“The two males go head-to-head for the female’s pleasure. She gets turned on, and the winner gets to mate with her. The winner—” I show her the palm of one hand as I empty the contents of the envelope onto the table with the other. The pen Julian likes to provide with all his paperwork clatters onto the glass top, bringing out the silence around us. “—gets the pussy.”
About to open her mouth again, I silence her as I continue. “I’m not a rhino, Arabella. I won’t go head-to-head with some fucking cretin over what’s already mine. You married me. You’re my wife. Your pleasure already belongs to me. End of.” Picking up the pen, I flick to the first marker and sign on my line, following it with my initials. I do the same for the second and the last markers. Dropping the pen onto the document, I twist it to face her. “If you’re not happy with that…then there’s the door and they’re signed.”
Pulling the bow tie that’s still hanging around my neck, I turn my back on her and throw it into the fire. This goes against everything I believe. I didn’t marry her so I could go back on it. That’s not me.
Once I’m in, I’m in. But if she wants an out, she’s got it, otherwise this duplicitous shit ends now.
Chapter 18
Arabella
My pause overwhelms me. The silence. The heat of the room. The rustle of Christopher’s footfalls as he walks away from me towards one of the bedrooms. That envelope was lying there all night, in plain sight. I have no idea how many times I laid my sights on it, but never once did I think or imagine that it would be anything like the papers in front of me.
He wants a divorce.
Fuck.
I never contemplated the notion. It didn’t matter how many times I walked away. Or how broken I am, I…
Shit. He wants a divorce.
I’m beyond blindsided. This was never a situation I saw us walking into. In the back of my mind, the hope of coming back to him, of making amends for everything…it filled me with certainty that we would be okay.
Even telling myself that in the end we might not make it, I never really saw a future without Christopher. He’s always been my pivot point. It doesn’t matter how far I get, I always revolve around him.
But now he’s walking away like this is nothing. No skin off his nose. He’d probably be more worked up about shit on the bottom of his shoe.
“Is this what you want?” My voice sounds a lot stronger and steadier than I feel. My insides are shaking, my eyes are stinging, and my heart is somewhere between the soles of my feet and hell. And before I even utter the words, my throat dries up painfully. “A divorce?”
The cavity of my chest burns so violently that I feel like I might spill my guts all over the floor. It’s not until I claw at my body, hoping to loosen the tightness constricting me, that I remember I’m in nothing but my underwear.
Turning in the doorway of the smaller bedroom, he stands taking up all the space with his arms crossed over his chest. His white shirt is soaked through crimson, the edges of the stains dark, almost black in contrast with the white cotton.
I pick up the papers on the table. Although I flick through them, I don’t actually take anything in. I have no idea what any of it says. He could be leaving me penniless and I wouldn’t know. It’s just that I thought they would be heavier. I wanted to feel their weight, but for something so meaningful, they feel insignificant.
Dropping them back down on the side table, I look up to find Christopher eyeing me carefully. His narrowed gaze follows every single one of my moves as I round the sitting area and walk over to where he’s standing.
“Of all the spiteful things you’ve ever said or done, this one is the most callous.” He peers down on me from his great height, biting down on his lip with his scowl scrunching his face. “Is this how you want to break us?”
“Break us?” His laugh is almost a sour snort. “Newsflash, sweetheart: broken is fixable. I don’t know what we are, but broken is nothing.”
I feel so sick that I’m breaking out in a cold sweat. The cold look on his face shatters all the hope that still shone somewhere inside me.
“I did it for you.”
“No, Belles. You did it for Daddy. Because you can’t bear to let him down.”
“I can’t bear to let my dad down? What about you, Christopher
? Why are you doing any of this? Why are we here?” Yeah, he says nothing, just continues looking at me like I’m the bad person. Like I did all this by myself. “I didn’t start this. I never wanted this. It was always you and our babies…our home. I wanted our own life.”
“You walked away!”
How dare he look at me as though I’m anything less than him. He can stand there and think I’ve done him nothing but wrong. In the end it was him that started this. He put the wheels in motion. He made a decision, and it changed everything. It wasn’t just a spanner in the works—we were completely derailed. Because of one decision. His decision.
“You killed my baby.”
The words float in the air between us like oil in the ocean. Poisonous. Suffocating. Catastrophic. A dark, caustic barrier between life and death. There’s no more sink or swim. We’re both drowning.