14. Adelaide
FOURTEEN
ADELAIDE
It was the big day.
Well, not that big day, but the big day where every prestigious person in New York would graciously be in presence of mine and Christian’s engagement.
A team of professionals shuffled around me, two working on my hair, one working on my face, another explaining the logistics of the dress to me.
Which was absolutely beautiful .
The strapless A-line covered my feet. It shimmered delicately under the light inside—made out of the smoothest silk—painted in baby blue. Along with it came a necklace that belonged in the regency era. Dainty and delicate, elongating the shape of my neck and it accentuated my collarbones.
The hairstylist braided my hair in a loose romantic down style, adding floral hair clips, making me stand out more than I’d like to.
“I’d propose, if Mr. Hayes didn’t beat me to it,” said Jameson. He swooped a blush brush over my cheeks. His job was to make me feel good about myself, but that didn’t stop me from falling into the lies.
Straightening my shoulders, I laughed. “If I wasn’t happy marrying him, I’m sure I’d say yes to you.”
His shoulders shrugged, melodramatically. “No man can compete with that ring.”
Everyone envied the blue diamond.
Which meant I should be thankful that this was the first ring that caught his eyes. It left little room for embarrassment on my end.
After about thirty minutes, the team said their congratulations and left. Umaima remained where I last saw her, with Yunus now awake, watching me with wide eyes and drool dripping down his mouth.
Umaima couldn’t make it to the engagement party because she got sick and now, she was on baby duty.
“You like, Yunus?” I did a quick three sixty twirl for him, the dress whooshing at my feet like a coming storm erupting upon clothes to a washing line.
A barely toothy smile broke on his face with an enthusiastic nod. Umaima chuckled and pressed a kiss to the back of his head, “My nephew has good taste.”
“I can’t stop looking at you,” she said with a proud smile.
“Thank you.” I blushed while awkwardly swinging my arms. “It’s all because of them.”
“Hey,” she struggled to get off the bed with Yunus latching onto her. “Give yourself some credit, Addie. Without you in it, the dress is just a dress. You make it beautiful.”
Warmth embraced my abdomen in a way that reminded me of the ocean on a hot summer day. While cool to the touch, eventually it becomes warm and comforting and despite your skin pruning from the water, you want to stay and bask in the moment because it feels incredible.
That moment quickly disappeared when my phone started buzzing incessantly.
Eda’s calling.
All of sudden, the ocean turned cold, and my legs froze. Darkness erupted onto the summery day and despite the voices in my head telling me to get out of the water I couldn’t.
The picture on my side table of her hugging me at my bachelor’s graduation beamed with the reminder of what a disappointment I was to Eda. We looked so happy there. She was smiling like she was so proud of me, and I was leaning against her chest. Eda filled in the missing pieces of my parents. Sometimes she was a parent figure and other times she was my best friend. Disappointing her was insufferable.
Shame was my child. When I was younger, I neglected it often. Now it reminded me that my womb’s only function was to give birth to it. There was no room for other feelings. It remained selfish despite being shunned from my body.
When would it stop torturing me this way?
My eyes barred with relief when the ringing stopped.
“Still not talking to her?”
“She keeps trying to talk me out of marrying Christian.” The conversation I had with her at Morning Star didn’t go well. She went hysterical—saying Christian was using me, he didn’t care about me, and he’d hurt me again.
When you’ve experienced pain as much as I have, it feels unnatural to be without it .
“Maybe you should just tell her the truth?” Umaima suggested. “It’s better than feeling like shit.”
My aunt would swim across the Atlantic to slap me across the face. It wasn’t marriage she was against, but she had plans for Starlight and me and I was ruining them for her.
She stayed away from Moonshine and here I was, drifting towards it like she hadn’t spent blood, sweat, and tears making sure their paths wouldn’t cross.
My contracted marriage would send her to an asylum.
“She needs to see me happy and then all will be fine.” At least that’s what I hoped. “She’s not the type to be mad at me for long either.”
I always envisioned her by my side, helping me prepare for these significant moments. Yet here I was, in the room she helped decorate, transformed into an idealized version of myself, and she wasn't here to see it.
Vocal cords jabbed at my throat.
“Love is a silly invention made for people that weren’t smart enough to invent their own unique feelings.”
I always thought she liked me and Christian together.
Well, there was the time he broke your heart and she had to stay by your side at the hospital for two weeks.
Panic nestled comfortably in my chest, sitting cross-legged, waiting for its turn to rise. I desperately hoped it would take the hint from all the shame I was feeling and allow me some semblance of peace.
Yunus naturally leaned into me when Umaima handed him over. I’d run away with this adorable toddler—hypothetically, of course. “I have to pee, if your dick fiancé comes before I get out of the bathroom, knee him the balls for me.”
With Yunus’s head nestled under my chin, I choked. “Only you would do something like that, Umaima.”
“Should I not? He embarrassed me in front of the other guy and my older brother—then proceeded to act like an unintellectual imbecile who had no comprehension of the dictionary.”
“One, don’t act like you don’t know what the other guy’s name is when you were basically blushing every time he talked to you. And two, aren’t imbeciles naturally not… smart ?”
“That’s not the point,” she huffed with a dismissing gesture. “The point is that I don’t like him, and I hate that you marrying him is the only viable option right now.”
With one hand on the back of Yunus’s head, I swayed in place. “Well, it wasn’t the only option we had. But it was the quickest and most ruthless one.”
“Which fucking sucks.”
Yunus giggled at the curse.
Umaima shut her eyes and stared up to the ceiling. “If his first word is fuc– fudge , Hasan bhai will choke me with my hijab. Like literally. He will pull it off me and choke me. Hang me—annihilate me.”
I held him tighter. Yunus should have said his first word by now, but he hadn't, and everyone was expecting it to happen any day. “At this point, Hasan would be thrilled if Yunus’s first word was a curse.”
“That is tru—oh shit, it’s bad!” Umaima crossed her legs, bending slightly.
“Umaima,” I grimaced. “ Go !”
She laughed while struggling her way to the bathroom.
After she was gone, I nuzzled the grubby space between Yunus's shoulder and neck, pressing a gentle kiss and smearing him with my red lipstick. “You’re such a good boy,” I cooed as we moved from my monotone bedroom into the beiger living room. Even the kitchen was beige. It wasn't that I didn't want to decorate; the place just didn't feel like me enough.
Yunus distracted himself with the diamonds around my neck when the bell rang.
My pulse racketed through my veins as I stopped swaying.
Christian was here.
It took me a hot minute to open the door. Dragging my feet against the floor—my feet coming under the dress—and arms tightly wrapped around Yunus for composure.
Stumbling with the locks, I opened the door to see my future husband.
Christian looked different.
Darker somehow.
His eyes glinted astonishingly under the horrendous orange hue of the hallway lights, yet he seemed polished and ravishing in ways I shouldn't be imagining.
His body was adorned in an all-black tuxedo, contrasting with my pastel colors. Christian looked every bit the ruthless boss, but was this the facade he presented to others or was it his true self? It seemed I’d never find out.
Veins popped strategically on his hands unbeknownst to the response furthering to the very south of my body—heating up with unpreventable pure, unfathomed burning.
He stared at me in silence. If it had been anyone else standing before me, I would have trembled with self-conscious overthinking. But before me was Christian and if it weren't for the subtle tick in his jaw and darkening of his eyes, I would’ve naturally assumed he was immune to me.
A shimmer of hope came in the form of drenched, unwilling arousal.
He opened his mouth to speak, but a jarring Uurrp cut through the moment, breaking our silence.
Yunus’s face blemished with subtle tones of green, a cacophonous bubbling from his stomach wafted through my ears.
Oh no.
Closing my eyes, I braced for the impact. Instead, Yunus was lifted out of my arms, and that's when the horrendous gag hit.
A loud cry ruptured out of his tiny little chest and echoed across the hallway.
Christian held Yunus with one arm. His small body wrapped tightly around his waist like a koala. How does he know how to hold a child so well? Whose babies has he been holding?
With a gentle yet swift motion, I seized Christian's other arm and guided him inside, swiftly closing the door behind us.
While my back faced him, heavy pants took over my own chest and struggled to settle back down in their respective places—not from panic, not from nerves—but from… from the disbelief of something mawkish and tender sticking to my veins and jumping on board every beat that travelled through them.
He stopped Yunus from throwing up on me.
Instantly blanching when I turned around to thank him.
Yunus’s milky frothy clumps trickled down near Christian’s breast pocket, and the smell? Criminal .
My initial fear transformed into suppressed cachinnations tickling the inside of my lips like the touch of a feather to skin.
“Are you laughing at me?” He asked darkly.
Looking up, half-expecting Christian to fume with anger, to yell at me for holding a child, to push Yunus back in my arms while he strutted away with the excuse of cleaning himself.
Instead, I found hazel irises shining with humour.
Within seconds, both of us burst out laughing.
Yunus joined in on our senseless chuckling with an adorable giggle, a snotty nose, and remaining tears rolling down his cheeks.
But just as the laughing started, it died down.
For a moment, I let go and it felt similar to jumping into a cold bed after a stressful day. He stood there, capturing my latest struggles as his own and I swallowed it up. Way too quickly.
Yunus nuzzled his tired face onto Christian’s shoulder, and he didn’t look the least bit bothered. “You should get cleaned up.”
His eyes flickered past me at the clearing of a throat.
“Well, isn’t this cozy ?”
Squinting my brows, I muttered a prayer. She chooses this as the time to come out?
“Umaima,” I turned around. “Can you show Christian where the washroom is?”
Just a couple of feet away from us, she leaned against the kitchen island. Her eyes glittered with unfiltered amusement. “I like it here, actually.”
She smiled mischievously at Christian. “I was hoping to knee you in the balls, but it seems like you’re in more pain than I thought.”
Turning my head to look at Christian, he cleared his throat with a blush. Shifting uncomfortably.
“What do you mean?” I looked back at Umaima who was smirking.
“Oh, just you know?”
No, I did not know.
“When a man is physically attracted?—”
“ I wanted to apologise for the other day.” He took a step forward with his interruption while extending Yunus over to me. “I was…” Our hands briefly brushed with the slightest touch of skin, igniting something akin to a newly hatched fire-breathing dragon. “Being a dick to you, I’m sorry.”
“That’s one way to get out of confrontation,” Umaima snickered. “I accept your apology.”
The words barely registered because our eyes were locked together. Christian’s searched a way into mine, mine hoped to jump out of its socket and roll into a black hole.
Out of control and out of breath, I looked away and shuffled Yunus higher on my hip, feeling the toddler’s body heat up before handing him to Umaima. “I think he caught whatever you had.”
“Oh shoot,” Umaima nervously checked her nephew with a kiss on his forehead. “Dammit. Let me go put him to bed, don’t wait for me.”
With her and Yunus gone, and my back turned to Christian, everything became more tangible and... clear . He was here. In my house. Just two feet away from me.
Smelling like all the dreams I pushed into the trash.
“Thank you for making sure he didn’t throw up on me,” I whispered quietly.
“I couldn’t have my fiancé showing up with baby vomit all over her, now, could I?” Tension and something hard coated his tongue.
My heart dropped. How stupid of me to think otherwise? A five million, Alida Soani original was no joke.
“Are you ready for tonight, Adelaide?”
My name on his tongue could turn religious prayers into jokes.
Get a hold of yourself, Addie. But did he have to say my name like that?
It took me years to get over him and I wasn’t entirely sure I had. For me, none of this was okay. Seeing him was biting an old wound and feeding off the pain.
How could he stand right behind me and feel unaffected while my heart was throwing itself against my chest over and over again—shattering—then putting itself back together only to repeat itself?
“If you mean by seducing Harry at our engagement, then yes.” I snapped back, cold, and annoyed.
A step closer. “You read through my instructions?”
“Ten times.”
Another step. “Even the fine print?”
“A thousand times,” my breaths came out in shallow pants like I’d been running a marathon.
He stood right behind me, his presence breathing life into mine without needing to do a thing .
“You smell really good.” He said, absentmindedly.
Blinking stupidly, “What?” I asked.
“What?” he broke away.
“You said something.”
“You misheard.”
Here I thought I was delusional. I rolled my eyes.
“Did you just roll your eyes?”
“No?” I smothered a smile.
His hands curled around my neck. Heat travelled down my forearms, up my neck, and to my head where all thought mumble jumbled together into complete and utter nonsense. For someone who appeared cold, he was extremely warm. “Don’t do it again.”
“Or what?” My breath hitched.
He chuckled in my ear, nipping at the skin. His tongue smoothed over the prick, moving in suggestive swirls. My hands found him before I could think—burning together—no use of coals or wood, when our fire could burn the forest down.
An image came to mind.
Him bending me over from the waist, pulling this dress up and taking my panties off. He’d stuff me with the drenched material, silencing me with unabashed arousal, and I’d stay there, wet, and needy as he punished me with his hands or his belt.
Afraid that he’d be able to read the thoughts in my head from the fevered heat, I dropped my hand. If I turned around to look at him, I ‘d grab him by the back of his neck and kiss him with an intensity I hadn’t felt in a long time. I was no virgin, I was no prude, but Christian was making me feel like a horny teenager who just hit puberty.
I want to take my panties off and make him look at the depravity he does to me.
As I tried to put more space between us, he pulled me back with a sharp bite to my neck.
Before I could implode on him, Umaima walked back into the room. Her eyes glanced between both of us with an amused yet concerned glance. Christian swiftly took a step back, dropping the hand around my neck, muttering a quiet reminder that he had vomit on his clothes, and he had to go clean up, and walked into the direction Umaima pointed for him.
Bewildered and confused, I stood there with my arms wrapped around my midsection and stared into space.
I was hot and bothered for my ex-boyfriend and the man who was soon to be my husband.
But I couldn’t jump his bones.
Because that would so complicate things.
And I couldn’t have things complicated because then it would make everything else complicated.
Complication is so… complicated .
My chest heaved with the idea of sex with Christian.
Maybe once wouldn’t complicate things that much.
Right?
No, Adelaide. You can’t do that. First, he’ll take your body, then your mind, lastly your heart. Remember last time. Don’t forget it. Don’t touch him. Don’t want him. Keep yourself contained, because if you give this man any bit of you, there’s doubt he’d ruin you.
I didn’t like being rational, but it was the only smart choice.
So, afterwards I did what I do best.
I moped.