6. Christian
SIX
CHRISTIAN
There were only two moments in my life where I was left speechless.
Staring into Adelaide’s mystical sapphire eyes was the third.
If a blind person asked me to describe the most beautiful creation, I’d describe Adelaide.
Her earrings dangled from how hard I pulled her towards me. She was taller than I remembered her to be—in heels—her head brushed the top of my chest. Her pulse juddered under my absentminded caress, skidding inhumanely fast and coerced my own to follow suit. My eyes involuntarily shut at the waft of roses and white musk.
Opening my eyes with furrowed brows, I couldn’t understand why my brain silenced itself. Why a fraction of her narrowed eyes softened or why both of us entered a place where the sound of trees ruffling in the midnight air sung between us.
Adelaide took a step back, taking with her the ambrosial scent. Her gated look hid from me with fingers rubbing my mark on her.
Adelaide’s throat rippled with a hard swallow.
Her short red dress swayed under the air conditioning vent and gave me a glimpse of her milky thigh. Patience was a fortitude—the beguiling image of ivory thighs and the hazy look she bore—punishable even to a man with as much placidity as me.
My hand flexed. Hoarse and unsteady, “Running away doesn’t solve problems, Ms. Mikael.”
“Talking from experience, Mr. Hayes?” Bitterness stretched through her voice onto the lapels of my last name.
This Adelaide was nothing like the girl on the news. Gone was the timidness and in its stead was a hissing cat.
She looked—forehead, between my brows, nose—but she didn’t look at me .
“Addie,” Osama took a step towards her. “As much as you don’t like Christian, you have to know that he’s the one that can help you. Not me.”
Black smoke shaded my gaze.
Why the fuck wasn’t she looking at me?
“She’s aware that her plan’s too shitty to bring up to me.”
Her jaw ticked.
“You want to know what I think?”
An agitated sigh fell from her lips. “Not really.”
“If I were you, Ms. Mikael.” I was careful to maintain a kind distance while taking a step forward. Silky threads fell over her face when she slightly turned. “I wouldn’t come to me for help on fixing Starlight’s reputation.” My fingers slanted not enough to touch her skin but to crackle the space between us with electric energy. “I’d need me to figure out what the fuck was going on in that company.”
“That is only, of course, if you had nothing to do with it.” Softness vanished and there emerged an ugly red monster who knocked sense back into me.
Dropping my hand, I reeled back.
Remember your plan.
She looked with a hardened glance.
“No one will give you your power back.”
“Thanks for telling me the obvious.”
Tongue pushed against my left cheek. “You have to snatch it back. The only way possible for you is with my help.”
“How?”
“Marrying me, Adelaide . ”
Adelaide stared at me like I was the last person she’d ever want to be tied to. Her colour blue wasn’t blue enough, yet too blue to colour in the black and white spaces in my mind.
“You’re insane.”
“Am I?” Orchestrated hymns of cacophonous melodies burst from the voids of my heart. “Because getting married automatically gives you power. You’ll get your position back and figure out who’s impersonating you.”
“Do you believe it wasn’t me?” She stuttered.
“I believe it wasn’t you.” Because I know it’s not you.
It was easy peeling away the covers of her composure, being as soft and pliable as she was. “Marriage isn’t the answer.”
“Marrying me isn’t, that’s what you mean.”
Osama walked to stand between our accelerated tension. “I’ll apologise for the way he sounds. But he has a point. A nuptial agreement between Starlight and Moonshine will divert the public’s attention to you guys. Christian doesn’t date, so people will catch onto you two like leeches, and Starlight’s board members will drool at the possibility of a permanent partnership.”
She met my gaze, a question of the past lingered in the opulent tones of her cornea.
“When we announce our engagement, I’ll announce being Moonshine’s CEO all along,” I cleared my throat, not missing how her questions washed away with turbulent waves.
“It’ll be breaking news,” Osama added. “You want them to focus on someone else’s life attached to yours, if that man is Moonshine’s CEO, he’s untouchable.”
“Then I’ll marry you,” she said to Osama.
“Absolutely not,” I snapped.
Her gaze ricocheted in my chest.
An arched brow. “There’s no need to announce you’re CEO, when I could marry Osama and the plan would work the same.”
Too fucking smart for her own good.
“I said no.”
“But I don’t want to marry you .”
“Then good luck.”
“Osama,” she turned to him with a pleasant smile. “Marry me?”
The bastard laughed. “My mom would kill me if I married a white girl.”
“Well then, I guess that’s that.” She looked at Osama with kindness. “Thank you for your time, Osama.”
Then scowled when turned to me. “And yours, Mr. Hayes.”
She sauntered over to the door when my tongue twisted into a hurricane. Spilling fucking bullshit. “You’re afraid, aren’t you?”
Her back turned rigid, niveous, and aerated.
“Christian,” Osama warned.
“You haven’t moved on from the past. From us.” Ignoring Osama, I moved towards her. “And it scares you. Why, sweet Adelaide? Are you afraid of falling in love with me again?”
She whipped her head around. Blazing. Fiery. Hot .
“I have no reason to be afraid where you’re concerned.”
“Then why not say yes?”
“Because I don’t trust you.”
Ouch.
“Then marry me and let me show you all the ways you could trust me.”
A ripple of unease cascaded down my spine when she didn’t respond. Agree to this, Adelaide. Agree to me .
I’d never felt as desperate as I did now. She stood with all her goodness, not changing a single bit—and suddenly my heart wanted to be tied to hers—real or unreal, it didn’t know the fucking difference.
“What do you get out of this?” She said quietly, staring into space. “It doesn’t make sense why you’d want to help me.”
Because it’s you.
“I want company shares.”
Her shoulders slumped. “You want to be a member of the board.”
“Exactly.”
She turned back around, this time making it a point to look back as she pushed open the door. Wind blew in, exposing all of her features to me. “If I was anyone else, I might have said yes.” she whispered. “But I’m me and I truly want nothing to do with you.”
It took a lot of effort to make me speechless.
But Adelaide did it twice in one day.
There’s one important fact to note about Osama. When he wasn’t being Moonshine’s hacker, he was acting like an eleven-year-old boy going through the heightened stages of puberty. Minus the porn addiction.
Osama’s house was a massive three-story mansion that was decorated from top to bottom, and take this in, each room had a theme. Nothing was left untouched by his cheesy taste. From games to books, the man had everything down.
Psychology would say he was lonely and decorated as a form of therapy.
I called it pure fucking crazy.
We sat on large bean bag chairs, LED lights colouring the room from top to bottom, with our takeout dinner discarded in front of us. Osama yelled at a thirteen-year-old boy through his gaming console.
I checked the time on my watch.
Hasan was supposed to be here an hour ago. Which meant something was really fucking wrong because idiot number two was never late.
Today, I’d tell him about the marriage proposal. I kept it hidden for far too long, knowing how close he was to Adelaide.
Osama cursed before shutting the game off. “These fucking kids, man.” He took a bite off of stone cold, shitty pizza. “Think they’re better than me or something.”
“They are,” I replied with a chuckle.
Osama and I had met in my first year of college. Purely fated. One late afternoon when I was getting to class, I caught him yelling a cat for being too fucking adorable. An odd sight, him, crouched down and rubbing the cat while talking in a shitty baby voice. He heard a contagious laugh and proceeded to give the middle finger. That day, we bonded over the cute fucking cat and never made it to our classes.
Hasan was the rule follower that caught me bringing that same cat to one of the classes he was TA-ing. He asked to see me after the tutorial, and we ended up bonding over the cat too.
The said cat—Chubby—now lives comfortably at home.
“Where is this guy?”
He usually sent a message if he was gonna be late.
“He has other friends than us, you know?”
“His sister and Adelaide?”
“And his son, don’t forget precious baby Yunus.” Osama made a pouty face and grabbed my cheeks with his dirty fucking hands.
“Fuck off, dude.”
“You love me,” Osama said with a nasty ass wink. “I’ll get you to admit it someday.”
“It’ll be the same day I bust your nuts.”
“I’d like to see you try, dumbass.”
We went on like that before the door to the gaming room opened and there appeared Hasan with a toddler strapped to his chest and an angry fucking look on his face.
Yunus cooed at the sight of us, and my heart swelled with pure ecstasy. I loved that boy like he was my own. The man attached to him? Fumes eviscerated out of his ears in promise of collateral damage. Shit .
Triple fucking shit .
Osama felt the energy and shuffled onto his feet with a quick brush of his crumby hands over his thighs. “I shall take my favourite man and get the fudgeity fudge out of here.”
Without breaking eye contact, Hasan passed Yunus over to Osama and calmly shut the door behind him.
“There are two ways this can go,” he rolled his sleeves up. “I can punch your pretty boy face, or you call Adelaide and tell her you don’t want to marry her anymore.”
A gentle, visceral grin forged itself on my lips. I placed my hands behind my head, clasped together and accentuating my upper body. “You sound a little jealous, Hasan.”
If it weren't for the conversation I had with his wife five years ago, I never would’ve known Hasan and Adelaide knew each other through her friendship with his sister. Underneath his hard exterior, Hasan was a softie. A couple of broken hitches and a sob story, he’d been prepared to help me.
Or at least I thought so until he barged in like a fucking blind man, defending Adelaide like she was his to protect.
Furious waves knotted in my stomach a thousand times over. I’d fucking kill Hasan before he put a hand on Adelaide, friendship be damned.
She was mine to hold , mine to keep , and mine to break .
It shouldn’t matter to him or to any other fucking man in the universe what I planned to do with her.
“Have you always been a dick?” Hasan remained calm. Too calm for my liking.
“Tell me how long you’ve liked her for, and we’ll get this over with.”
It was a low blow. But my feelings had been low for a long fucking time.
He narrowed his eyes, “Fuck you, Christian.”
“Does me marrying her bother you? Have you imagined sweeping her off her feet and riding into the sunset?” There was no warmth to the crevices in my laugh when I stood with complete grace. “I bet you could give that to her. Roses. Sunsets. Every fucking thing she doesn’t des?—”
Hasan’s fists connected with my face the same way a tsunami met land. Rough and painful.
I rubbed my jaw with a boyish smile.
“If you weren’t one of my best friends and didn’t have a good fucking reason for doing this shitty revenge plan of yours, I’d bury you ten feet deep.” Hasan grabbed my arm and tightened his hold.
“She may be slow and may have no fucking clue what your intentions are, but Adelaide is much more than your petty games, Christian. I want you to remember that when you get the chance to meet her at the end of the aisle.”
The threat perforated through the husky edges of his expressions and into my soul, where the most whole parts of me began to crack. Hasan misunderstood me. Adelaide wasn’t a part of the revenge; she was the route to get to it. Without her, this wasn’t possible.
He didn’t get that she was using me .
“You sure she’ll say yes?”
“That’s what you got from all of this?”
“All I really cared about,” I shrugged.
Exhaustion tainted beneath his eyes. “You’re a dick, you know that?”
Wasn’t the first time he said, sure as fuck wouldn’t be the last.
“Yep, you sure you blocked her bank account?”
A twisted, down casted expression. “Yeah. She’ll have no choice but to say yes.”