Chapter 36
Selena
When Ben was six, he dived too deep into the lake at the back of the house and nearly drowned, except that Xavier, who was only seven, dived in after him and saved his life.
We all know this. It’s the stuff of urban legend in our social circle. Ben’s brush with death was brandished like a weapon throughout our childhoods. Don’t go near the lake. Remember what happened to Ben?
We all remembered.
What I was not aware of, however, until last night at supper, was that my hedonistic, seemingly straightforward husband has long harboured this immense sense of guilt over and gratitude for Xavier’s having risked his life for him.
Apparently, Ben has always felt a profound sense of obligation to his brother, a knowledge that, without the incredible bravery of little seven-year-old Xav that day, he wouldn’t be here at all.
And he brought this up when he told Xav he intended to propose to me. This much I dragged out of them both last night.
Now, I’m extrapolating here, but it doesn’t seem a huge stretch to imagine that Ben saw his brother all miserable and in love and decided it was time to step up—not for me, but to relieve Xav of, well, me.
Think about it: Ben’s always done whatever the fuck he likes; Xav’s always been the dutiful son, the firstborn, doing whatever his parents tell him to do, always knowing that he’d assume the title and, with it, a wife he didn’t love.
Hear me out. Xav meets Ivy and, for the first time ever, wants something he’s not supposed to want.
What’s more, he acts on it, which is a total shocker to anyone who knows Xav, and then he feels consumed with guilt for throwing me over (I can accept this intellectually while also still being beyond furious with him).
Enter Ben, who’s been larking about his entire, charmed life, who wouldn’t even be here if it wasn’t for Xav…
And he decides to step up, assume the mantle:
The title their father stripped Xav of.
The unwanted fiancée.
The whole fucking shebang.
And here we are.
If I felt isolated before, knowing that Ben couldn’t possibly comprehend why I was letting the press furore affect me quite so deeply, knowing he could never truly appreciate the level of gnarled scar tissue knitting itself together in the recesses of my heart, then the loneliness I feel in light of this revelation is so stark it makes it hard to take a full breath.
I have no one to turn to. No one. My friends are too bitchy and are probably sharing every single, fresh-off-the-press article about me with each other, positively orgasmic with schadenfreude.
Flora is a sweetheart, but she’s a de Vere.
Ivy may have had a front-row seat to Lake-gate, but she could never understand the burden of expectations that come with my position in life.
And my husband is officially the person whose pity is the most heartrending, because it comes from a place of guilt and obligation even while guilt and obligation are the very things that drove him to marry me, and there is no way on earth that I will allow myself to be any more of a burden to him than I have already been.
I’ve been a pawn my whole bloody life—as has Xav, I suppose—and the mortification of having unknowingly been a pawn in Ben’s eminently well-meaning but stupendously fucked-up attempt to balance a ledger that, in his head, has been open since he was six years old is total.
I don’t honestly know which is worse: that Ben was probably the only person who believed that ledger existed—because I doubt for a second that Xav would ever have considered it that way—or that he used me as collateral to balance it.
Not that this kind of speculation changes where we stand today.
My husband married me to repay a perceived debt of his.
He married me impulsively and with zero due diligence, and every positive aspect of our marriage has been the result of his making the best of a situation he’d got himself stuck in.
That day he came over to propose, I was the one who raised concerns, and Ben was the one who knocked them down, who reframed recklessness as fun spontaneity. Let’s get married! It’ll be a blast!
He’s alluded many times to our marriage as some kind of grand adventure.
He’s gamified it, basically, the way he gamifies most things in life, because playing a game is far more palatable than existing with the uncomfortable truth: that he’s hitched his wagon for all eternity to a woman he doesn’t actually love.
Sure, the physical side has been fine. More than fine, obviously—it’s wonderful.
But he never denied that. He told me when he proposed that he’d always wanted me, and I distinctly remember retorting that wanting someone was very different from wanting to marry them.
And it’s about time I admit something else to myself—something important—which is that Ben never actually wanted me.
He wanted the version of myself I put out in the world: hot, accomplished, beautifully dressed.
He wanted the trophy version of me, not the real me.
He’s said as much, many times. Ben got his kicks from eyeing me up across crowded rooms and ogling the highly polished forbidden fruit.
So when we married, then of course there was going to be an even bigger, albeit fleeting, kick.
I was the ultimate conquest, and history has shown us how much men adore a conquest.
And, for a few months, things ran surprisingly smoothly between us.
I was still the born-and-bred trophy he’d been eyeing up for all those years; I was still polished and accomplished, and better: I was now sexually available to him.
Up until recently, the transaction we entered into has made sense to him.
The benefits have justified the eye-watering sacrifice he made.
Up until recently.
Because now all those benefits have fallen away.
I’m a national laughingstock; I look like shit; I’m barely functioning; I have no social capital left; the whole persona I’ve cultivated so carefully for so long has totally imploded.
And, worst of all, I’m not even capable of putting out at the moment.
We haven’t had sex since the Reddit article came out, and Ben hasn’t even tried.
He’s been lovely; don’t get me wrong. We’re lying in bed, and he holds me tightly in his arms as he whispers in my ear, as he does every night, that it will all be okay, that it will all blow over.
As sweet as his words are, they’re just as pointless.
Because reputational damage like this doesn’t unwind itself, and scandals like this are never forgotten.
They are dredged up, over and over again.
‘How are you doing, sweetheart?’ he asks when I don’t respond.
‘I’m fine.’ I try my hardest to sound neutral and not passive-aggressive.
‘You’re not fine, though. Talk to me, please.’
I can’t talk to him, obviously, because my temples and cheekbones are aching enough as it is with the exhausting weight of trapped emotion and unshed tears.
If I speak, the tears will come, and all the terrible thoughts I’ve been having will emerge in a great big ugly tumble, and I can’t put that burden onto the beautiful man I’ve trapped in this marriage with me.
‘I spoke to the PR team again today,’ he tries. ‘They reckon another week and the news cycle will have moved on. Some footballer’s been caught shagging his wife’s best mate, apparently, so with any luck that’ll take the heat off.’
‘That sounds encouraging,’ I say faintly.
I’ve found that vague breadcrumbs of positivity are more likely to placate him, even if his efforts are useless.
He’s trying his best, bless him, because Ben is an eternal optimist possessed of a breezy confidence that everything will blow over.
What he doesn’t seem to realise is that this isn’t about the news cycle; not anymore.
That I’m an empty, worthless shell with nothing of value to offer my husband is something no amount of horny, cheating footballers can rectify.
‘What can I do,’ he murmurs against my hair, ‘to make you feel better?’
I can barely get the words out. ‘Just hold me.’
With a sigh, he tightens his arms around me, and I nestle my face against the t-shirt he’s taken to wearing again in bed: his own official closed for business sign.
The fact that my own husband, my only port in this storm, hasn’t laid a finger on me since the story broke tells me that all he ever wanted, all the poor guy ever even knew of me, was the hot girl across the room.
He never saw the real me, never knew that girl who collapsed on the floor, a duvet stuffed into her mouth when Xav dumped her.
And it’s not his fault, because I never let him.
I concealed her beneath layer upon layer of constructs.
So he threw himself on his sword for his brother, and he didn’t even get a proper payday out of the entire thing.
I studied business at uni and I’ve run a major division of a multi-billion-pound fashion brand for years. I know a thing or two about finance, and let me tell you this:
Acquisitions are always risky. However much due diligence you do (and let me remind you that Ben did none), there’s always the risk that you get the keys to your new empire and discover that the whole damn thing is rotten to the core behind the tarted-up facade.
All that expense, all that effort—and nothing to show for it.
I can only assume that the full horror of exactly this is dawning like a frigid mist on my kind, boyishly na?ve husband, but worse: because the trophy wife he thought he’d landed turns out not only to not be an asset but to be an enormous fucking liability whose reputation is haemorrhaging value and tarnishing the reputation of the entire de Vere family, too.
He’s done this deal; he’s balanced his ledger with Xav.
Xav got to be with Ivy, and they’re blissfully happy, and the twins will grow up loved and financially secure.
But on the other side of the transaction, which should have been a dead cert for Ben at least on the level of bagging himself a good little duchess, there’s nothing but an empty balance sheet.
All the assets he thought I had: gone. Just a big black hole.
I bet he’s shitting himself. He must be.
He’s been so attentive, so busy looking after me and my epic meltdown and too kind to bring up the fact that he didn’t sign up for this.
That’s the thing: he’s so fucking kind, and it kills me.
It kills me that he’s pitying me and also feeling horrified for himself and thinking Holy hell, how the fuck do I extricate myself from this shitshow?
I can’t bear it; I can’t bear that he’s seeing me so vulnerable and dysfunctional and downright useless.
I can’t bear being this pitiful creature to him, this burden, at a time when he must be so plagued by disappointment himself.
The last time I felt even remotely like this was when Xav dumped me, and that was nothing compared to now—
Because I wasn’t in love with Xav.
I’m in love with Ben. As he drifts off to sleep beside me, I know that more clearly than I know almost anything else to be true.
I’ve fallen so fast and so hard and so fucking recklessly, because that’s how he’s made me feel these past few months: reckless, and empowered, and adored.
I’ve fallen for his positivity and his passion and his awe-inspiring life force.
His vitality has made me feel alive. It’s made me feel, for the first time, as if it’s safe to let go.
I did let go, and look what happened.
But let me say this. I thought what Xav did to me would break me. I’ll never forget that twenty-four hours of abject terror and powerlessness. I’ll never forget how it made me feel to be cast aside like that. He made a unilateral decision about our future, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I may be a pathetic, hollowed-out shell of myself right now, but there’s one thing I do have.
I have the agency to take control of the situation.
I have the ability to pre-empt any move Ben may make—or, far worse, any move he may want to make that his altruism is preventing him from making. The only thing worse than him running for the hills would be his wanting to run for the hills and staying with me out of pity and duty and breeding.
These fucking dutiful de Vere brothers. They’ll be the death of me.
All this is to say that I know what I need to do. I’ve known for a few days now, and the sweet way that he’s holding me, that he continues to be here for me so devotedly in his sleep, fortifies me even as it crucifies me.
What I need to do is—deep breath, Selena—the following:
I need to resign before I get myself fired. I need to call the shots. I need to exercise the only agency I have and walk away while I still have the strength to gather my tattered shreds of dignity around me.
The impossible part of it all is this:
I don’t know how the hell I’ll exist if I give this man up.
And I can’t live with myself if I don’t.