want to watch how your words affected him.”
At that, her smile returns, pure evil lighting up her eyes. “Actually, that makes me feel a little better.”
I lead her into the kitchen while grabbing my bag from the floor, and after cueing up the video, I watch her face as she grins to see Grant so angry.
It’ll be a week at least before the asshole makes a move, but I can’t feel excited for it, only because I know what will happen after.
Still, I go through the motions of a man who loves the woman who cast her spell on him when she was an out of control teenager, and with that plan in mind, I show her the rest of the house after the video, feeling like a fucking dick the entire time because I know how the truth will ruin her.
But it is what it is.
You can’t script reality. And as much as any person would like to go back and rewrite certain passages, the ink is permanent on the pages of our life.
My pages just happen to be written in blood. In the lives I’ve taken and the families I’ve destroyed. Including Adeline’s.
Accepting it and learning to live with it is the only option we have when truth becomes unbearable and secrets are revealed.
It’s too bad my secrets are exactly what make Adeline’s dreams of what I am to her impossible.
Adeline
One thing I should have known with Grant is that he’s not stupid.
Bad tempered? Vain? Egotistical? A lying, cheating bastard? All yes. But stupid? No.
Not my husband.
Grant has too much to lose in all of this, and although his pride took a hit with the public statement I made, his control didn’t snap like we hoped it would.
Everything he does is calculated. Just like Ari. And rather than flying off the handle to be outed as a liar, a cheat, and a shitty husband, Grant made a public statement of his own, lighting a fire under Ari and me in the process.
Who is Harrison Nash?
It’s a question buzzing around the city with only dead ends. Ari assures me that there’s a paper trail the police will follow, leading them to a different country and the appearance of legitimacy, but he was like a tiger caged for the first few weeks, pacing the rooms of my house with an expression on his face that made him unapproachable.
Rather than taking the hit, Grant spun the investigation up again. Called me a liar. Claimed I was in on a game with a man nobody can find. He accused me of being a criminal, although with what motive, nobody is sure.
According to Grant’s most recent interview, he believes I married him for his money while in a relationship with Harrison all along.
Unfortunately, his power and influence make him more of a believable character than me, the police often coming to my door with more questions.
All I can do is tell them that I no longer speak to Harrison, that he left me after he saw my public statement, and that I have no idea where it was he took me when I left Grant.
Playing it off that I was in an emotional state, I claimed I hadn’t paid attention. I just knew the flight took three hours and the drive after we landed took several more.
I wasn’t aware. I hadn’t cared. I slept through most of it, on the way and when coming back.
I have no clue, is what I told them. And, having no evidence of a crime I’d committed, the police had no choice but to slink away to investigate it on their own.
The scrutiny of my life made it difficult for Ari. He can’t be at my house during the day, and when he comes at night, it’s usually through a back window or door after ensuring I’m not being watched by police. Sometimes, I am, and he doesn’t come on those nights.
I wake up in sweaty, twisted sheets the next morning when he’s not here, my throat sore and my eyes swollen from crying.
He’s the only person who can help me sleep, but when he’s gone, my disorder is worse than it’s ever been.
Stress is a factor. The constant worry that he’ll be caught.
But mostly it’s the feeling I have that he’s distancing himself from me. That he’s walking away when he told me he had no intention to do so.
My shadow is diaphanous again, hovering just out of reach.
After two months of this nightmare, I know I