Parking lot incident

The car remained silent for a long time as they waited for news from their spy. 

Kan checked his phone again, but there was still nothing from Ariel.

Damn! The woman really meant it when she said she was going to work today. 

Should he even let her exert herself so much after just being discharged from the hospital?

Man! Would his father have loved her? Hardworking woman who did not care to be pampered.

“Did you mean it?” Eleanor said suddenly into the silence. 

“What?”

“You said you missed me, did you mean it?” She asked, and the look in her eyes made him sad. 

Why could she not stop hoping? That was the only way she would not continue to hurt herself.

But did he really want her to stop hoping, though? If she did, there would be no reason for her to continue staying by his side and he really liked her, and liked having her around.

If she stopped hoping, and he insisted on having her around regardless, then he would have to deal with seeing her with another man who would love her properly and give her the stability she had always craved from him.

And there were plenty of those men. 

She told him about some, and he had even physically met a few who would swoop her up as soon as she gave them a green light.

He squeezed her scarf in his hand as his jaw worked. 

He took his time to answer, trying to calm his nerves and compose himself after the rage he felt just from the thought of her and another man.

“You did not seem to care when I said it earlier.” He turned his eyes to her, hating her a little, hating her for being so good he could not let her go, but also hating himself for his inability to love her all those years before Ariel showed up.

“Did you?” She said, like she had not heard his last statement. 

“Yes,” he said, staring at her. “Yes, I missed you a lot.”

“Just as your assistant? You needed someone to make sense of your crazy schedule and rearrange it in a way you understand?”

“Eleanor,” he groaned in exhaustion, looking away.

He saw Tucker's wife returning, walking briskly back to her car, and as she did so a man appeared in the empty parking lot and began to follow her. 

He tensed up. Was he about to witness a crime?

This was one reason he would never let Ariel be out and about on her own without protection. 

He stared at the man who was walking like a cat behind Tucker's wife, quick on his feet and realized this was no casual bum.

He was well-dressed and his hair was styled neatly.

Eleanor was watching now too, and suddenly the man reached out and gripped Tucker's wife’s arm.

She was already whirling around with her purse as a weapon, the way women usually do, when she stopped.

Kan saw her lips move, like she was calling the man's name, but they were too far away for him to hear anything. 

She looked angry while the man was just smiling cockily, confidently even as Tucker's wife's lips kept moving.

She looked livid, and about to burst.

Then she pushed him back, and was turning away when the man grabbed her hair and pulled her back. 

Eleanor gasped, and her hand was edging towards the door.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“A woman is being assaulted right in front of us,” she said, her eyes angry. He was about to tell her that that was none of her business, but his eyes traveled back to the pair, and he saw this was not a case of assault after all. 

This man, who was definitely not Japanese, could have been European, but Kan could not be sure from this distance, was not a foe.

The man brought his lips down on Tucker's wife, who froze like a trapped fish, all that anger and vigor from a few seconds ago, gone. 

The man began to back her against a wall that was obscured from every other part of the garage. But from where Kan and Eleanor sat, the view was clearer, and they even began to hear them a little.

“Yuck!” Eleanor looked away, her neck going red and Kan burst into laughter. 

“The man’s got skills.” He took his phone out and began to record the scene. “Tucker would die if he saw this. I would if Ariel was moaning this way beneath another man.”

“There’s no reason to die,” Eleanor said angrily. “She didn’t when he cheated on her.”

“What?” Kan glanced at her distractedly, as most of his attention was on the unfolding adult video before him.

“You men think women don’t have feelings? That we don’t get hurt at the thought of you grunting and pumping in another woman?”

“Is that why you sent that to Ariel?” Kan said quietly, and that sent Eleanor into silence. 

It was a good thing the driver could hear nothing of their conversation with the mic off.

Who did she think this was? Did she think she had a right to judge anyone? 

They were all the same, all of them. The only thing that separated them was their family names.

“What do you mean Tucker cheated on his wife?” He frowned now, a higher dose of anger whipping inside him. 

How dare she refer to the time Ariel was with Blaine like that in his presence? 

He had a mind to send her out of his car, but he could not do that.

He had invited her here because he wanted to spend the whole day with her, although now he wondered what he had been thinking.

This was one angry, embittered woman. 

Of course, she would always find a way to bring up their undefined relationship. ~Grunting and pumping~

Is that what she spends her time thinking about? Were those the thoughts that tormented her? What he and Ariel did in their intimate moments.

He exhaled and turned back to the couple who were across the parking lot. 

Did they not care? Did they really think all the cars here were empty?

Anyway, he could not wait to see that barbarian’s face when he showed him this.