Chapter 31
Thirty-One
Iblink, not sure I’m seeing what I am.
Cinder is with my ex-fiancée and her mother. And from the looks of what I just walked in on, they know each other. But how is that possible?
I came down to drag Cinder back to the house for the night. I’d planned to draw her a bath after dinner, knowing she’s been stressed about the impending opening of the studio and has been putting in longer hours than Asher.
“Hey! What the hell is going on here?” I shout when Maude steps toward Cinder as though she’s going to hurt her physically.
Cinder’s eyes squeeze shut at the sound of my voice, and Maude and Louise turn around to face me. This is the first time I’ve set eyes on Maude since I broke up with her, and I’m relieved to find that there are no lingering feelings. In fact, seeing her and Cinder in the same room, knowing everything about the two of them, it makes me wonder how I could ever have fallen for Maude in the first place.
“How did you find me?” Cinder asks.
They both turn back in her direction. I walk around them and stand at Cinder’s side.
“If you’re trying to ghost someone, you should be careful about splashing your picture all over social media to promote your new business. It took hardly any digging to find out where you’d been living and who exactly you’d been spending time with.” Louise looks at me with disgust and scoffs.
I look between them, confused.
“Was it her big tits, Nero? Is that how she seduced you away from me?” Maude asks.
“Cinder.” I turn to face her. “How do you know them?”
Her blue gaze doesn’t meet mine, and my stomach sours.
“I’m her stepmother,” Louise says.
“And I’m her stepsister,” Maude adds.
A single tear cascades down Cinder’s cheek.
“Is that true?” I ask, feeling like my chest is caving in. It’s hard to breathe.
She nods and opens her eyes, which are filled with guilt and sorrow.
I stumble back.
“That’s right. You’ve been fucking your ex-fiancée’s sister!” Maude shouts.
My mind races with thoughts. Piecing their relationship together, everything that Cinder told me about her childhood runs through my mind. These two people tormented a child and made her life a living hell. The anger over my own childhood rises, overtaking the fact that Cinder lied to me, too.
I whip my head toward Louise and Maude. “You. You’re the one who treated a child with such cruelty after she lost her father.” I step toward them. “You nearly starved her. Forced her to work at a strip club and give you her earnings.” I get closer to them. “She’s been working her ass off at two jobs while you two treat her like a servant. Actually, less than.” My fists clutch at my sides.
Louise’s head rears back, looking affronted by my accusations, but she doesn’t deny them. “I always knew she was a vile little creature. And look what she’s done with you. Seems I was proven right.”
My nostrils flare, and I attempt to rein in my temper. “Have you forgotten that your daughter was fucking someone else behind my back while she was engaged to me?”
Maude has the good sense to look contrite. “I told you it was a mistake. I’ve missed you so much, Nero. What we had was so good.” She walks right to me, way too close, and rests her palm on my chest, looking up at me and batting her eyelashes as if she’s so innocent.
“What we had was a lie,” I sneer. Then I look over my shoulder at Cinder. “Just like what we had. All fucking liars.”
I can’t deal with this anymore.
I turn back to Louise and Maude. “You two need to leave. You’ve accomplished what you set out to do. Now go.” When they don’t start toward the exit immediately, I shout, “Now!”
They flinch and look at one another before slithering to the door like the snakes they are. The two of them make me sick with how they treated a child deep in the throes of grief.
Steeling myself against what I feel for her, I turn back to Cinder. “I don’t have anything to say to you either.”
Her back hunches, and she breaks down in tears. I force myself to walk out the door, even though the urge to comfort her swells inside me like a tidal wave.
Half a bottle of whiskey later,I’m still plagued by anger and pain, but the knife’s edge has dulled, and it feels more tolerable at least.
I’m sitting on the same chaise in the aviary that Cinder and I made love on. At least, that’s what I thought we were doing. Maybe that was all a lie too.
Attempting to put all my thoughts in order is proving more difficult due to the haze of the alcohol. I wonder again if it was indeed Asher who sent me that photo of Maude and the other guy. Cinder clearly hates her family, so she looks like suspect number one now. A great way to get back at her stepmother and stepsister. But that would mean she knew who I was before we started what we have. This entire time I’ve housed her, she was pretending to love me. Could I be that stupid, to be fooled by a woman twice in a year?
I set the bottle on the table beside the chaise just as the door behind me opens. I don’t need to turn around to know who it is. I knew Cinder would come looking for me.
“What do you want?” I ask without turning around.
She steps into view. It’s obvious from how red and swollen her eyes are that she’s been crying since I left her hours ago.
Even the birds quiet down as if they’re waiting for her excuses, too.
“I want to explain.”
My eyes close for a moment because I hate hearing the pain in her voice. It makes me want to pull her into my lap and tell her that everything will be okay. But it won’t be. She lied to me, and now I can’t trust her.
“Sure, can’t wait to hear this,” I say.
She comes around to stand in front of me, and I motion for her to sit in the chair to the side of me, so I don’t have to look at her head-on. I don’t trust myself to be strong enough to push her away.
“Nero, you have to know that I wanted to tell you. I really did.”
A caustic laugh leaves my lips. “Then why didn’t you?”
“I was afraid of what you’d think.”
“And what’s that?” I turn to meet her gaze because I want to see for myself whether she’s telling the truth or not. Of course, I couldn’t tell that she’s been lying to me this entire time so what do I know?
“That you would think my feelings for you weren’t real.” She holds my gaze until I’m the one who looks away.
I don’t want to talk about feelings. I want answers.
“I blamed Asher for sending me the picture of Maude and another guy.” I side-glance at her as her chin falls to her chest. “He denied it, but I figured he was lying.”
Still she says nothing.
“After my anger wore off, I figured he did me a favor. And then I was drinking away the blues, so I wasn’t thinking clearly, and I saw you for the first time. And you became all I could think about.”
“Nero—”
I don’t allow her to interrupt me, especially since my gut was correct. “You know I’ve been giving this some thought. I bet if I went back and did some digging, the picture came from you.” I turn to look at her, arching an eyebrow.
She bursts into tears, burying her face in her hands. “Yes. I sent it.” She cries for another minute and eventually pulls her shit together enough to wipe the tears from her face and look at me. “There’s something you don’t know.”
“Oh, great. What?” I roll my eyes and blow out a breath of frustration.
“The night of the ball. I… was there.”
My memories travel back to that night, but I don’t remember seeing her. I for sure would have clicked with her. It was the night I proposed and had Asher… oh… fuck no. “We danced.”
She nods.
“That guy was all over you, and I pretended to be…” It all comes back.
She nods, her eyes reminding me of that dance and how I couldn’t get her out of my mind even though I was engaged to someone else.
“Maude didn’t add you to the guest list.”
“I snuck in. Louise ruined my dress that night and gave me a list of chores, but I hurried through them and altered my dress so I could attend.”
“But…” Fuck, it was her. How did I never realize that or recall her?
“After that dance, I realized you were so nice and charming and such a good guy. I didn’t want you to get mixed up with Maude. I couldn’t stand the thought of you being fooled by her and tied to her for life. She’s a horrible person, and she masked that from you. When I overheard her planning to meet up with another man, I had to do something to save you from the same fate I had. She and Louise talked about how she needed to make sure she got pregnant as soon as you guys were married to secure her position and your financial support for life. I couldn’t let her trick you.”
I won’t tell her, but she did do me a favor. The idea of Maude being pregnant with my child and having to deal with her for the rest of my life sounds like a special sort of hell. But Cinder could have told me, instead of lying to me all this time. Why must everyone I care about lie to me?
“And then what?”
She wipes her cheeks. “What do you mean?”
I lean in closer to her. “What was the next part of your plan?”
She shakes her head. “I… I didn’t have one. You guys broke up.”
“You’re lying, Cinder.”
“I didn’t have a plan after that. I just wanted you to know who she really was. But then you came into TT’s…”
I nod. “Continue.”
Her eyes fill with a plea to forgive her. “You came into TT’s. I didn’t even know who you were, but I was drawn to the stranger in the dark booth at the back. Then I went to the VIP room and…”
I motion with my hand for her to continue.
“When I saw you, I recognized you. I should have told you who I was then, but… I don’t know… I hate my stepsister, and the idea of giving you a lap dance felt good. Felt like retribution in a weird way. I thought I’d give you a lap dance, and you’d leave. Your fascination with me would come to an end, you’d stop coming into TT’s. If I’d known… I mean… I had no way of knowing that?—”
“I’d get you off?” I snipe, making it sound cheap and dirty when it felt anything but.
She nods. “I didn’t expect that to happen. Then you brought me here, and it was only supposed to be for one night, but…” Her face twists.
I don’t have time to respond before she spills her guts further. “But I got to know you, started to fall for you, fell… in love with you.”
I slam down the whiskey bottle, and she winces, drawing back in the chair. “You don’t get to whip those words out now!” A large lump forms in my throat. I thought that when we exchanged those words for the first time, it would be something special, not in the midst of our breakup.
Tears build in her eyes again. “I’m sorry, but they took so much away from me. I couldn’t let them take you away too because of who Maude was to me. I wanted to tell you, I should have… I was just so scared. But I would have… eventually.”
I squeeze my eyes shut, wanting so badly to believe her, but too many times I’ve given people the benefit of the doubt, and I’m the one who gets burned. “I don’t believe you. You were never going to tell me. I’m convinced of that.”
Her face crumples, and she reaches for me. I pull my hand away so she doesn’t make contact.
“I swear to you I wanted so badly to tell you, but the more time that passed, the harder it got. Don’t you understand? There’s a reason you waited to tell me you were engaged.”
I scowl at her. “My engagement had nothing to do with you. At all. And the fact is, I did tell you. But you being Maude’s stepsister has everything to do with me. It’s not the same thing.”
She shakes her head. “Please don’t let this ruin what we have. Please.” Her voice is hoarse, holding a desperate plea.
“There’s something I’ve been wondering. How come I never met or saw you when I was at the house?”
A flash of pain crosses her face. “They’d never let me come down from the attic whenever you were there. Louise would lock me in my room.”
My fist tightens on my thigh. I shouldn’t give a shit how they treated her, but it still pisses me off. I nod and stand from the chair, needing to get away from her.
“Wait!” Cinder rushes to her feet and grips my shirt. “Please don’t leave like this. Tell me we can figure this out. I know you feel what I do, Nero.”
I pull her hands off me, hating myself for having the urge to continue holding onto her. “What I felt for you, Cinder. Felt.”
She shakes her head and tears burst from her eyes. “No. What we have is too good to be ruined because of them.”
I frown. “It’s over, but I’ll admit, a part of me wishes you weren’t so hard to walk away from.”
She collapses to the floor in sobs as I turn and walk away from her. I have nothing more to say.