Chapter 2 The Wronged Husband

My thumb hovered over send. This would burn everything down. Their marriages, their reputations. One tap, and I wouldn't be the only one sitting in the ashes.

But then I saw Zane at sixteen, sharing his lunch with the quiet, awkward girl everyone ignored. I saw Jovi at eighteen, squeezing my hand and telling me I could borrow any of her clothes, her friendship a gift I never felt I deserved.

They were betrayers. They were also pieces of my only history.

I deleted the message. I threw my phone onto the passenger seat, furious with myself. I had the perfect revenge in my hands, and I couldn't do it. I was still, after everything, the girl who loved them too much. My only friends.

I drove for another hour. Ended up at a bar I'd never seen before, in a part of the city I didn't know.

I ordered gin. Straight. The bartender didn't ask questions.

My phone lit up then. Texts after texts made my phone shook the table with the vibration.

Jovi: Neri please. It was a MISTAKE. A moment of weakness. We can talk.

Zane: Baby please. Where are you? I'm freaking out. Let me explain.

I flipped the phone face-down and ordered another drink. It made me start to get drunk.

Then the hands found me.

"Hey, lonely girl. Come have fun with us."

A stranger held me. Beer breath. Cheap cologne. A hand on my waist, pulling me off the stool.

"Go away." My head tilted, I felt dizzy.

"Feisty. I like it." His smirk visible in my blur vision.

Then another hand from my other side. Stronger. I pushed, but my body wasn't listening. The gin had done its work.

"Stop." my voice low.

"She said stop."

The voice came from behind me. Quiet. Flat. Not loud, but it cut through the bar noise and made me shivered.

I felt the hands around pulled away strongly, I felt a slight tremble from them before the hands vanished. I turned. And he was there.

Vance. The heir of Blackwood family. His rich and cold aura had send the two men away from me.

He stood there in that expensive suit, grey eyes flat as winter. The same man who'd nodded at me this morning. The same man whose wife had just destroyed my marriage.

Something flickered in his gaze as he looked at me. He looked at me with the same gaze he had on his wedding day. Seven years ago, he saw me standing beside Jovi in an ugly bridesmaid dress, watching him marry my best friend. I'd caught him looking at me once that day. Just once. A glance. Then it was gone.

I'd forgotten until now.

"Can you stand?" he asked. I noticed he had a husky deep voice when he asked me that way.

I tried to stand but failed. The room tilted.

He didn't sigh. Didn't roll his eyes. Just slid an arm around me and half-carried me out into the cold air. His strong arm wrapped me securely as he half dragged me away.

I slumped against him. He was warm. Solid. Smelled like expensive wool and something sharp underneath.

He didn't ask my address. Didn't ask questions. Just took me to a hotel, he got us a room, dumped me on the bed like I was a sack of potatoes.

He was turning to leave when I grabbed his jacket.

"Don't go."

I didn't know why I said it. Didn't care. But I sound desperate.

"Please. Just... don't leave me alone."

He stood there. Looking down at me. His face was unreadable, but something in his eyes shifted-that same flicker from seven years ago, maybe. There and gone.

"Let go."

"Why does everyone pick her?" The words spilled out, ugly and broken. I completely ignored his order to let him go.

"Why am I never enough? Why my bed? Wasn't taking him enough? She had to take my bed too?"

I pulled him down. Found his mouth with mine. And consume his lip immediately.

The kiss was a disaster. Tasted like gin and tears. Desperation and salt. I was trying to feel something, anything... other than the gaping hole where my marriage used to be.

For one second, he was stone. He was too stunned by the sheer audacity I had. Kissing my own boss when I got drunk like this.

But then he kissed me back.

Hard. Demanding. Like he was just as desperate as me. His hand cupped my face, his thumb pressed against my jaw, and for a few seconds, there was nothing else.

All I could felt was the heat of our kiss. The need to claim each other. Just two people screaming without sound.

Then as he get his logic back, he shoved himself back. Breathing hard.

His eyes in the dim light were shattered. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand quickly. Brutal. As if he wanted to erase the kiss like it was a crime.

Then he straightened his jacket. Reassembled himself before my eyes. The mask of powerful cold CEO slid back into place.

"Sleep," he said. Voice rough.

He turned away without taking a second glance. Then he left me alone.

The door clicked shut.

I stared at the ceiling and didn't move for a long time.

***

Morning came like a hangover. Brutal and unforgiving.

The ceiling was unfamiliar. The bed too soft. I was panicked when I regained consciousness and learnt where I was right now. I checked on my body. I was still dressed. Weak sob of relief poured down on me.

But then the memory hit me like a tidal wave. A strong hand around my body, a collision between two mouth. I faintly smelled a man's cologne beneath the smell of alcohol all around me.

I gasped. 

The bathroom door opened. Vance stepped out in a white robe, hair wet, face already composed. Looked at me like I was a problem he'd left on his desk overnight.

I remembered those grey eyes stared on me just before I pulled the man into my desperation.

No... Not him. Anyone but him.

He looked at me with a cold and calm expression as he was drying his hair with a towel.

I remembered the way he kissed me back with the same desperation I felt last night,

Did I just kissed Vance Blackwoodt? My boss?  

My stomach twisted, I felt a nauseous.  

More importantly, I kiss Jovi's husband at the same night I discovered she cheated on me with my husband. 

I clutched the blanket until my fingers hurt. I could feel the heat raised to my cheek, not entirely about my shame. But also disgust and rage.

My face turned completely pale. 

I spent all night calling them traitors.

Vance noticed my expression. He walked closer. Not toward me. But towards the table side where he took his watch and started wearing it around his wrist.

"You reek of a bar floor," he said flatly. "Shower. You have a 9:30 meeting. Lydia said you have the final numbers for the Harrington project."

The sheer normalcy of it stunned me silent.

"What?" I asked him in disbelief.

"Take a shower." He adjusted the cuff of his shirt. Checked his watch. As though last night belonged to someone else. As though my worst mistake was nothing more than an inconvenience.

"I... " 

I wanted to ask him about last night. I wanted to ask him why he hadn't pushed me away. Why he'd kissed me back. Whether he regretted it. Whether he despised me now.

But seeing his deep eyes staring at me like I was a part of some problem made me gulped down my own saliva.

"I understand." 

I stood up slowly, averting my eyes from his gaze and entering the toilet.

As the warm water washed over me, I kept praying that it would wash away the memory of the kiss and the betrayal that haunt me since last night.

I scrubbed my lips until they stung. But the kiss wouldn't disappear.

We left together fifteen minutes later. The hallway carpet was too thick. Our silence was a sick thing between us.

We turned the corner toward the elevators.

And there they were.

Zane and Jovi. By the ice machine. His arm around her. She leaned into him. They looked tired, worried... together.

They looked up as they sensed our presence.

Zane's eyes went from my wrinkled clothes to Vance's damp hair to the space between us. His face crumpled-not with anger, but with sick comprehension.

Jovi's hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes darted from me to him and back. Shock, then outrage. Perfect, hypocritical outrage.

No one spoke.

Then Vance's voice. Low. Clean. Carrying a lifetime of ice.

"Jovienne."

Just her name.

He took one step forward.

"There you are."

I'd spent the last fifteen minutes wondering if I'd become as selfish as they were.

Then I saw them together.