More Than Anything

I was angry with her and with myself. Of all the places in the world, why had she chosen this one?

I felt like a fool. From the moment I’d seen her at the top of the stairs, I’d lost control of my emotions. At first, I’d thought it was a dream, one like the many I’d had in the past two years. I’d wanted nothing more than to meet her at the top of the stairs and feel her in my arms again. I’d wondered if my dreams had finally come true.

But of course, they hadn’t. If Allie was here, it was for her own selfish reasons. With every word that came out of her mouth, I had to fight the urge to go to her, to pull her down to the floor with me, to silence her with a kiss, to envelope myself in her heat until the past two years were a blur for the both of us.

I watched her walk away, hips swaying gently inside her silk dressing gown, and I’d never felt more infuriated and helpless. I muttered a string of rotten words. I should have stayed at the Jeffersons’, I thought bitterly. There, at least, I didn’t have to deal with the woman who’d shattered my heart.

I went up the stairs, making my way to the bedroom that adjoined mine. I prepared for bed, silently cursing her, cursing the image of her in my bed, cursing the fact that her proximity made it almost impossible for me to function, that my physical need for her had intensified to an undeniable stiffness in my pants.

I’d seen every movie, watched her on TV, read her interviews, tortured myself with the thought of who she allowed into her private life, who she allowed to touch her, to bring her pleasure.

Now, I listened to the silence on the other side of the wall and cursed again. She likely didn’t care that I was working myself up because of her. She would sleep like a baby and go back to her life, leaving me torn up under the mask of equanimity I always had to put on for the world.

I got into bed, the evidence of my arousal heavy on my thigh. Without even coming within a foot of me, she could do this to me. I chuckled bitterly. How could she even come here

, to this house where we’d fallen in love and decided to be together, knowing she had ruined our marriage?

She ruined it? The voice in my head mocked me. You ended it.

In the first flush of love, I’d believed we could make it work, living a whole country apart, both of us with successful careers. I had planes at my disposal. I bought a house in LA, for her, for us.

But she was never there. She had prior commitments, plans that had been made long before she met me. She had a management team who, even though they hid it, saw me as little more than an inconvenience, just one of many claims on her time.

She went to locations in Paris, Helsinki, Montana, and I flew long miles almost every weekend trying to catch a moment with my wife.

The rumors didn’t help. Allie had been working on an action franchise with elements of romance. A whole fanbase was rooting for her on-screen romance with her co-star, Guy Fletcher, to translate off-screen. Guy wasn’t opposed to the idea, and every interview I watched, I had to swallow his flirting with her. I had to ignore the allusions from countless entertainment hosts that maybe my wife truly belonged with another man.

Then there was the media attention, the stalking of paparazzi who weren’t averse to sacrificing their safety for a picture of me doing the most mundane things. They linked me romantically to my secretary, my lawyer, an associate’s wife, the curator of an exhibition I attended. Any woman who came within an inch of me was proof to the Guylies that I was an asshole who didn’t deserve their queen.

When she’d been nominated for an Oscar for a movie she did outside the franchise, I’d arrived in LA to support her and found myself mostly in the way. She’d won, and at the after-party, I’d watched her surrounded by people I didn’t care to know. I’d watched her flirt with Guy, watched her forget I was even there.

So, I’d left, and when she came home after the party, clutching her award and flushed with the pleasure of victory, I’d said the words I still regretted whenever I thought of them.

I can’t do this anymore.

How many times had I kicked myself mentally for saying it? At that moment, I’d expected a different outcome, another promise that there would be a change, more reassurance that the rumors were just that—rumors. What I didn’t expect was the small nod, the three damning words.

Whatever you want.

Sometimes, I wondered how different things would be if I’d said something else…if I’d whisked her away for a holiday and bought out all her contracts, but I hadn’t. Instead, I’d walked past her, over the shattered pieces of our marriage, and come back to the life I knew.

And she had gone back to hers.

Thirteen

Allie

I listened to the faint sounds as Braden moved around in the adjoining bedroom. I closed my eyes but was unable to sleep—how could I when he was only a few feet away? It was embarrassing that just being in the same house with him could reduce me to this.

A quivering mess.

Standing at the top of the stairs, I’d been so relieved that so far below me, he couldn’t see that I was shaking, couldn’t hear the quaver in my voice or feel the need that pierced me when I looked at him. It had been so long, and all I wanted was for him to come to me, take me in his arms, tell me the last two years had never happened.

It was crazy—crazy and stupid to forget how much he’d hurt me when he walked away.

I can’t do this anymore.

Those words, like a guillotine that severed my heart from my body and sent it tumbling to the ground to be crushed under merciless feet.