Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
E den
I hear a noise downstairs in the kitchen, and instantly, my stomach twists into a tight knot. I can’t see Marius right now. We’ll just end up in a big fight, and that’s the last thing I want to do with him.
“Eden! Where are you?”
Throwing the covers off, I jump out of bed and hurry down the stairs to see Ava looking around the penthouse like she’s in awe. “Not too shabby, huh? The man is an ass, but he does know how to buy a girl a gift.”
She looks at me and her mouth drops open. “This doesn’t belong to both of you? He bought you this place?”
I nod, knowing how incredible that makes Marius sound. “Yeah. I told him I wanted a place of our own instead of us spending all our time in hotels, so the next week, he bought this penthouse. Doesn’t mean he’s a good man or anything. Just that he has money.”
Why I say that I don’t know. Marius King is a good man. He’s never lied to me, and he’s always been the man he said he would be when we got together.
But I’m not in the mood to sing his praises right now.
Ava doesn’t respond to my attack on Marius and instead just opens her arms to invite me in for a hug. That’s all it takes to make the waterworks start all over again. I stumble over to her and practically collapse against her as she wraps her arms around me.
Sobbing, I say, “I hated not telling you. You have no idea how much I wanted to tell you we were sisters-in-law.”
She rubs my back and starts to cry too. “I know. It’s not your fault. It’s his. I want you to know I was so mad at him that I slapped him right across the face.”
I lean back and sniffle as my tears continue to come. “You did?”
Ava nods and tries to smile. “I did! He was so surprised. Then I told him if you weren’t okay when you found you, that he was going to have to answer to me.
And then I said your father was going to be furious when he finds out, and I know Matthias has explained to him by now what that means since he didn’t look like he knew what I was talking about. ”
“Oh, you’re the best friend a girl could ever have, Ava. I love you.”
“I love you too, Eden. So this has been your home for the past two years?” she asks as she looks around at the penthouse.
Sheepishly, I admit the truth. “Not exactly. I’ve only been here for a couple months.”
My best friend shakes her head in confusion. “Wait, I don’t understand. You and Marius have been married for that long, so where were you living before here?”
I lower my gaze to the floor. “I was living at my parents’ house. Marius was living at your house or in hotels when he was on shoots.”
When she doesn’t say anything to that bizarre revelation, I lift my head and see her expression full of questions. “I know. It’s strange.”
“It’s not strange. I just don’t understand. You got married and then didn’t live together? Why? Because you were keeping everything secret?”
God, I wish the answer was that simple.
I look around at my beautiful home and sigh.
“It’s hard to explain. I don’t know, honestly.
We got back after getting married, and then he had a job he had to go to and I had to go back to work.
So he left, and when he returned from wherever he was on whatever shoot he went on, we spent time together, but then he’d leave again for work.
Then last spring when everything with Ronan happened, he wanted to keep an eye on him, so he started hanging out a lot more at your house. ”
Even I know that explanation isn’t great. It’s not that Marius and I ever came right out and said we didn’t want to live together. Things just conspired to make it not happen.
“I wish I knew, Eden. I would have told him he should be home spending time with his wife.”
“He felt he had to watch over Ronan, and I understand that. To his credit, the first time I said I didn’t want to sleep in hotels anymore, no matter how nice they were, Marius bought me this place.”
She smiles and asks, “Want to give me a tour of your gorgeous home?”
“No. Maybe later. Right now, I just want to crawl into bed and pretend this day never happened.”
“Then we’ll both do that.”
We walk upstairs to the bedroom Marius and I share, and Ava stops dead as soon as she sees the enormous master suite. “Oh my God! This bedroom is bigger than the house I grew up in.”
I wave away her comment. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s big. Yeah. But it’s not bigger than the entire house you lived in, Ava.”
She looks over toward the king size bed in front of a bank of huge windows. “Your bed looks almost lost in here, and it’s huge too!” Then she turns to look at the fifty inch TV across from the bed. “And look at that TV!”
I know what she’s trying to do, but listing all the great things about this place isn’t distracting me like she thinks it is. I climb into bed and unpause the TV so my episode of Air Disasters starts again.
When your life comes down around you, at least your favorite show is there for you.
Ava kicks off her shoes and climbs under the covers with me. “Do you remember that time I slept over your house in eleventh grade when you broke up with that boy you were dating? We gorged ourselves on rocky road ice cream that night and stayed up until dawn. Want to do that again?”
I love my best friend, but none of this is working. I just want to feel bad. It’s sounds wrong, but right now, all I want to do is wallow is my misery.
“Not really. I think I’d just like to watch my show and feel terrible.”
She snuggles up against me so her head is resting on my shoulder. “Got it. No ice cream. Just hanging out. Let me guess. This is an episode with that guy in it, right?”
“Right.”
“So I’ll get to see him finally?”
I turn to my left to look at her and force a smile. “Yes, and I don’t think I need to remind you that I’m in a very delicate state right now, so if you think he’s ugly or anything even remotely negative, please keep it to yourself, okay?”
She smiles so sweetly that I know I don’t have to worry. “As long as you like him, who am I to say otherwise? Now show me this man who makes you so happy.”
We watch TV for another five minutes before he appears, and I point at the screen. “That’s him.”
My lovely crush.
“Oh, he reminds me of my father,” Ava says. “He’s got kind eyes.”
I study his eyes until he disappears from the screen. They are kind. I like that.
“Kind is good.”
Beside me, Ava says in a quiet voice. “Marius has nice eyes too. They’re that shade of brown all the Kings have. You know, that warm chocolate shade.”
“You’re sweet, but that’s your husband who has the warm chocolate eyes. Mine has more like dark chocolate.”
Ava smiles as I say that. “Your husband. I’m still trying to get used to that.”
“Well, don’t take too long. I hear he got served with divorce papers.”
Even as I try to make a joke, my heart aches when I say those words. I hated that I didn’t have a choice but to do that.
My best friend hugs me tightly to her and says, “I saw a picture of my father when he and my mother first started dating, and he looked a lot like this guy on Air Disasters. My mother used to say my father fell in love first, but she was secretly crazy about him even before they started going out because he was so handsome.”
I look at the TV and can see a hint of similarity in how this guy looks with her father. “That’s nice. Your father is a great guy. Sweet and thoughtful and honest. I like that.”
Just listing all those wonderful qualities makes me break down again, and I begin to sob like a baby. “Your mother was so lucky. She had such a great guy.”
Ava pulls me close and hugs me tightly to her. “Oh, honey. I didn’t mean to make you sad again. Marius is a great guy too. He just made a mistake.”
That has the opposite effect of what I think she’s trying to accomplish here, and I cry even harder. “He is a great guy, but he never wanted anyone to know we were together, so really, how great is he?” I ask all muffled into her shoulder.
“Aww, Eden. Let it out. You’ll feel better.”
“I wanted things to work out so much. He kept saying just a little longer, but when I saw him with that girl at your party, that’s when I knew he wasn’t understanding how much I hated hiding our relationship. Why did he have to do that?”
“Honey, I don’t know, but I can tell you as soon as you left that night, he sent her home and went to his room. I don’t think they were really together.”
Leaning back, I wipe under my eyes. “I know they weren’t, but why couldn’t he understand that because he wanted to keep everything under wraps, I didn’t have a choice but to keep going out with guys you wanted to set me up with?
I would have never been at that party with Rob or anyone else if we weren’t hiding that we were together. ”
God, how did my life become so messed up?
“Let it out,” she says sweetly. “Get all your crying done so you can start to feel better.”
I don’t want to tell Ava that isn’t going to work this time. I’m never going to feel better. I love Marius. I’ve never been happier with anyone else in my life, and now it’s over. How the hell can I ever feel anything close to okay again?
Even as I think that, I secretly wish something would happen to make me not want to divorce him. But what could that possibly be?
As I watch Air Disasters through teary eyes, Ava asks, “Will you tell me the story of how you guys got together? I’d love to hear it.”
Normally, whenever I meet a new guy, I tell my best friend everything about it. She didn’t get to enjoy the Eden and Marius story when it first happened, though.
I sniffle and sit up against the pillows. Drying my eyes, I smile as that night comes rushing back to me.
“Well, believe it or not, I finally have my story of a white knight coming to my rescue. Didn’t think I was going to say that, now did you?”
Ava smiles and shifts her position so she’s facing me sitting cross-legged. “Tell me everything! I need to know chapter and verse and the whole book!”