Chapter 6

I whispered it so loudly it frightened me, though, and I knew this time no one was in the room with me. Just me turning a light bulb in a corner, a stench of red wine in my tongue, and a couch on which I just got too cold to sit. I was yet in the gala dress, with the zippers down and wads. My makeup was smeared, and my phone was shaky in my hand as though it knew that it had done something wrong.

Grayson was having sex with her in a bed which was not mine with my lawyer . It is the same woman who said I was courageous to walk away. The same woman who held my hand and told me “You deserve peace, Ava.”The woman whom I believed would be my ugliest end to life. They were smiling in the photo. Not that sort of smile folks show when they are tipsy. The nice clothes which they put on after they have won. She had on the silver necklace that I bought her as a gift on her birthday.

A reward of appreciation .it appeared as a trophy and Grayson? His hand was on her hip. That was the hand which held mine in court. The same hand that has wiped a false tear since I signed divorce papers I did not want to sign in pieces. The worst part - It was not the photo, but the video.. It is as though her voice were out of breath, like that of a girl who has just gotten all she wished.

“She trusted you, and you ought to have told her everything before she signed." And him--sunken, complacent, devil-ish.

“Of course she did. Ava always wanted to be seen. All I had to do was look.” I didn’t scream, I didn't cry, not even once. I simply sat down and my mouth was full of ashes. I put my hands through my hair, and my hands were shaking, this wasn’t heartbreak. This was war.

***

KILLIAN

I had to see her. I was not sure whether she would smash the door or pour wine all over me. But none of it would be as bad as that picture that I just received. Grayson, Ava’s lawyer. The man I did hate and grinned so coolly and with so many untrue kinds of things, in bed with the woman, which led Ava through the ruins of our marriage.

God was I a fool, Grayson has been playing us both along, and now, the game was finished. I still had my hands on the wheel yet the car had stopped outside her building. It did not matter whether it was Joe Corp, it did not matter what my name was, nothing mattered. I took the stairs, fast then i knocked on her door like I had a God given right to do so.. As an obligation she owed me another opportunity to be heard out. Before I knocked a second time the door opened.

****

AVA

He had been out of breath, looked around wildly as though he had run up here, I never said a word. He came again like he remembered this place, like this place was still like it was before, or like i was still like it was before.

Before he could speak I said, "I saw it.”

"He swallowed hard. “It is not what it seems to be-”

“Don’t. Don’t lie to me. Not again.”

“Ava—”

“Killian,” I pronounced his name in such a way as if it was something irrelevant. It was something like a stain on my tongue that I was sick and tired of eating.

“They used me,” I said. “Grayson. Her. Together.”

“I didn’t know,” he breathed. “If I had—”

“But you didn’t.” I stopped in mid-sentence for my voice broke, not because I was sad but from control.

“And you did not know because you never looked at all. Killian, you stopped searching long since.” I yelled as he stepped forward, his eyes begged and his mouth opened as though it wished to caress my skin but I pulled back.

“You still think I’m yours?” I whispered. And when he refused to answer I played him the video. the music was low, as it is whispered between foes. He watched and didn’t blink, but his jaw tightened then like a man who at last was aware of what he had lost.

“Still have the idea that you can win me back??” I asked again. He didn’t speak rather he just stared, so i turned and started walking toward the hallway.

KILLIAN

She was walking away and leaving me standing and i deserved it but i could not do any thing to stop myself . I followed her down the hall and as she opened the door to her bedroom I ceased to breathe. Same room, new woman. She was not that Ava who used to urge me to go home and was not the one who cried when I was late with Ava. . She was her, the one I did not want her to turn into, the one I still wanted. She turned around and with stubbornness in her eyes she looked at me.

She said, "You touch me now,” she said, “and it will not be as it was some time before."

“I know.”

“It won’t fix us.”

“I don't think i’m trying to amend anything. “I just want you.”

There was a pause.

And then—

She let the robe fall.