Chapter Forty-Eight – Cullen
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
CULLEN
“ W here is he?”
“Seriously. Do you see anyone else here other than the sad man draped over my bar?” There’s a pause. “Don’t give me that look. I needed your help. I can’t leave him here overnight, and I’m not about to lug him back to Brooklyn.”
“It’s four a.m.”
“And you answered my call on the first ring.”
“And now I’m considering blocking you.”
“Just help me so we can both go home.”
A hand grabs the back of my shirt, lifting me off the bar with excessive force. Rafe’s nose wrinkles as he scans me before glaring back at Sonny.
“How much did you give him?”
“I didn’t give him anything. Anthony, on the other hand, might’ve given him a few glasses.”
“He’s barely coherent.”
“A few is a relative term.”
“I’m fully coherent.” The words are slightly slurred, countering my argument.
Rafe lets out a sigh, pulling me off the stool and positioning my arm over his shoulders to support me.
“You better be able to walk. Otherwise, I’m dragging you out of here.”
My head pounds. It’s as though someone has taken a sledgehammer to my skull and keeps whacking it like a drum. I groan, pressing the heel of my palm against my right eye as I push up from my bed.
Not my bed.
Or my room.
Memories start coming back to me in fractured pieces. After five days of radio silence from Verity, five days of respecting her wishes and not reaching out to her, five days of still swinging by her apartment in the hopes of catching a glimpse of her and seeing nothing, I cracked.
I had dinner with some clients after closing out a deal for their new retail space on Fifth Ave.
It should’ve been a celebration from the sheer amount of commission I am going to make, but one of the clients brought his new fiancée.
Spending three hours hearing them talk about their wedding plans and being all lovey-dovey with each other just reminded me of all I was missing with Verity, and no amount of expensive red wine fixed the issue.
The restaurant had been near Sonny’s place, so I’d dragged myself over there and continued to order drinks in the hope that it would erase her from my mind for even a minute.
It hadn’t worked.
It just made me miss her more.
At some point, things got hazy, but I vaguely remember Rafe shoving me into a car because he had the care of a giant and cracked my elbow on the door.
I am in the spare room in his brownstone by the look of it.
He hadn’t even bothered to put me in the bed; he’d just dumped me on top of the sheets and hoped for the best. I am still in my suit, but at least he’d taken my shoes off—although I suspect that was more for his benefit than my own, so I wouldn’t scuff the duvet.
I slip off the bed, loosening my tie and undoing the buttons around my wrists. I roll my shirtsleeves to my elbows as I stumble to the bathroom. My mouth tastes like ass, and I feel like shit.
Because Rafe isn’t exactly the hospitable type, there’s absolutely fuck all in here other than towels and hand soap. I run the water in the sink, splashing my face before gulping down a few mouthfuls.
I brace my hands on the sides of the marble, staring at myself in the reflection. My stubble has grown out, bordering on unkempt. The dark circles under my eyes create a hollowness to my overall appearance.
Everything sucks.
Halston is back in daily negotiations with Darcy, but we don’t seem to be getting anywhere. Celine has completely reneged on everything, using my relationship with Verity as fuel for her ire.
Oh, fuck.
I vaguely remember calling Halston while I was at the bar.
Shit. What did I tell him?
I shove my hands in my pockets, searching for my phone.
I scour the bedroom to see if Rafe put it somewhere or if it fell under the bed.
When I come up empty, I decide to trek out of the room and down the stairs to the main floor.
There’s a good chance he tossed my phone and wallet on the entryway table, not giving it a second thought.
I’m halfway down the steps when he calls out to me.
“The princess has risen from his slumber.”
He’s lounging on the couch, laptop perched on his thighs and mug of coffee in his hand. Even though it’s a Saturday, he’s dressed in chinos and a loose, short-sleeved shirt.
I give him a half-hearted smile. “You’re hilarious.”
He sets his mug down and grabs a pill bottle from the coffee table. He tosses it at me without any warning.
Despite the sluggishness crawling through my body, I manage to catch it before it clocks me in the face.
“Seriously?”
He shrugs.
I open the bottle, pouring out four capsules before screwing the lid on and chucking it back at him with the same lack of warning. He catches it without giving me a glance.
You’d think he’d be a little nicer to me, but you’d be wrong.
“Where’s my phone?”
I trudge down the last few steps and then turn in the opposite direction to head for his kitchen. I grab a glass and fill it with water before popping the pills and swallowing.
“What phone?” he calls back.
“Don’t be an ass.”
I take one of the blue coffee pods and place it in his machine, letting it whirl to life and create its magic.
My stomach turns, reminding me of all the alcohol that’s still sloshing its way through my system.
I scan the rest of Rafe’s kitchen for something to eat, but it is abysmally empty due to how often he travels.
I grab my coffee and then trudge back to the living room and drop next to him on the couch. The motion sends my brain rocking in my skull, and I let out an unfiltered groan.
“Here.”
He hands me my phone, and I immediately unlock it to search through the unread notifications. There are a handful of texts from Halston this morning, each of them confirming exactly what I expected.
In my drunken depression, I gave him the final go-ahead to bring our case to a judge.
I hate that everything has gotten to this point. I spent so long hoping that Celine and I would be able to resolve this on our own, that we wouldn’t have to resort to something like this.
To wind up in the exact position I’d been trying to avoid feels like a failure. It makes me sick because I spent years suffering and trying to appease her—for what?
I double-check my recent calls, and my stomach bottoms out.
“Oh, fuck.”
There are six outgoing calls to Verity.
Rafe peers over and taps twice on the screen, bringing up the log.
“Well, at least she didn’t answer. Although, looks like you left a five-minute voicemail.”
“That doesn’t make me feel better.”
“Would you rather see that she picked up and you had a conversation?”
“No.”
He closes the lid of his laptop, placing it on the coffee table, and then shifts to face me.
“I’m going to regret saying this, but—” he lets out a sigh “—do you want to talk about it?”
I haven’t completely filled Rafe in on the situation.
Mostly because he isn’t exactly the person to go to for relationship woes, but also because I hadn’t wanted to get into the details.
I told him that Celine found out about Verity and me, and everything had gone to shit.
The wound is still too fresh, and talking about it would just be like pouring alcohol onto the raw flesh.
But I am slowly dying inside.
If I don’t let the poison out, it will kill me.
“I don’t know what to do, man. She said she wanted space, but for how long?
Will enough time pass where she is able to forgive me, or am I already fucked?
Is she just doing it to distance us? I didn’t mean for this to happen.
I didn’t mean to deceive her. But, fuck, I did.
I lied to her. I didn’t tell her that Celine and I were still married because I thought it would ruin everything. ”
“But it did anyway.”
“I know! But how was I supposed to tell Verity that, yes, Celine and I are exes, but also, we are still legally married because the chick refuses to sign the divorce papers even though we signed a separation decree that stated she would sign them if I left the state for ten years. So, yes, according to the law I’m in a marital relationship, but for all other intents and purposes I am single, and that’s why I would like to date her.
Do you think that’s an easy situation to explain? ”
“No, because everything involving Celine is always a little fucked.”
“God, I wish I’d never married her.”
“I did tell you to wait.”
“You are no help.” I drop my head in my hands.
I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to gain her trust back. This is the second time we’ve gotten into a fight because I hadn’t been transparent with her regarding Celine. The worst part is, I don’t blame her for turning her back on me. In fact, I’d be more surprised if she’d stuck around.
I fucked up.
I know that.
But I also don’t know if I could’ve gone about it any better way.
Maybe if she’d heard it from me, maybe if Celine hadn’t gotten to her first, I could’ve softened the blow but…
It doesn’t matter. I’ll do whatever is necessary to win Verity back. I did it once before, and I will do it again. I might be a flawed human, but I know I can’t let her go.
I spent ten years closing myself off and believing that I would never be capable of love again.
Ten years thinking that I’d had my one chance at love and that it had turned to dust. Ten years thinking that there is something wrong with me, that I’m not worthy of someone else’s affection.
Ten years believing that I’d never find someone who could spark my heart again.
And then I met her, and she turned my world around.
Verity is the one truth in my life, the one shining light who proved to me that my heart could heal and that Celine hadn’t shattered it to pieces.
I never got a chance to tell her that.
I never told her just how broken I was in those first few years after the separation, the way I threw myself so heavily into work because, if I had a second to breathe, I’d realize just how isolated I was.
Celine cut me off from everything I loved.
She ran me out of the city I’d grown up in.
I was wallowing in hurt but also self-pity.
As the years went by, I started to hate Celine just as much as she hated me. I shifted the blame onto the two of us, and that anger fueled my determination to come back to the city and prove to her that she hadn’t won.
But even still, there was a gaping hole in my chest. I missed having someone to share my life with, missed having a person I could turn to at the end of the night, and I thought that I had traded that chance away—until I met Verity.
I don’t know what I am going to do, but I won’t give up.
I’ll fix this, somehow.