer that insult than with a swift karate chop to the face.
Except my finger slipped and poked him in the eye.
Both of us had to be picked up from the school nurse shortly after. Curtis swore he had lost his vision, his right eye red and watering. Whereas I couldn’t stop crying, terrified that I had blinded him and he’d have to wear an eye patch for the rest of his life.
Our dads arrived to pick us up at the same time. They immediately hit it off and became best friends, which in turn trickled down to the next generation—us.
I chuckled, reminiscing over those carefree days. “Serves you right for picking on me, you big bully.”
His brown eyes twinkled in mirth. “How else was I supposed to get your attention?”
“Get my attention? Hmm, maybe, ‘Hi, do you want to play on the playground with me?’”
“I had the emotional intelligence of a rock, Stella. And to make it worse, I had a crush on the famous Dylan Foster’s daughter. But did you really have to poke my eye out?”
My mind stalled on that one word. “Crush...?”
Curtis chuckled as if that new information wasn’t sending a weird electrical reaction through my brain.
“Yeah… why’d you think I teased you in the first place?
Don’t tell me Eli hasn’t done something silly over a girl…
” He stopped, contemplating my shy firstborn and his quiet personality, then pivoted.
“Better yet, that sounds more like a Phoenix thing.”
I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. I was still stuck on his newfound revelation.
“Crush?” I repeated.
He smirked. “Why are you acting like you never knew?”
“Because I didn’t.” Or did I?
Curtis was a severely honest person, even to the point of near hurting one’s feelings. He never would have intentionally hidden that from me. Which meant that I didn’t pick up on the signs.
Flashing images recalled from my memory, forcing me to see our past through a different lens.
A slight phrase here. An innocent touch there. A shared moment of care.
In that brief moment of a single spoken word, my entire friendship was cracked open for review.
If only I had the mental fortitude to follow through. Instead, my emotional capacity could only focus on one person at a time. And that just happened to be my soon-to-be ex-husband.
Which brought me back to why I had asked Curtis out for lunch in the first place.
“Everything alright, Stells?”
“Not really.”
“Anything I can help with?”
“Actually, there is...” I sighed, so absolutely exhausted. “I need the contact for your divorce lawyer.”