32. Adelaide
THIRTY-TWO
ADELAIDE
The moment we got inside the venue, I let go of Christian’s hand and my anxiety came rushing back.
I’d been to a fair share of events my whole life, but it rarely got better. The music, the noise, and the people.
Everyone looked at me—or at least that’s what it felt like. Their muttering whispers, their chuckles, and the way they’d watch me while I grabbed a drink. It ate me out from the inside, sticking eaten parts of different organs to create a new one that didn’t know how to function.
Social parties turned people like me into their entertainment for the night. The public may have stopped talking about my scandal, but the elitists didn’t forget.
They judged. They wondered. They destroyed.
Which is why while Christian spoke with other guests, I stayed in a dark corner near an exit.
I hated how having Christian near made all the sticky thoughts disappear.
My tongue fizzled with the taste of champagne.
My self-control was on the precipice of losing its mind and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do about it.
He just looked so sad .
Whenever I came down into the kitchen, he looked at me with these puppy eyes and his hair would be messy and all I wanted was to be as near as possible to him.
But I couldn’t.
After what he said, it would be a shame for me to give into him like that ever again.
Love? Absolutely foolish.
The only love I felt for Christian was hate.
Maybe not hate, but a feeling close to it.
Okay well maybe not that either, but I didn’t like him at the moment.
“Adelaide Mikael?”
My body connected with the voice and turned.
It was her .
The girl Christian talked to at the engagement.
The one with long brunette hair and stunning features.
She was here.
“I’m Hana,” she extended her hand with a smile. “I’ve been looking forward to meeting you.”
Swallowing the knot in my throat, I shook her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“You must be really special to Christian.” There was nothing in the kind way she spoke to me that was suspicious. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard him talk about a girl as much as he talks about you.”
I hate that he talks about me to her.
“How do you know Christian?” I asked instead.
There was no way a beautiful woman like Hana and a handsome man like Christian didn’t feel something towards one another.
Her laugh sounded genuine and breathless. Completely surreal.
“We used to live in the same apartment complex.”
I visibly deflated.
“Nothing happened between us.” She added with haste. “He’s a good friend, one who helped me with my career.”
“But he talks about me to you?” That didn’t make sense.
“He talked about you with everyone in the crochet club.”
My body stilled, replacing the indignation with catastrophic laughter. “Did you just…” I spoke in between sudden giggles. “ Crochet club ?”
“Is that really so funny?” Her eyes twinkled under the lights. “Christian won best crocheter of the club every month since he joined.”
My laughter died down. “When did he join the club?”
“A couple of years back, not exactly sure when.”
“And he’s always talked about me?”
She looked confused as to why I was asking. “It was hard getting him to change the subject.”
That didn’t make any sense. He pushed me away, told me he didn’t want to be with me, only to tell people about me? Christian didn’t like, nonetheless love me. He downright hated me. You could clearly see it in the way he looked when he waited outside of my door.
“Ms. Mikael.”
Laughter faded away quickly with the grubby hand on my arm.
Todd Kerrigan stood with his belly protruding with Harry smiling behind him.
Eyes automatically darted around the room for Christian, only to find his back facing me.
Hana bid her goodbye and left me alone with the men.
“It’s taken us a while to get back to you about your celebratory party.” Todd rubbed a finger under his nose. “We’ve been planning the perfect surprise for you.”
Even with the smile, I didn’t like the sound of that.
“Would the first week of September work for you?” Harry took a sip of his drink, eyes shining in a malevolent way.
“It works,” I said with a nod. “I appreciate it.”
“Nonsense,” Todd waved it off. “You deserve our appreciation, especially after the scandal. It’s terrible what the girls have said about you.”
When we talked with Rowlen, it was essentially speculated that there were more girls than Ayeza. Todd’s slip up proved it.
“ Ayeza made a mistake about you,” Harry clarified. “You’re one of us. You wouldn’t do something like that to her and we know it.”
Eda taught me better than to be like them.
“Sorry to interrupt you gentlemen, but I saw this beautiful woman from across the room and needed to know her name.”
Todd was moved by a single push of a finger.
The man who stood in front of me was… wow .
Tall. Leather jacket—despite the dress code clearly stating formal attire only. Flirty, monolid eyes.
He was a bad boy through and through.
Harry snarled but dragged himself and Todd away.
Releasing a breath, I smiled at the handsome stranger. “Thank you for that.”
“They seemed nice,” he joked. “If nice was bald, then they’re real nice.”
He was funny.
I liked him.
“I’m Adelaide Mik— Hayes .”
It was interesting how he knowingly smirked. “I know, I’m Ocean.”
“Ocean? Like the?—”
“Water?” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, all while keeping his eyes on me.
“Your parents must have loved the ocean.”
“Technically my Korean name is O-Shin,” he pursed his lips. “My parents didn’t want to name me John.”
“Yeah,” I smiled. “You definitely don’t look like a John.”
“I’m glad.” His eyes squinted when he smiled, hiding behind his skin. Two dimples appeared below them. That’s the first time I'd seen dimples like that.
“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please?” An older woman who looked to be in her late fifties stood on the stage, her voice echoed through the speaker.
People were here for two reasons. One, they actually cared about today's event or two, they were here to party and gossip.
“In honour of today’s fundraiser, Moonshines CEO Christian Hayes—SVS’s highest donator, will share a couple of words with us today.”
My eyes widened, pinching the edges of my sockets. Since when was he a guest speaker?
That’s what you get for ignoring him.
Ocean leaned down to whisper, “I’m not into men, but if I was, I’d smash your husband.”
Husband.
Mine.
Christian walked across the stage with natural confidence. His black suit hugged his body in all the right places, and he stood tall and dominant— commanding the room’s attention.
It was hard being mad at him and it was harder ignoring the irritating digging in my chest.
Umaima and Hasan told me the version I was growing into was a version they liked and admired to be. The encouragement, the emotional change flourishing through me felt amazing.
In some ways, I felt like a teenager again, sitting on that rooftop with Christian, making bold moves like kissing him, and crying my heart out even when people were watching.
It was in that moment, with Christian’s eyes pausing on mine, that I realised the voices in my head reappeared whenever Christian wasn’t around.
From the days in school to the years after we broke up.
Maybe anxiety tried to fill up the void he left me with and disappeared in the moments he returned because it realised, I’d no longer be lonely.
There were people in your life that made those voices disappear, even if momentarily. But when they were around, your body relaxed into the silence and relied on their energy to keep you upright.
Christian was my wall and no matter what, no matter when, no matter how , he never refused the weight of my body against him.
“I know you’re gawking at your man right now,” Ocean teased his way into my daze. “But I have to say he picked a beautiful woman as his wife.”
With a questioning tilt to my head, I asked. “Are you flirting with me right after saying you’d smash my husband?”
He laughed. “Is it so wrong to admire a beautiful man and woman?”
“Maybe not,” I responded with a giggle of my own. “But you have to agree it’s kind of funny.”
“Excuse me,” the same older lady from the stage walked up to us. “Could you please tone it down?”
The people around us were glaring and unabashedly judging our ill-mannered-ness.
Ocean and I tucked our lips into our mouths like two little kids getting lectured for breaking their mother’s favourite flowerpot.
When I turned my attention back to the stage, Christian stared me dead in the eye. We were far away from each other, but the fire crackling beneath his hazel gaze didn’t fly over my head.
My heart ricocheted to another dimension just as the audience applauded and Christian walked down the stage. Hands clenched at his sides and determination written between the single quotations of his brows.
What’s he doing?
An insensitive, over-exaggerated slippery ache catapulted from his strides. My body wouldn’t budge from its place—completely captivated by my husband.
His hands, his veins, his face, his body, him . In the middle of the night, when my lower abdomen smothered with heat, I had no choice but to touch myself to the thought of him. His hand guiding mine with slowed and controlled movements. My body rocking back and forth on his.
A feeling that was meant for goddesses, yet he bestowed it upon an insignificant being as myself and all I could do was take.
He stole my hippocampus and replaced it with images of himself. Now all my brain did was pursue him in my sleep and waking state.
With a loss of connection, I squashed the overwhelming feelings and focused on whatever Ocean said. Something about paintings and models. But I could feel him getting closer and closer and I wanted to meet him in the middle.
Sparkling with indecency to drag him to the spot I needed him the most, a forced laugh broke from my lips at nothing particularly funny.
A warm hand curved around the back of my throat, the other cupping my cheek—we looked into each other’s eyes.
Questions ran through mine, no-shits given ran through his.
Christian didn’t wait to speak and didn’t wait for me to catch up.
He leaned down and kissed me. Our lips ran into each other at the speed of a thousand years met in a millisecond.
There was nothing romantic or soft about this kiss. It was rough, completely tragic in its revenge. He poured his anger from the past month into me, and I never wanted to be hurt by him as much as I did now.
Dragging a finger up his jacket to the span of his neck, where I wrapped my own hand around his neck and gave into his onslaught.
His fingers pressed into the sensitive part between my neck and ear. My lips parted into the kiss. Christian slid his tongue inside, meeting mine in an electrifying stroke.
He tasted like my favourite memory, and I wanted to remind myself of it every day for the rest of my life. He was sweet and caramelized with me, it hurled a heat wave to my core. But all I could was hold onto him like the unsaid prayers whining on the skin of my lips.
My hands found the sleeves of his jacket and held on for dear life as he took and took and took.
The hand on my cheek roamed down to my waist and with a rough pull, brought me closer to him.
A tickling smile met my desperation, and it irked me but not enough to force me to stop, to let go, to push him far away from me.
Even opposite sides of a magnet couldn’t keep us apart.
“You guys look like you’re about to get naked right now and it’s not really the kind of entertainment I prefer.”
But the interrupting voice did.
I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kill someone as much as I wanted to kill Ocean.
Hands trembled as I loosened my hold on his sleeve. Christian’s breath fluttered against my own.
Christian’s chest collapsed with every sharp intake of breath.
Lips red and tainted with the colour of mine.
He stared at me like I was the devil carving his name onto hell’s gates.
Bringing his fingers up to his lips, rubbing them in a callous way of insinuating what he’d do to me without our clothes.
“Ocean, this is—” My train of thought vanished into thin air. My ovaries whined at the sight of Christian looking down at his lipstick-stained finger with a sadistic smirk.
In complete shock and utter stillness, I watched him turn to Ocean and extend that same, red-stained hand. “Christian Hayes, her husband .”
My body deflated the same way a hot air balloon did the moment it settled down at the end of the night. Just like the activity itself, Christian’s kiss was entertainment—a show of possessiveness and misogyny.
He used me to show the room I was his possession and his to control. There were tabloids of us wondering why we hadn’t gone for a honeymoon, why we were back to work like we hadn’t gotten married, and this was it.
In front of the higher society, Christian forced a performance of love onto me, and I took it like the idiot I was.
He truly wasn’t any better than Harry and the other board members.
Kissing me was a sign of how putty I was in his arms. That with him behind me, no scandal would harm or tarnish his name.
Whistles coming from different areas in the room snapped me out of my thoughts and I started moving without missing a beat.
“Excuse me,” the world came rushing back in a wave of slumbering haze. People morphed back into their separate selves instead of the blurring collage they collapsed into when Christian kissed me.
They stared, they whispered, some smiled.
I didn’t have the time to analyse their reactions when my own body tumbled over heated waves of anger and anguish.
He kissed me for them, not for himself.
I’d been so good, staying away from Christian and keeping my mouth shut. It was hard doing all of that when all I wanted was to be in his arms.
The seven years that separated us hadn’t mattered when we were together in the present.
Love didn’t mean you couldn't be angry or hurt, and his words killed me. I fell to my knees, cried until my tear ducts ran dry, and forced myself to jam the pieces of my cracked chest together.
My legs moved until I was out into a long hallway.
“Adelaide,” his voice quickly caught up behind me. I didn’t stop. Didn’t turn back. Continued walking with no destination but to get away from him as soon as I could.
There, clearing into vision, appeared an exit door at the very end of the hallway. I quickened my pace despite hearing Christian call out my name again.
“Adelaide, stop.”
He didn’t sound too happy.
Well, guess what? That made the two of us.
My palm curved around the door handle when I was dragged by his strong yet slackened hold on my upper arm.
“Let go of me,” I spoke through gritted teeth. Christian whipped me around to face him, tightening his grip. “If you don’t let me, go, I’ll scream.”
His cheek was pressed against mine, breathing so heavily that I had to pause to let him take the rest of my air.
Quiet and deadly, “Shut up.”
My jaw dropped .
How dare he speak to me like that?
Christian dragged me into an empty room.
Quickly taking in the ballroom style hall, I was shoved against the closed door.
Hands on either side of my head, Christian stared downlike a bull ready to attack.
Instead of being the girl who cowered, I copied his expression with a cocked brow. “What the hell is?—”
He pushed his lower body against mine to silence me.
It definitely worked.
“If I’d known,” he pressed. “That it would’ve taken a single kiss to hear your voice again, I would’ve done it sooner.”
“You just told me to shut up, Christian.” My morose chuckle received no reaction from him. “Which one is it, you want to hear my voice, or do you want me to shut up?”
His arousal pressed firmly against me. “Right now, I just want to feel those pretty little lips wrapped around my cock.”
Mouth parted.
I was trapped.
This feeling of intimacy, of him being so near me when for the past month I’d been alone. His silence was a threatened vile of reminders that no matter what I did, deep down he hated me for a reason I didn’t know. When we broke up, it was because he wanted to experiment—to be with other women. I’d been the one woman to remind him how much wanted to explore to find the one .
Even if he was looking at me like I was the only person he could see.
However, the body didn’t lie.
“It’s been fucking torture, Adelaide.” Christian buried his face into my neck, his nose moving across the length of it—inhibiting and destroying all my senses and devotion to standing upright. “When you walk out of a room and barely glance in my direction, I can’t think. It’s like I need you to look at me, to mouth a single letter so I can piece an imaginary phrase in my head.” He pressed a kiss to my jaw. “Seeing you in this dress has been torture. It clings to your ass and your tits, and I’m stuck between pulling it down and sucking your tits or pulling it up and eating your pussy.”
He looked at me for permission and I didn’t have time to bask in the betrayal of my own nod when I gasped.
Christian squeezed my breasts.
Pushing them together, he was completely oblivious to the way the centre of me dripped with slick arousal.
“The audacity,” I spat while panting. “You think you can just waltz back into my life after a month and ruin it?”
Christian looked up. It was comical really, the way he kept his hands on my breasts but stared at me with fire burning in his eyes.
Great , he was pissed but I was furious.
Whatever the reason, he had no right to manhandle me.
“You are my wife, Adelaide.” He swiped a finger over my nipple with swift sharpness. I arched at the sudden shock. The built-in bra did nothing to protect me.
So much for trying to punish him.
“I am…” I bit my lip and tried to stop the moan circling in my mouth. “Your wife in name only.”
“You’d like that wouldn’t you,” he wasn’t listening to what I was saying. His eyes scoured my body with a hungry gaze. Christian had one thing on his mind, and I hated admitting that it was the same thought in mine. “You’d like hearing your name from my mouth while you sucked my cock.”
“You have an obsession with your cock, Christian.”
“No, I have an obsession with seeing you on my cock.”
I squeezed my thighs together. “That’ll never happen.”
I wasn’t opposed to the idea. At all. But my dignity was on the line.
He brought his mouth closer to my lips. His tongue snuck out and licked the line of my bottom one.
Holy.
“Because we’re friends?” He taunted my skin with his feather-light, slithering touch.
“You lost the privilege of calling me your friend.”
I gasped when his teeth nipped at my bottom lip. “Wouldn’t consider it a loss when I gained the privilege of calling you my wife.”
He let go, smoothing out the sting with his tongue. Only to repeat the process again—edging me, making me squirm in his hold.
Christian’s touch found the slit in my dress. “These legs,” He squeezed my thigh. “I’ve been dreaming about them. Using them, holding them, fucking the sweet spot in between them.”
His urgent breaths pushed my head backward.
Christian held tight with his teeth pulling at my skin.
I was slick with his unrestrained desire, stifling moans of pleasure begging to escape.
“You don’t even like me,” I kept my hands fisted to the sides.
I wouldn’t touch him. Touching would accept this. Touching him would allow room for broken hearts.
His hand snuck into the slit. Surely, he wouldn’t notice?—
All movement froze.
His hand on my breast and the one now near my ass.
Christian pulled back enough to look into my eyes.
Intense, fiery wrath consumed them.
His next words pitched low and rugged. “Where the fuck is your underwear?”
“Oops?” Indifference hung on my shoulder as I shrugged, but my heart pounded erratically, as if multiple open wounds were bleeding out. I was losing myself in Christian's icy gaze, though I felt anything but cold.
I got wetter if that were possible.
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “The fuck you mean oops ?”
Another careless shrug. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“You’re dripping down your fucking thigh.”
“Who said that’s because of you?”
His nostrils flared and hands tightened. “Take that back.”
“Or what?” I dared. “You’re harm— what are you doing?”
Christian flung the one half of the slit to the side and rubbed his hand up the inside of my thigh.
He didn’t feel harmless anymore.
His fingers hovered teasingly over my inner thighs, never touching but never pulling away either.
I pressed my lips together, as even the mere anticipation of his touch was devastatingly erotic.
Just as he got closer and closer to the spot, I ached most…
His touch paused near the pulsing point of my core and watched me. An indecipherable feeling flew through his face before he dropped it to my shoulder.
“When I saw you laughing with another man, it made me fucking angry.”
My lips parted in surprise.
I said nothing in fear of breaking whatever sudden confession this was.
“I spent the last month wondering how to speak to you and he did it so easily,” his thumb rubbed back and forth on my inner thigh.
Nails dug into the hard material of the door, while I remained still at his shocking words.
“You are the first and last thought when I wake up and before I go to bed.” The rubbing stopped. “My brain is plagued with the possibility of getting to know you again, that maybe the past seven years of space between us was nothing but a blip in time and here in this moment is where you and I have always meant to belong.”
He took a deep, broken breath. “But when I hear another man making you laugh, my existence starts suffocating me and I want to erase myself from your life to make sure you always laugh that way.”
I want you to make me laugh, Christian. The words scratched and fought on the tip of my tongue. Dying a quick death, leaving behind a bitter trail of fragmented letters.
Insides stammered, mumbled, and made fools of themselves at his words.
Dark eyes and even darker aura, Christian hacked my senses to respond solely to him.
My presence completely shattered at his words. It’s as if I was on my knees but instead of looking up, there he was.
Begging on his knees right in front of me.
We were not equals in this world, but the intensity of his gaze and the sudden shift in his feelings risked belief that—in his heart—I was more than an equal.
Language wasn’t meant to be universal. There are so many in the world and all are entirely unique. I excelled in English, German, French, Turkish, and somewhat Urdu.
But none of them prepared me for the difficulty of mastering the language of Christian.
Just when I’d think I understood a phrase, a simple dialogue fornicating from his lips—the meaning changed, and I stood barely comprehending it.
My head tilted to the right as Christian nuzzled his way up my neck, my cheek, my eyes, to the top where he simply breathed.
“In another world,” he whispered against my temple. I felt the world shuttering around us, my heart skipping feverishly fast with its hands wrapped around my neck. “I’d gently press my lips to yours and it would be real.” The sudden press of his lips against my skin awoke something tangible and inevitable inside of me.
“And maybe,” he continued. “It would be more than just… kissing.” My eyes involuntarily shut as the words danced in my mind.
In another world.
In another world.
In another world.
I was so fucking tired of Christian switching up on me.
It didn’t count as touching if I didn’t touch his skin, right?
I opened my eyes and dragged my palms up his jacket.
He moved a breadth away, looking down at me with a dark unexplainable look that made me want to slap and kiss him at the same time.
There was no waiting another second when the moment existed in the now.
He could push me away, kiss me in front of another man, and leave me. But I was done being the good one.
I was done being the respectful woman I’d been raised to be.
We only lived once in this world and these feelings were too astronomical for me to keep inside. Christian could live with his restraint, with this undeniable affection we had for each other—but I won’t.
A month of silence kept me thinking and too many thoughts destroyed my heart. This marriage wasn’t gonna last forever and I owed it to myself to drown in these emotions and pretend that maybe an eternity would pass before we broke up again.
Wishful thinking, I knew that.
But knowing is different from experiencing and sometimes what we know could change.
I had hope .
Sometimes we didn't get the closure we wanted, but we needed it to survive in a world filled with people who simply didn't care.
Allowing myself to succumb to Christian was my way of seeking the closure I never got from our breakup .
When I thought I had moved on, the wounds tore open and bled onto the ground. I tried to dry them with the weight of my burdens, but it only made a bigger mess.
Here I stood, in a pool of new and dried blood—standing in front of Christian who held the knife.
Just once.
I wanted to decide on my own.
Starting now.
“Maybe,” I spoke with a voice completely unrecognizable—smoky and veiled behind a fire of unfiltered desire. “This is the other world.”
Then I did what I’d wanted to do for a while.
I pressed my lips against his.