Chapter 2
Elliot
Isometimes wonder what my life would have been like if my parents had met at a different stage in life. If they hadn’t been new adults, freshly eighteen, trying to escape life before they crossed paths.
What if they had never met all?
Would my siblings and I even exist?
If they hadn’t fallen pregnant nine months after meeting, would they have stayed together? Or would they have called it quits before vowing to spend the rest of forever together was even a thought?
Would my mother still be missing, quickly followed by my father, who went looking for her, only for him to never come back?
Would she have shown up years later with no remorse for her missing husband?
Would she still crave money and power enough to destroy the love her children had for her?
So many questions plague my mind and have for twenty-one years.
Will I ever get the answers to those questions?
No.
They will forever be left unanswered, because would-haves don’t change the past. They only make you question the present and future and torment you until you can’t think of anything else.
There are days I don’t think about my parents whatsoever.
There are days I solely think of my mother and how the sweet, loving woman who raised me no longer exists.
I wonder if she had always been that way and was just good at hiding it, or if something happened to make her power hungry and filled with greed.
I sometimes wonder about my dad—if he is really gone or roaming the world somewhere.
Maybe he lost his memory and doesn’t remember who he is or the people who have spent the last twenty years looking for him.
Maybe.
Maybe.
Maybe.
So many damn maybes.
I wish the days I don’t think about them forward, because those are the days I can actually get things done.
Those are the days when I’m not angry at the world or at them for leaving me and my siblings with two strangers.
The days I don’t think about them are the days I don’t hate my uncle, the man who has helped raise me.
The days my mind doesn’t fill with thoughts of them are the days I don’t want to escape Chicago.
Those are the days I actually want to wear my last name.
The days they don’t cross my mind are filled with fresh air.
I live for every single one of those days.
It’s been a while since I’ve had one of those days. Every day, I will for the thoughts of them to go away, to let me be, but no matter how hard I try to push and shove them back into the deepest pits of my mind, the smallest memory, the most mundane question, sneaks through.
When was the last time I didn’t think about them?
Pouty lips fill my memories.
Thoughts of soft, honey blonde hair make my fingers itch.
Sweet moans sound in my ears as if they were happening right here and now, and not almost three years ago.
That’s when I didn’t think about my parents for God knows how long.
When I was in Vegas, holding the most gorgeous woman in my arms for a singular night.
I have never wanted to extend a one-night stand more than I did in that moment. I wanted to taste that woman every single day, every time I pleased.
One damn night, and I wanted to make her mine forever.
She made me forget, made me actually feel like I was Elliot Lane, my own fucking person. She made the anger I felt on any given day go away.
What I would give to get that feeling back.
What I would pay to have one more night with her. With Aria.
Maybe that’s what I need. Maybe I just need her back in my life for a day, a week, a year, however fucking long, just so I’m able to feel like my own person again.
Because with her, I wasn’t a billionaire bachelor or the oldest child who had to hold things together.
I wasn’t in the shadow of my parents. I wasn’t holding the executive title my uncle so desperately wants me to be proud of.
I was just me, a normal guy who had met the most beautiful woman in the world at a pizza place in Vegas. I was just a guy who had her screaming his name.
I was just Elliot.
There is no maybe about, the more I think of it.
I need to go back to that.
I need Aria back in my life.
But how?
That fucking night changed everything. It might not have been the same for her, but it was transformative for me, and I’d do anything to get that back.
Even if it’s for one weekend.
I don’t even think about it for a minute before I have an answer.
As I look out at Lake Michigan from my penthouse on the top floor, I pull out my phone and do the one thing I vowed to myself I would never do again.
Ask my brother to track down the woman I spent a night in Vegas with.
Going to him is the easier route. Otherwise I would fly to her last known address that I have and be subjected to questions I’m not ready to answer.
I’m about to dial his number, about to shoot a message to him to get me all the information he can get on her since the last time he looked into her.
I’m about to get the woman of my dreams back, but at the last second, I pull back. At the last second, I pocket my phone.
Faith is not something I believe in, at least not for the last twenty years, but right now, I have faith.
I have faith Aria Hernandez will come back into my life, and when she does, I will make her mine. I will make sure of it.