جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 8

Back home, I got Elle settled into bed. She sometimes came half-awake after drinking and turned difficult. I used to make her a cup of hangover tea every time, honey, lemon, warm water, the routine so familiar I could do it with my eyes closed. This time, though, I just sat on the couch and stared blankly at our wedding photo on the wall.Elle and I had known each other for seven years before we married. She'd always carried a thorn in her heart. Back when she had nothing, Rob, her first love at the time, had abandoned her and run off to build a life somewhere else. After that, she stopped trusting anyone. Until I came along.I stayed by her side in that cramped rented apartment while she built everything up from nothing, watched her business grow until she became the name everyone in the industry praised. Then we got married. To become the kind of man people said deserved her, I worked myself half to death, climbing the ranks. Just as I was finally catching up to her, Rob came

Elle rushed to explain, her words tumbling out of order. "I know this whole stretch hasn't been fair to you, but I mean it, there won't be a next time. There's only a week left before the month's up. If you really want to, we can go get the marriage license right now." She started tugging me toward the door as she spoke.I didn't move. Elle turned back to look at me. I shook my head. "No need. You still haven't finished whatever you promised Rob. There's no rush. It's just a week. I can wait."In her heart, Rob would always come first. Rather than waste more time, I figured it was better to end things sooner. So I invoked his name deliberately, and whatever hope had started rising in Elle shrank back down. Her fingers, still curled around my wrist, loosened their grip. In the end, she didn't say anything more.In the days that followed, Elle turned into a different person. To make it up to me, she started showering me with anything expensive she could think of, luxury cars,

Elle found herself thrown out. She stood outside the door, a sharp pain stabbing through her chest. Max had actually sold the house, and she hadn't heard a word of it. If he'd sold the house, where had he gone?Elle fumbled her phone out of her bag and dialed Max's number. No one picked up. When she tried again, all she got was the same cold automated message.Elle had never felt this panicked before. In all their years together, no matter how busy Max was, he'd always answered when she called. Lately, though, she'd noticed his phone going unanswered, sometimes taking several tries before he picked up, and she'd assumed it was just more of the same. But now she'd been standing under a streetlight for what felt like forever, dialing nearly a hundred times, and still nothing.She kept dialing mechanically, not snapping out of it until her phone warned her the battery was almost dead. She had no idea what to do next. Max's sudden disappearance had left her mind blank, without even

I hadn't expected Elle to show up at my wedding. She wasn't on the guest list, and no one had invited her. I hadn't seen her in months, and she'd lost a noticeable amount of weight, standing there out of place among the tables. I looked away and focused on sliding the ring onto my wife's finger.Elle pushed through the crowd and marched straight up to the stage. Gryphen City's celebrated businesswoman now stood there like any common shrew off the street, eyes rimmed red, demanding an answer. "Max, what is this supposed to mean? Did you already decide to leave me from the start? Do you have any idea how long I've been looking for you?"She pointed at Lacey Matthews standing beside me. "How could you marry someone else? How could you sell our house?"I pulled my hand free of Elle's grip, feeling, for the first time, genuinely fed up with her. My tone came out distant. "I'm sorry, but today is my wedding day. Please don't disrupt it."I thought I'd made myself clear enough. But