Chapter 31
KEELY
Six days later
“Thank fuck that’s over!” Bethany flops into the club seat next to me on Zach’s private plane and secures her seatbelt over her Zac Posen dress and matching shoes combo.
“Don’t get me wrong, I love the Indigo Lounge and everything Zach’s built.
But no matter how extensively you vet them, the guests are always an unknown variable.
Case in point—Fake Rack Olga the Ogre for me last year, and Tetanus Titus with you this trip.
” She stops and giggles, then purses her adorable lips.
“Hmm, I think if we put our heads together, we can come up with some idea of a personality yardstick to measure them with. Or beat the crap out of them if they misbehave. What you do you think, Keels?”
I drag my frozen heart and aching body out of its icy morass and force my head to bob up and down. “Yeah, sure. Whatever.”
Fuck. Moving my mouth hurts and my eyes water when I blink.
Every second for the past week, I’ve wanted to lie down and die.
From the moment I revealed the true depths of my rotten soul to Mason, and saw the frozen shock in his eyes, I’ve been a piece of toxic driftwood, bobbing toward a great and final plunge into nothingness.
Except the nothingness hasn’t ever arrived.
Instead, tidal surges of pain keep me afloat, and while the occasional twisting current pulls me under, it’s never enough to do away with me.
Bethany has put her wedding preparations on hold to make me her personal project.
I’m sure Zach hates the very mention of my name by now.
All week, I’ve secretly hoped he would do something about it.
Hire a team of hitmen to take me out so he can have his Bethany back.
Instead, the big pussy indulged his fiancée, who in turn has stood by me, held my hand when tears defied me and dared to fall.
Her heart broke for me when I finally told her what I went through at nineteen, and I fought her to stop her getting Zach on the case when I told her about the emails. We cried in each other’s arms when I told her about the child I gave birth to, then gave away.
She grabs my hand now and squeezes it tight as the plane taxies and surges into the sky. Her face is a tableau of sadness and worry. “What can I do, Keels? I can’t stand seeing you like this.”
For a hot little second, I hate her for not throwing me off the edge of a cliff when our positions were reversed and I was smugly confident I knew what she was going through.
“You should’ve told me to go fuck myself when I tossed out relationship advice to you last year,” I murmur around a throat that refuses to work properly.
She smiles. “Are you telling me to go fuck myself now?”
I try to grip her hand, but my fingers are too weak, so I let them go slack again.
“Of course not. What I’m saying is you haven’t judged me once this week, whereas I was Judgey McBitch when you were going through that stuff with Zach last year.
I whined about you not telling me straight away, when I’d kept my own shit from you for years.
Then I was an ass to Zach for daring to want you back after he hurt you. ”
“No, Keely. You listened when I needed you to, and you encouraged me to take a chance with Zach. I don’t know what’ll happen with Mason?—”
“Nothing will happen!” Even the sound of his name is like a blowtorch to my skin. “You didn’t see his face, B. For God’s sake, he… he lost his child. I gave mine away?—”
“After you were violated so horrifically, you spent months in hospital.” Her fingers twist through mine and I see her heartache for me.
“Perfectly healthy, well-adjusted women take that option every day. No one can judge you for that. No one has a right to. And if Mason thinks he can, well… he can fuck right off. There, I can be bitchy about him in return.”
A drop of liquid falls onto my white jumpsuit, and I realize I’m crying. Bethany’s face twists, and she swipes her fingers over my wet cheeks.
“Dammit. Sorry, B. I don’t mean to… I can’t… God, it hurts so fucking much!”
As soon as the seatbelt sign goes off, she unbuckles hers and pulls me into a tight, deep hug. The next minute, I’m bawling my eyes out, each sob ripping me to pieces all over again.
“I’m sorry,” she croons over and over in my ears.
I love Bethany, but in that moment I wish for other arms around me. I yearn for the stronger arms of the man I’ve fallen in love with despite all the signs pointing to it being the biggest mistake of all.
I was so stoned with shame and self-recrimination when I stumbled out of Mason’s suite, it never occurred to me that it would be the last time I’d see him.
Now, I wish I’d taken one last look at his face. Stayed a minute longer in his arms when he pulled me close.
Delayed my confession by another day?
I suck in a tortured breath. I would have ended up here, like this, wishing my every breath would be my last.
You have a hell of a fucking lot to live for!
Pain lances through me when I hear Mason’s voice. God, I bet he wishes he’d known the depths of my sins before he made that assumption.
More tears flow when that thought flares through my mind.
“Oh God, Keels. Tell me what to do,” Bethany begs.
I take pity on her and pull myself together. For one thing, if I return her to Zach as stressed as she is right now, he’ll serve my head on a silver platter. While that thought is palatable right now, the situation will stress Bethany out even more.
“You want to help me?”
She nods. “Whatever you need.”
“Get the stewardess to rustle up some Dom P. I’ll go clean up and we can get pissed in style. Yeah?” I croak.
She looks uncertain for a few seconds, then she nods. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
* * *
The limo drops us off at my place when Bethany refuses to go home until she’s sure I’ll be okay.
She knows better than anyone that I won’t be okay for a long time, so I don’t bother putting up a protest.
I lean disconsolately against the wall while she grabs my mail. She hands it to me as we enter the elevator. After I shut my front door, I toss the mail on my console table. A couple of envelopes slip off and drop to the floor.
I bend to pick them up and see the unmistakable seal marking the back of a heavy, rectangular envelope.
My blood runs hot, then cold, then freezing. I make a sound that probably isn’t human, and Bethany hurries to my side.
“What’s wrong?”
My fingers tremble as I clutch the envelope. “Omigod, it came. It actually came.”
Bethany gasps. “What did you say?”
I repeat it and turn the envelope over, staring at it incredulously. I assumed that all arrangements we made before our relationship’s fiery demise were null and void.
But I hold in my hands physical proof that I was mistaken.
I want to lift the pristine white paper to my nose and sniff hard to see if Mason’s scent clings to it.
Of course, the likelihood that he doesn’t send out his own invitations is quite high.
Plus, this invitation probably came straight from the White House?—
“My God.”
I look up and Bethany’s wiping a tear away from the corner of her eye while grinning like a freaky circus clown.
“What?” I demand.
“What you said kinda freaks me out a little. That was my first thought too, when I saw Zach’s Indigo Lounge envelope.”
I let out a defeated sigh. “Baby girl?—”
“No.” She grabs my hand in hers. “It’s my turn to help you, and we’re doing things my way. Open the envelope.”
My whole body shakes as I slide my finger carefully beneath the gold crest. I lift the flap and cautiously remove the invitation. I see my name next to Mason’s and my heart squeezes hard enough to make me dizzy.
“Shit! Don’t fucking pass out on me,” Bethany cries.
We walk arm in arm to the living room and collapse on the sofa. I lie there, wide open and defenseless against the waves of pain as Bethany talks about designer fittings and makeovers.
“No,” I croak when it all becomes too much.
“What do you mean, no?”
“I’m not going.”
“Yes, you are. It’s the fucking White House. Refusal could be treasonous.”
I manage a weak snort, which fails miserably.
When she launches into another shopping list of things I need to get me ready, I sigh.
“Mason said he’d send me a dress. And shoes.
And trinkets .” I attempt another snort.
It works this time, and suddenly I can’t stop.
I laugh and cry and snort until I’m a giant wrecking ball of hysteria, rolling around on my living room floor.
But as quickly as the mania begins, it ends, and I curl my knees to my chest and hug my heartache close. I don’t know how long I lie there or when I give in and let sleep claim me.
When I wake, there’s a blanket over me and a pillow beneath my head. Bethany is on the floor next to me, with a steaming bowl in one hand and the remote in the other.
My gaze meets hers, and she gives me a heartbreaking little smile. I nod and shuffle my broken body upright. I take the bowl of chicken soup from her, and she clicks on the first episode of Game of Thrones .
I drink my soup. And let the carnage onscreen wash over me.
And I wonder if the rock of agony in my stomach will ever leave me.
* * *
The dress arrives two days later. I refuse to open the Valentino bag and shoe box when Bethany shows it to me. I ignore her huff as she goes to hang it in my closet.
The diamonds arrive two days before the Friday event. This time, I’m alone at my apartment, having finally convinced Bethany that I can take care of myself and Jeigerhamster, my pet hamster, and that I’m going to Washington D.C.
My hands shake—I wonder if I’ll ever stop shaking—as I carefully pry open the Harry Winston velvet box. I gasp at the sheer amount of diamonds on display and swiftly shut the box again.