Chapter 51
51
M aeve
I’m on the warpath. After calling and texting Ezra multiple times on the way to his office with no response, I’m ready to throttle him.
My excitement about delivering the good news has turned into a desire to claw his eyes out. He didn’t come back home yesterday, and now he’s ignoring me completely the whole morning. What in the ever-loving hell is happening? By the time I get to his floor, I’m fuming.
I find Martin at his desk. He’s finishing a phone call and shows me with his raised finger to give him a second. Once he puts it down, he interlocks his fingers in front of his face to rest his chin on them.
“Dear, you look like an Amazon ready to chop off some big balls.” His eyes run down my height, and he winces. “Well, a very short Amazon, but a little warrior regardless. What happened? ”
With my lips pinched together, I walk up to his desk. “What’s he doing?” I nod at the closed door.
Martin leans a little closer to me and whispers, “I have no idea. He’s been cooped up in there all morning. And when I tried to peek inside, he nearly bit my head off. I mean, he’s always grumpy, especially in the morning. But it’s a whole new level even for him.”
“He’s been ignoring my calls and messages the whole morning. On top of not sleeping at home.” I glance toward his office, chewing on my lip. “And he’s been acting weird for days.”
Martin’s gaze follows mine for a moment before it returns to me. “What about, you know, the yesterday thing?” His voice trails off at the end.
I wave my hand in the air dismissively. “I overheard their talk in the hallway on the way to the bathroom.”
“Their?”
“Yes. Him and his supposed mistress,” I explain.
Martin’s eyes turn round. “I can’t believe that,” he nearly whispers. “I thought… I don’t know what I thought. I just?—”
“Martin,” I call him out before he goes down this rabbit hole and Ezra is forever tainted in Martin’s eyes. “He told her that all he wants is me.”
“Oh!” His eyes widen as his tone turns lighter. “That makes more sense. Because I was sure I was right .”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing!” He smiles with all his seventy teeth—that’s how many it feels like. His smile is that of a shark.
“Martin,” I start with a warning.
He sighs with obvious defeat as if I’ve just tortured the answer out of him, even though he didn’t fight very hard. “I used to bring him coffee in the morning. Right from your shop,” he adds with a raised brow.
“Oh! Yes! That’s where I know you from.” I point my finger at him. “I’ve been trying to figure out if we’ve ever met before.”
He mocks offense, glancing to the side. “Sure. I’m so forgettable.”
“You’re not. Stop it,” I laugh. “I’m just very bad with faces. I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you from before.”
His accusing stare might bring a lesser person to their knees, but I drop my gaze to the floor like a shy wallflower.
“Neither can I.” Then his attitude instantly changes. “Anyway, I used to bring him coffee in the mornings. He was so-o-o,” a roll of his eyes, “stiff; it was uncomfortable to walk around him. For real. He couldn’t crack a joke to save his life. I wasn’t sure if he even possessed a sense of humor. So when I saw you,” his finger this time points at me, “I thought he could use some crazy in his stuffy life.”
“Crazy?” I raise my pierced brow.
“Girl, it’s me, alright. Yes, crazy. And my plan worked.”
I narrow my eyes at him. “What exactly did you do?”
“I just stopped bringing him coffee, so he had to go and get his own. Where he met you, the wild card he was missing in his perfectly arranged deck.” His face is shining with pride and glee. Someone should take a picture.
“So you are my fairy godmother?” I can’t help but chuckle.
He rises to his feet and curtsies quickly. “At your service, child.”
“Thank you. Really, thank you.” Then I think for a moment and add with a wince, “And sorry about the building.”
He waves me off with the mischievous smile of someone who’s not really upset with what has happened. “Yeah, I did not see that one coming.”
“Speaking of buildings.” I slowly lift the paper in the air, waiting for the standing ovation. “I’ve got a solution. ”
His eyes go round. “You did not.”
“Did too.” I shake the paper, still waiting for my appreciation.
“Is that what I think it is?”
I give the paper a dramatic air kiss. “The permit.”
“The permit,” Martin parrots with a wide smile. When he snaps out of it, he runs around the table and rushes me toward Ezra’s office. “Go, fix that moody issue over there, so we all can go back to peace. I’ll put my headphones on. Don’t be shy,” he adds with a wink, pulling the drawer of his desk open.
With a quiet laugh, I throw the permit into my bag and push the door open. But when I see Ezra’s eyes staring back at me, it dies out. He doesn’t look happy to see me at all. It’s the opposite. His eyes narrow at the first sight of me, and his nostrils instantly flare like a bull.
“What are you doing here?”
“Hello to you too, husband.”
He flinches at me using the word, and I feel myself frowning in confusion. What happened? Why has he changed so much? I thought he loved calling me his wife and loved being called my husband.
“What do you need?” He keeps his voice gruff and unwelcoming. Nasty even. And I’ve had enough.
“What’s wrong with you?”
His jaw starts moving from side to side—he’s contemplating if he should say something. So there is something to say.
Squaring my shoulders, I begin my angry stride toward him to face this asshole of a husband and find out what’s happening once and for all.
While passing his desk, I accidentally bump into its corner and move a stack of papers on the side. The whole thing slides to the floor. This is not how I imagined our standoff to look like, but it’s very typical of me to bump into unsuspected corners and make myself look like an idiot.
“Sorry,” I mumble and start collecting the papers from the floor. He joins to help, gesturing for me to stop.
They are on the floor because I’m a klutz, so I keep gathering and putting them back on the desk, trying to make them appear neat just like they were before my interference. “Sorry,” I mumble again, feeling stupid about my lack of grace.
Out of nowhere, something on the top of the stack catches my eye. Something with the coffee shop name on it. I stop fidgeting with the papers and pick up the piece. Ezra suddenly freezes. With his eyes glued to the paper in my hands, he rises to his feet.
His stare has changed its tune. It’s not angry anymore, just scorching.
My eyes roam over the printed lines dismissively at first. But I keep reading. The more I read, the colder my heart becomes. The stiffer my fingers turn.
“What’s this?” I ask, lifting my eyes to him.
His annoyingly thick neck moves with a rough swallow. “The insurance papers.”
“About the fire at your building?” I ask, hoping I just saw something else. Some other building he owns. Some other fire he had.
“Yes.” His voice is void of any emotions.
“But—” I look down at the paper and read it again. “But it says it wasn’t my fault. That it was faulty wiring in the wall and not even connected to the oven.”
A short nod of confirmation is all I get. No explanation.
“So it’s not my fault,” I repeat with a weak voice. “I was never going to go to jail for arson.”
Another short nod .
I finally catch his gaze and hold it. “When did you get this report?”
He’s holding my stare with an equally hurt one of his own. What is he hurt about?
“When, Ezra?” I repeat in a slightly raised voice.
A swallow. “Before I left for the trip.”
I look down at the paper in my hands like it’s going to give me an explanation why he lied to me.
“Why didn’t you tell me that?” I recall our conversation when he pretty much blackmailed me into marrying him. Yes, the final decision of marrying him happened because of the promises he made, but him threatening me with jail was why I even considered his idea in the first place.
“You kept secrets too,” he says stubbornly. His jaw moves from side to side.
“There’s nothing to tell.” I feel myself getting angry. “We could have avoided all of this.” I wave my hand between him and myself. “Why did you tell me you’d send me to jail?”
His lips are tightly pressed together. Not a sound escaping. And it makes me mad.
“Why, Ezra?” I walk to him and stop half a foot away from him.
He’s still quiet. I edge closer. Nothing. I grab the front of his crisp, white shirt and pull him to me. He lets me. If he didn’t want me to, I wouldn’t be able to move him even a bit.
“Why?” I hiss, rising on my tippytoes.
I see his self-control spinning. His nostrils flare, and his gaze dips to my mouth and then back to my eyes. His palm covers my hand in a firm grip. Not painful but controlling.
“Because I wanted you for myself,” he spits out the truth I’d been dreaming to hear before. But now it just sounds hollow. “I wanted to have you for myself . I couldn’t bear the idea of someone else doing to you the things I did to you on the island.” His voice drops lower. “I couldn’t even imagine you throwing the damn stick at someone else and laughing with someone else. I’d be the only one to catch the fuckin’ stick. I didn’t want to come back to a woman I’d hate forever. Because the woman I came to want didn’t want me back. So I forced you to want me.” His voice turns softer as his eyes dart between mine. “And you wanted me. For some time.”
“Why did you lie to me? You could have told me you liked me. That’s what normal people do, you know. That’s what I would do.”
“Yeah?” His tone takes the wrong turn again. “That’s what you would do?” His voice becomes even more menacing. Barely contained. “How about telling me how you spend your evenings with Jeff? How about that?”
I blink. And blink. Then blink some more, hoping he’s joking. But he’s not—there’s absolutely no sign of humor on his serious, hurt face. Then I throw my head back and start laughing.
My reaction is clearly not what he expected because his face turns confused as his grip on my hand loosens.
“You stupid, stupid man,” I say when I stop laughing. “And here I thought we might have something real. But if a slight misunderstanding makes you run and hide instead of coming to me to ask, then nothing was real. Nothing. Grown people talk, Ezra.” I step away from him. “If they value a person, they talk to them. They make it work. And you,” I look him up and down, “have done everything but talk.”
Shaking my head, I open my giant purse and pull the shiny permit out. I drop it on the table and start to leave the office.
“What is that?” he asks my back with way less confidence than he had when he was talking about Jeff.
“That is,” I turn around and point at the paper on the desk, “what Jeff got for you.” My finger now points at him. “This is how I spend my evenings with Jeff. If you wanted this marriage to be real, you would have used your brain before making assumptions and see that I’m not the person who cheats when I made a commitment.”
My voice breaks at the end, and I grab the door handle to escape this moment. But I pause. If I don’t say the things I want to say, I’ll be no better than him.
“It honestly feels like you were just looking for a reason for us not to work when it got too real for you.” I descend into a whisper. “I just wish you didn’t drag me along the way with the promises that you could love me back.”
Feeling slightly out of my depth with the unexpected love declaration, I stomp away, silently waving an unpleasantly surprised Martin goodbye. I don’t want anyone to witness the epic end to my short-lived marriage besides me and my unfortunate husband.
For now, I need some time for myself to stir in self-pity in a space where his scent and wide shoulders don’t distract me from thinking clearly. I’ll give him time to think too. If he agrees with my words, he’ll find me. If he doesn’t, then I’ll have to learn how to live without him. Now, when he has his building back, and he needs nothing else from me, our marriage is in his hands. There’s only so much baggage one can pull alone before their back breaks from the weight.