24. Capri
C apri~
Desperately needing some time to get my head on straight, instead of waiting for Ares at his place or mine, I booked a cabin up north, despite the snow warning.
I needed to get away, and it’d been nothing to rent a four-wheel jeep for the trip.
I might not be able to survive out in the wilderness on my own, but I knew how to drive through stormy weather if I had to, and I definitely had to.
Ares was driving me insane.
Never in my life had I ever been so unprofessional as to tell someone to go to hell in an email, and the fact that I’d been driven to such...such madness was proof enough that I needed some peace and quiet to determine what to do next.
Tori had also been no help, though she had tried.
However, at the end of it all, I had only two choices, and those were to either divorce him or not.
The only problem was that I believed Ares.
If I didn’t file a dismissal for divorce, I could see him dragging me through court for the rest of my life.
If that weren’t enough, there was the fact that I still had feelings for him underneath all my anger.
No matter how much I wanted to, I couldn’t forget the past two weeks, and even though I knew that it was the great sex that was clouding my judgement, that still didn’t erase the feelings that were there.
“You really should have let me go with you,” Tori said as her voice rang throughout the car. “Even if it wasn’t snowing, you could still use a little support.”
While Tori and I had met up earlier, I’d wanted to get out of town fast enough that I had cut our girl time short. Besides, we hadn’t been getting anywhere, what with my emotions all over the place and her calm logic not making me feel any better.
“I’ll be fine,” I reassured her. “The snow isn’t coming down that bad right now.”
“The weather says that it’s supposed to come down hard after nine tonight,” she said in her mother voice. “What if you get snowed in?”
“Even better,” I laughed. “It’ll give me the perfect excuse to avoid my husband and marriage through the weekend.”
“Well, they do say that there’s always a silver lining to any situation,” she chuckled.
“I really think it’ll be good for me,” I told her. “I need...I just need to disengage from life for a second. I’m still reeling from learning just how...I don’t know. I just...I just never imagined that my father would ever do something so...cold and callous. I mean, he literally sold me, Tori.”
“That’s the problem with ambitious men,” she sighed. “In his mind, he probably really believed that he was saving Martha Holdings by not telling you the truth.”
“Even if that is the case, when did Martha Holdings become more important to him than his own daughter?” I countered. “When did it become okay to trade the rest of my life for the livelihoods of everyone else?”
“Okay, don’t hate me,” she said, and it was really a warning when it came to Tori. “But maybe the answer to that is when you decided that Martha Holdings was more important than anything else.”
I hated it when she had a point.
“By your own admission, you’ve spent your entire life putting Martha Holdings first, so why wouldn’t your father believe that you’d be willing to do anything to save it?
” she posed before she let out a quiet sigh.
“It’s just something to consider before you throw the baby out with the bathwater on your father. ”
“You sure do know how to ruin a pity party with your logical thinking,” I grumbled, though she still had a knack for bringing a smile to my face.
“I try,” she quipped.
“Okay, enough of endangering other motorists,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. “I need to get back to concentrating on the road.”
“That’s just a disturbing statement,” she chuckled.
“All the more reason to start paying attention,” I chuckled back.
“Text me when you get there,” she ordered. “I want to know that you made it safe.”
“Of course,” I easily agreed. “Love you.”
“I love you, too.”
We hung up, and I still had about an hour’s drive, which was a good thing now that she’d given me more to think about. While I still didn’t agree with what my father had done, maybe it wasn’t as black and white as I was making it out to be.
That was one of the squares that stitched up my character flaws.
So badly, I wanted people to always do the right thing, and that made me unbearable at times.
I spent a lot of time on my high horse, forgetting that people weren’t perfect, including myself.
I needed to work on my tolerance for people’s differences before I turned into a really horrible person.
Though Ares could benefit from the art of tact, he hadn’t been lying when he’d given that little recount of our wedding.
He’d been very clear about his expectations, and I was the one that hadn’t taken him seriously.
I was the one that had treated our vows as a business decision more than an actual life choice.
Ares had told me that he’d only be married once, and I hadn’t listened.
Instead, I had filed for divorce as if his words in that church hadn’t mattered.
God, I was an idiot.
Just then, a weather alert signaled over my phone, and it warned of a possible record snowfall, possibly turning into a blizzard, which was wild as hell. We were usually finished with severe weather by now, but it was still a hundred degrees in October some days, so that just showed what I knew.
I leaned forward, scanning the sky, wondering if my stubbornness was finally going to kick me in the ass. While I really did feel that some peace and quiet was warranted, I could have had some peace and quiet in any of the hotels that littered Portal Lands.
That was the funny thing about emotions; they really did make a situation more difficult than it needed to be. There was a reason for the saying that cooler heads prevailed, but since I wasn’t a goddamn robot, here we were.
It wasn’t half an hour later that my phone rang again, and as I glanced at the screen, I saw Ares’ name flashing mockingly at me.
Now, while I’d been teasing Tori earlier about paying attention to the road, she’d been on speaker during our conversation, me doing my best to follow the hands-free rules of the road.
Unlike most of the world’s population, I refused to sync my phone to rentals, one of the very few things that I was paranoid about.
At any rate, even if I’d wanted to speak with Ares, an argument on the phone while driving through the snow wasn’t the thing to do, and there was little doubt in my mind that it’d be an argument.
I had disobeyed Ares’ order to be waiting at home for him, so why else would he be calling if not to argue with me about my disobedience?
Besides, I was almost at the cabin, so Ares could wait.
When I finally pulled up to the gate, it was already opened, saving me from having to get out to open it, which was something that I really appreciated now that I was in snow-covered country.
While I wouldn’t call myself a diva, I definitely didn’t rough it often.
I’d grown up rich, so our vacations had included a service staff and mimosas in the morning.
Nonetheless, I drove the jeep up the rugged driveway until the cabin came in sight, and what a sight it was.
Though it’d been described as ‘quaint’, it was far from quaint.
It was two-stories with a wrap-around porch, and stacks of wood were piled neatly on the left side of that porch.
The place looked beautiful, and I bet it looked even more picturesque during summer, though I preferred winter because mosquitos just weren’t the business.
After parking right in front, I tossed my phone in my purse, then reached around to grab my bag from the back.
Since I wasn’t planning on staying too long, I hadn’t packed much, just enough to get me through a couple of days.
In all honesty, I probably wasn’t going to get out of my pajamas once I got into them, which was exactly what I needed.
I’d also been conscious enough to bring two bottles of wine, feeling like I was going to need both of them to get me through the weekend.
With my stuff in hand, I got out of the jeep, locked it up, then headed to the front door.
According to the travel agency, a spare key was hidden inside the fake racoon near the steps.
The agent was also clear about how they moved the key after each rental, and so I didn’t have to be concerned about security, which had been a very good selling point.
Once I was inside, the place really was worth the rental price, and if the owners were ever going to sell, I wouldn’t mind throwing my hat in the ring.
The place really was gorgeous, and while it did have a certain rustic look to it, it was far from an outhouse in the Arkansas hills.
I couldn’t imagine that whoever owned this place was missing most of their teeth.
Tossing my stuff on the couch, I took my time looking around, avoiding my phone that had a crapload of texts messages and voicemails. While the argument was unavoidable, I preferred to be comfortable for it, preferably with a glass of wine in my hand.
Oh, who was I kidding?
I needed an entire bottle.