My steps slow when the voice of the person I bumped into registers as familiar. “Why are you in such a hurry, Mir? Did you finally realize you’re too good for these men?”
As I twist to face Roy, my panic surges. I’m not worried about me. I don’t want his arrival pulling Nero away from the wedding reception of one of his closest friends.
“What are you doing here, Roy?”
He steps closer, filling the air and my senses with his boozy breath. “I want to speak with you.”
“Then you should have picked a better location and time. I don’t have time to talk to you right now. I’m busy.”
I commence walking again, only to be stopped by a snivel. “I’ve tried to see you since... since…”
“Since you were forced to face the consequences ofyouractions?”
He nods, darkening his eyes further when the cap hiding the perfect word for his betrayal lowers down his forehead. “Buthewouldn’t give me the chance. He told me if he saw me anywhere near you, he’d kill me.” The way he sneers “he” announces who he is speaking about, but before I can warn him I won’t be held accountable for my actions if he mocks Nero in front of me again, he continues. “I made a mistake?—”
“A mistake?” I “ha!” him. “It was more than once, and I’m not solely talking about the pictures that surrounded your feet in the hotel room you booked for your mistress.”
I’m not asking a question, but he acts as if I am. “They meant nothing to me.”
I scoff before I continue for the van.
He follows me like a lost dog, but I don’t feel an ounce of sympathy that he may end up alone and on the streets.
My empathy commenced disappearing the day he called me a heffer for the first time, and it fully vanished when he referred to Nero ashe.
“Stop following me, Roy,” I warn when I hear footsteps. “Because I make no promises that my van is knife-free.”
“Stop this, Mir. You’re not like them.” He thrusts his hand at the reception area whose noise subdues a smidge when his shouts reach some guests’ ears. “So why the fuck are you acting like violence is the solution for everything?”
“How do you know I’m not like them?” I ask, my tone lower than his, but my anger way higher. “Even after fourteen years, you don’t know a damn thing about me. Not a single thing.”
“I know that I love you and that you love me. You’re just blinded by the shiny new toypretendinghe likes you how you are now.”
His eyes lower down my body.
They don’t spark with envy.
He looks disgusted.
“I give him days before he either loses interest in you or puts you on a diet.”
I laugh. It is witchlike and full of disbelief. “Nero isnothinglike you.” I don’t wait for him to bite at the bait I’m dangling in front of him. I hit him with the utmost truths. “And that love you’re talking about isn’t close to what true love feels like. IthoughtI loved you, but I am learning that love isn’t being belittled by your other half, being badgered by them to the point you consider suicide, and it isn’t being fat shamed in front of an audience with the hope it will double the loss on the scales the following week. It isn’t breaking someone’s soul and then walking away without offering to pick up the piecesyousmashed. That isn’t love, Roy. That’s abuse.”
“Mir—”
“No. You don’t deserve my time.” I spin before a fire inside me forces me to spin right back around. “You also don’t deserve me.”
I work his coping mechanism like a pro when he follows my trek. I ignore him while stomping across manicured lawns, while throwing open the back door of my catering van, and while pulling out the sheets of gold-flecked paper Shiloh needs.
I don’t speak a word until he pushes too hard for me not to respond. “I’m your fucking husband! That should award me some morsel of respect.”
“Wrong. Youweremy husband. You’re not anymore.” The hairs on my nape prickle before they fortify the rod in my back. But the person inspiring them remains hidden, confident I’ve got this. “So get the fuck out of my life before the only title our marriage will leave me with is widower.”
Roy is an idiot. I can’t put it any simpler than that.
“You—”
“Nah,” Nero mutters, moving out of the curtains stopping the bugs from entering the catering tent. “You don’t have a say inanyof her decisions. You shouldn’t have had any back then, and I sure as fuck won’t let you have any now.”
