Chapter 19
I slam the accelerator, and adrenaline courses through me, pumping me up for the win. I push myself to the limit, but the asshole is a professional race car driver. He has also quite the motivation, which makes the race even more difficult to win.
This lunatic is mad about Abi and takes a risky curve, propelling him in front of me.
Waves of frustration ripple through me at the idea of losing. You’re doing this for your friend. Giving her a night of indulging in the forbidden.
He wins by a few inches, smirking at me.
Enjoy it.Climbing out, I shut the door, and Abi sends me a little smile. My gaze tells her she owes me.
Dane carries Abi to his car, and I feel Celine’s eyes on me, but I turn and walk away. She doesn’t love me anymore. I can’t do this anymore, round after round. Not with all the hurt still butchering my heart.
Her words broke me. I am a pile of dejection inside.
The girl who has sent sultry gazes my way the entire night sashays over to me.
“Wanna get out of here?” she asks.
If I take her up on her offer, by the end of the night, my vows will be broken like Celine broke my heart.
Catcalls ring around us. I catch Abi’s questioning gaze behind the car’s passenger window, silently asking if this is what I truly want. But the one I want is the one who ruined me.
Arms lock around my neck and legs wrap around my torso.
Cheers erupt around us.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I ask Celine.
“I could ask you the same.” Defiance oozes from her, and we both breathe heavily.
“Kaden.” The girl looks at me and opens my passenger door.
“Do not get in the car.” Celine whips her head at her.
The girl just smiles at her. That was a mistake. Not that she had a chance to begin with. I am a fucking mess.
I grip Celine’s arm to keep her from going after her.
“You don’t want her.”
No, I only ever want you. But you don’t love me anymore.
“Kaden, please.” Her voice breaks as if it’s hard for her to ask me not to go.
My head hangs. My heart drips with loyalty. It has loved her its entire life, but this fucking limbo kills me.
She plucks the keys from my pocket and wiggles them in my line of sight.
“Me or her?”
Her eyes glisten with a pain so great my knees weaken.
“Give me the keys.”
“Me or her, Kaden?”
“When did you pick me?”
Her face breaks into a sad smile.
“Always.”
She lifts on her toes and places a kiss on my jaw, hugging me like she wants to preserve this moment. Before I give in to destroying what was left of us.
“Here.”
She peels my hand open and puts the keys in my palm.
“I have so much to tell you. It’s bursting from within me. But we’re toxic. For a love like ours, it’s quite sad how we turned out. Go, it’s okay.”
She steps back and says to the girl in a shaky voice, “I’m sorry, I let myself go. But he’s, he was… it doesn’t matter.”
Celine halts one more moment. “We failed at the whole marriage, but maybe we can try to be friends?”
Friends? We could never be just friends. We fucking burn for the other. I watch her climb into her car, dabbing at the corners of her eyes, smiling at me, trying to reassure me it’s okay. Even the pain is worth it. If my love for her kills me, then so be it. Without her, everything is meaningless. With her, everything is worthwhile.
When the car’s rear lights vanish, I get in the driver’s seat and wrap my hands around the wheel.
“Your ex?” the girl lowers and pokes her head in my car. I thought she was long gone.
She’s brunette. I guess she’s cute with her twin pigtails, petite frame, and amiable smile. But girls, women—they don’t even exist in my orbit of interest.
I can’t do this. She’s not what I love, what I crave. No one else is but Celine. We have hurt each other too fucking much to keep doing this. I refuse to continue doing this shit to her, to me, and to us. If Celine wants to talk, then we’ll talk. We can either find a way to be together, or she can fucking kill me because I can’t live like this any longer.
“Please close the door.”
“It’s okay. I mean, after that show, I guessed as much. Was worth a try. Bye.”
I speed away, but I can’t go home, and do something stupid like wring her neck, kiss her until we both suffocate, make love until I actually put a baby in her belly, and chain her to me so she feels how I feel––like I can’t escape her.
I need a clear head and full control over my emotions.
After I drive aimlessly for a while, I park in front of a bar downtown. There’s a low chance that someone would recognize me here. After the fifth beer, I call Blake.
“What’s up?” he asks.
“Drinking.”
“Where?”
I give him the address, and twenty minutes later, he plops down on the bar stool next to me.
“What happened? Celine… behaved strangely.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. Different… smiling at us, hugging us.”
After I drink two more beers, he pays and helps me to my feet.
I wobble on my legs.
“Where is Abi?” Blake asks.
“Hopefully having the best night of her life.”
I crash in the passenger seat, and my head lolls to the side as sleep drags me under.
I’m jolted awake by a shove. Grumbling, I open an eye to see Blake nudging me.
“We’re here.”
Clarity gradually seeps through my grogginess. I push myself up, bracing against the door.
Staggering upstairs, I zig-zag toward a singular goal—Celine’s comfort.
I hold on to the banister and stumble from one wall to the other before I tumble inside her room.
“Wife, I am home. Miss me?”
I drop onto the bed. Light flickers from under the bathroom door. She will come out any moment, and then I can have her.
***
When I wake up, an ache throbs in my head, feeling like it’s splitting my skull. I peel one eye open and groan. The sun attacks my vision, and I shut it again.
Last night’s events become clearer in my head. I am in Celine’s room. I got drunk and ended up in her bed. Only the latter was in my plans last night. I don’t even care anymore. She’s embedded in my life’s fabric.
My lips curl, and I pat the side of the bed next to me, but it’s empty and cold.
“Celine?”
Where is she? Light comes from under the bathroom door, and I knock on it.
“Hey, baby, are you okay?”
Sighing, I brace my hands against the door. “We need to talk.”
No reply, no sounds, no nothing. Panic sets in my veins. “Sky, open the door right now.” I count to three and then yank the door open, but there is no sign of her.
I shout her name, then search for her in every room, my worry skyrocketing.
Sweat gathers at my nape, and Hunter says, “Get the fuck out of my room.”
“Have you seen Celine?”
“No. Get out.”
Fuck. Fear tears at my composure. Dark thoughts swirl in my head. I try to keep calm and not give into despair. I come face to face with Bailey.
“She’s not here. Celine left.”
“Where?”
Bailey eyes me, lips pursed in a line of disappointment. I am not in the mood for judgment.
“Where is she?” Where is my wife?
She turns around and I follow her into the kitchen.
“You said the house is ready. This place is messing with us all. I think we should leave.” A shudder ripples through her, and I block her from approaching the fridge.
“What do you know?”
“I promised her I wouldn’t tell. But she will come back.”
“So you won’t help me?”
Bailey flinches. “You know where she is. She’s one of us. Even with you wearing her on your heart, she couldn’t be more part of this family than she already is.”
“So you won’t tell me.”
“No.”
I pin her with a sharp gaze, and she holds it, not at all intimidated. “Look, you love her. She loves you. But you don’t trust each other, so…”
She’s pointing out the obvious.
Everything is getting out of control. I ball my fists at my sides and storm outside. I get in my car, and after I drive mindlessly for a while, I reach her father’s place. Celine has to be here. Setting myself up for a confrontation, I am half inclined to look Sebastian in the eyes and tell him I might kill him if he won’t let me see her.
Either way, I am not leaving without her.
This time, the guards let me in. Sebastian and Cillian wait for me at the entrance.
“You have a habit of arriving unannounced.”
I open my mouth to ask him where Celine is when he says, “Any idea why Celine said she will be away for a few days?”
Fuck. She’s not here. Where the fuck is she? And then it hits me. Bailey covertly told me where she is.
I approach him, and when we’re eye to eye, I say, “Show me everything. Let’s take these motherfuckers down.”
I do this for Celine: creating one family from two.
Our love will prevail. Our bond is unbreakable.
Cillian looks at him and says, “Are you sure?”
“He has even more to lose,” Sebastian responds.
I don’t fear losing the bullshit family my name is attached to, status or money, but the people I love and swore to protect.
“Celine’s mother is alive. My wife is being kept somewhere in what we think is this building.”
I shoot from my chair and approach the board, where a map stretches with a red circle around a place not far away from the Family’s compound.
“I don’t know anything about this.”
“From what we’ve gathered, it’s under Caleb’s command. The only one we caught coming and going are your father and Caleb.”
Caleb, Blake’s father,is my father’s best friend, and the head of the Family’s pharmaceutical company.
Shouldn’t Blake have found out about this?
“That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Caleb is the mad scientist, and your father is the evil manipulator. Those two are the perfect match.”
“But the old––I mean Grandmother.”
They stifle smiles and Sebastian says, “It’s hard to understand how a mother could keep her daughter prisoner, but there is also another version.”
“My father is planning to take control,” I say.
“He’s smart,” Cillian says, his voice ringing with incredulity.
I pin that asshole with a glare. His son definitely takes after him.
“How do they come and go?”
“It’s virtually impossible to get inside. Celine and Hunter have scouted the area, but it’s heavily guarded. We can’t breach it from the outside.”
While they talk, I study every opening I can find.
“Yes, but knowing my father, he has another way to get there. He uses the tunnel for that.”
“Celine said the same thing.”
I itch to find her, to go to her. I open my mouth to ask him when he says, “Don’t even bother.”
Fucking great.
“Look, it’s up to my daughter. It says something that she prefers to stay away for a few days when we have this much to work through.”
I slam my palms on the table. “This is what fucking happens when there is mistrust and secrets we both inherited, courtesy of our fathers.”
He flinches, and two guards step inside.
“Everything all right?”
He dismisses the guard. “Thank you, Benjamin.”
Sebastian looks straight at me. “You’re nothing like him.”
“I take that as a compliment,” I say and walk away.
My phone rings, and I say to Bailey, “I trust you with the move back to the house. Take Mia and Hunter with you.”
“But?”
“Trust me.”
Time is slipping, and if Celine’s mother is alive, we have even more reason to work together.