Chapter 1 #2
My legs moved on autopilot, carrying me from my home office into the kitchen. No sooner than I put my hand on the refrigerator handle, my phone rang. By the ringtone alone, I knew it was my fiancé, Patrick.
“Hey, baby.” I greeted him with a forced smile after accepting his FaceTime call.
Patrick was the definition of handsome. He had soft, toffee-brown skin, jet-black hair, soft, neat curls on top of his head with a bald fade on the sides and back, and a gleaming white smile.
A pair of thick, dark eyebrows sat over his chocolate-brown eyes, and a thick beard covered his squared jaw.
“There’s my beautiful fiancée. How are you?”
“I’m okay,” I lied.
“You sure? You look tired, baby.”
A huff slipped past my lips as I easily dropped my facade. “I didn’t sleep well again last night,” I admitted. “This wedding is stressing me the fuck out, baby. It’s literally turning from a dream to a nightmare right in front of my eyes.”
I decided not to go into too much detail, knowing it would only stress us both out.
“I’m sorry, baby. But we’re almost at the finish line. I know you’ll handle it.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, we’ll see about that. I still haven’t been able to convince your mother to stop adding guests at the last minute. I get your parents are paying for it, but I’d still like to have some sense of control over our wedding.”
“I’ll talk to her again, okay?”
“Thank you, baby. I hate feeling like I’m nagging all the time about every little thing. But the more people she invites from your side, the more I’m reminded that I don’t have any family that will be there aside from Liv and her parents.”
I was closer to Liv’s family than my own.
Liv always had stability—the nice, two-parent, upper-middle-class household.
Then there was me. My mom died when I was nine, and my dad worked long shifts, so I was on my own for dinner a lot of times.
Soon enough, I was over to Liv’s house for dinner three to four nights a week.
My father passed away when I was nineteen, and I’d been alone in the world ever since.
Losing a parent at any age was hard and traumatic, but it was even more difficult as a kid.
Losing both of my parents left a void the size of a moon crater in my chest. Truthfully, I was scared to become a wife and, eventually, a mother.
The only role model I had was Liv’s mom, Mama Gray.
Marrying into Pat’s wealthy family was more than them footing the bill for our fairytale wedding.
It was my chance to build a family of my own, adjacent to Patrick’s already successful bloodline.
“You’re not, baby. My family is about to be your family, so you’re not alone,” he assured me before setting the phone down so that all I could see was the ceiling.
“Where are you?”
“Oh, um, in my hotel room. We had an overnight layover between Tulsa and Miami. I’ve got a flight that leaves again in a couple of hours.”
“And then you’ll be coming home?”
“Yeah. I’ll fly back to Chicago in two days, and I’ll be all over you for the next three,” he assured me with his signature flirtatious grin.
I forced another half smile. “Can’t wait. I know you just left, but I miss you already.”
“I miss you too, baby. You know you’re my heart.”
Pat didn’t have a typical nine-to-five schedule.
He was a pilot based in New York but lived in Chicago, so he usually flew into the city the day before his flight or sometimes drove in.
He’d work a series of days followed by some days off.
His parents also owned a chain of hotels across the country, which meant he was bred into generational wealth, but he was always away at work.
Love was literally in the air the night we met, because we met on a flight to Austin.
Imagine my surprise when I realized that the same handsome stranger who bumped into me at the airport coffee shop and nearly sent my chai latte flying would end up being the pilot who greeted me as I stepped onto the plane.
After we landed, he handed me a discreet, handwritten note saying he wanted to take me out to dinner or for another latte.
My choice. It was a chance encounter. I was traveling there for a freelance graphic design gig I’d landed for a magazine.
He was tall, handsome, and obviously had a financially stable job, so I took him up on his dinner offer. After all, we both had to eat.
We’d been inseparable ever since—minus the distance with him being in the sky and me being on land for the majority of our fourteen-month relationship. Most days, I felt like I’d won the jackpot, but when I was alone in bed at night, I always found myself wondering what the actual prize was.
I snapped out of my slight daze when I heard a door close inside his hotel room. “What was that?”
“What?”
“I heard a door close.”
“Oh, that was room service. I ordered something to eat,” he answered before picking the phone back up. “You know what else I can’t wait for?”
“What? This wedding to be over?” I asked, voice laced with cynicism.
He chuckled. “I was gonna say our honeymoon, but I guess the two go hand in hand.”
“Ugh, my mind has been stationed in Bali ever since we booked our tickets,” I confessed, which sparked a genuine smile.
“I can’t wait to bend you over and put a couple of babies in you.”
My smile faded. “Damn, baby. Can we enjoy being married for a little while before we start popping out our cute little spawns?”
“I thought you wanted kids.”
“I do, baby. I just . . . wanna enjoy being your wife and only your wife for a little bit. That’s all,” I answered, knowing I had zero plans to stop taking my birth control anytime soon.
He nodded. “That’s fair, baby. We’ll call this practice.”
I smirked, and he winked at me. “What’d you get to eat?”
“Huh?”
“You said you ordered room service.”
His visible Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed before looking off camera. “Oh, just a burger and fries.”
“How is it?”
“I’m about to eat it now.”
“Oh.”
“Why? You wan’ a piece?” he teased.
I smacked my lips. “I’m good. I’m in the kitchen now, about to find something to eat.”
“I’ll let you get to it then, okay?”
“Okay. I love you.”
“Love you too,” he replied before ending the FaceTime call.
As soon as the call ended, I found myself instinctively pushing down the lump inside my throat and trying to ignore the sinking feeling inside my chest. But even so, there was one question replaying in the back of my mind: There’s no way he’s cheating on me again, is there?