10. Kiara
— ? —
Kiara
I knock once and push the door open without waiting for an answer.
Jensen is pacing by the window. Back and forth, back and forth, his hand raking through his hair, pulling at it, leaving it standing in wild tufts.
His shirt is untucked on one side. His jacket is thrown over the back of a chair.
He looks like he’s been tearing himself apart in this room, piece by piece, while waiting for me to arrive.
He turns when he hears me enter, and his face is wrecked. Red-rimmed eyes. Jaw tight. A vein pulsing at his temple.
Good. Let him suffer. I’ve been suffering for five years.
“Close the door,” he says.
I close it. The click of the latch sounds loud in the quiet room. I stay where I am, my back against the door, as far from him as I can get in this space.
“Kieran is downstairs with Nadia. We have limited time before he starts asking where I am.”
“Four years.” He stops pacing. He faces me, and his voice comes out cracked, broken, like something inside him has shattered.
“He’s four years old. I have a son who’s four years old and I didn’t know.
I didn’t know he existed. I’ve missed four years of his life.
Four years of birthdays and first steps and first words and I didn’t even know he was alive. ”
“I’m aware of how old my son is.”
“Our son.” He takes a step toward me. I hold my ground. “He’s our son. You and me. He has my eyes. He has my jaw. He looked at me in that lobby and I saw myself looking back and I didn’t understand, I couldn’t understand, because you never told me. You never gave me the chance to be his father.”
“I gave you nothing because you gave me nothing first.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you weren’t there, Jensen.” My voice is rising.
I can’t stop it. “I stood in that bridal suite with your baby growing inside me, a baby I was going to surprise you with, a baby I’d been keeping secret because I wanted to see your face when I told you, and you didn’t come. You didn’t show up.”
“I had reasons.”
“You had Lauren Hayes.”
He stops moving. His face goes blank.
“What?”
“Don’t stand there and pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.” I push off the door and take a step toward him. “Don’t look at me with that confused expression like you have no idea what I mean. I saw the photos, Jensen. I saw them with my own eyes.”
“What photos?” He shakes his head, his brow furrowed, his hands spread open at his sides. “Kiara, what photos? I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
“The photos your mother showed me.” I’m shaking now. My hands won’t stay still. I grip them together in front of me, squeezing until my knuckles ache. “On our wedding day. She showed me photos of you and Lauren at a restaurant.”
“Kiara, what are you talking about? None of this makes sense.”
“Yes.” I can see them still. “You were sitting across from each other at a table with white tablecloths. You were reaching across, your hand on hers, your fingers wrapped around her fingers. The way you used to lean close to me.”
Jensen’s face has gone pale. He looks like he might be sick.
“And you believed it?”
“The evidence was right there in front of my face. Telling me I was an embarrassment you’d decided to walk away from, that I had no name. No family. No blood worth marrying into.” My voice cracks but I push through.
“Kiara.” He reaches for me. I step back. His hand falls to his side, empty. “Kiara, those photos are lies.”
“They looked real enough to me.”
“They’re lies.” He says it again, harder this time, desperate. “There are no photos of me and Lauren. Not like that. Not ever. I have never been with Lauren. I have never wanted Lauren. I have never looked at another woman since the moment I met you.”
“Then explain the photos.”
“I can’t explain photos I have never seen!
” He’s shouting now. His voice echoes off the walls of the suite.
“I don’t know what my mother showed you.
I don’t know what lies she told. But I know they’re lies because I know the truth, and the truth is that I have only ever loved you.
From the first moment I saw you, there has been no one else. There could never be anyone else.”
“Pretty words.” I fold my arms across my chest, trying to hold myself together, trying to keep from flying apart. “Pretty words from a man who wasn’t there.”
“What was I wearing?”
“What?”
“In the photos. What was I wearing?” He crosses to me, stopping an arm’s length away. His hands are clenched into fists at his sides, trembling with the effort of keeping them there. “You said you remember them. You said they’re burned into your memory. So tell me. What was I wearing?”
I frown. I don’t understand why this matters, but the answer comes easily. I’ve looked at those images in my mind a thousand times.
“A suit. A black suit. Formal.”
“What else? What did I look like?”
“Your hair was shorter than it is now. Your face was...” I pause, trying to find the right word. “Fuller. Younger.”
“Younger.” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Younger, Kiara. Because those photos are old. They’re at least seven, maybe eight years old. They were taken at a dinner after my father’s funeral.”
The words don’t make sense. I hear them but they don’t arrange themselves into meaning.
“That isn’t possible.”
“I own one black formal suit. One.” He holds up a single finger, shaking it in front of my face.
“I bought it for my father’s funeral because I didn’t have anything appropriate to wear when he died.
And I have never worn it since. I can’t stand to look at it.
It’s still in my closet with the tags from the dry cleaner still attached because I can’t bring myself to touch it. ”
“Jensen...”
“Her mother and my mother have been friends for forty years. She sent Lauren to check on me because that’s what families like ours do.”
I’m gripping the back of a chair now. I need something to hold onto. The room feels like it’s spinning around me.
“My father’s funeral was two years before I met you.
” He says it slowly, deliberately, making sure I hear every word.
“Those photos are from two years before we ever knew each other. My mother took old photos and showed them to you and told you they were new. She lied to you, Kiara. She lied to destroy us.”
“No.” I shake my head. The movement feels jerky, uncontrolled. “No, that isn’t... she said they were recent. She said you’d been seeing Lauren for weeks. She said...”
“She lied.”
“Why would she lie?”
“Because she wanted you gone!” He slams his palm against the wall beside my head.
I flinch but I don’t move away. His face is inches from mine, his breath hot on my skin, his eyes wild with desperation.
“I chose you over her plans. I told her I was going to marry you and there was nothing she could do to stop me. For the first time in my entire life I made a decision she didn’t approve of, and she couldn’t stand it.
She couldn’t tolerate losing control of me. ”
“And I ran.” The words come out small. “I thought you chose another woman over me. I’ve spent five years hating you, Jensen. Telling myself you weren’t worth grieving. Teaching myself to forget what your hands felt like on my skin because remembering hurt too much.”
“You should have asked me.” His voice is ragged, torn. “You should have waited for me to explain. You should have trusted me.”
“How could I trust you when you weren’t there?
” I shove him. Both hands against his chest, pushing him backward.
He stumbles but catches himself. “I waited in that room, Jensen. I waited until my feet ached from standing in those heels. I waited until my sister found me on the floor. I waited and you never came. So don’t stand there and tell me I should have trusted you when you gave me nothing to trust.”
“I’d have come.” He grabs my arms. His fingers dig into my skin, holding on like I might disappear if he lets go. “If I could have come, I’d have been there. You have to believe that. Whatever else you think of me, you have to know that I’d have walked through fire to marry you that day.”
“Then where were you?” I wrench myself free. “If the photos are fake. If your mother lied. If you didn’t choose Lauren. Then where the hell were you, Jensen? Why did you not come?”
He turns away from me. He walks to the window and presses his forehead against the glass. His shoulders are shaking.
“I can’t tell you.”
I follow him across the room. I grab his shoulder and force him to face me. “You just told me your mother lied. You just told me the foundation of everything I’ve believed for years is false. And now you can’t tell me where you actually were?”
“It’s complicated.”
“Then uncomplicate it.”
“I’m trying to protect you.”
“Protect me?” I laugh. “I don’t need your protection.
I’ve survived without your protection. I’ve raised a child without your protection.
I’ve built a life and a career and a home without your protection.
What I need is the truth. I need to know if I was wrong to hate you.
I need to know if every choice I made was based on a lie. ”
“Kiara...”
“Tell me!”
He closes his eyes. His whole body shudders, a tremor that runs through him from head to toe. When he speaks, his voice is barely above a whisper.
“I was on my way to the wedding. I was in the car, thinking about my vows, thinking about your face, thinking about how happy I was going to be when I finally got to call you my wife.” He opens his eyes. They’re wet. “And then I received a threat.”
“A threat?”
“A message. On my phone. Telling me that if I married you...” He stops. Swallows. “If I married you, you’d die.”
The words land between us.
I stare at him. The man I’ve loved. The man I’ve hated. The man who says he stayed away not because he chose someone else, but because my life depended on his absence.
I don’t know what to believe anymore.