He seemed happy, but not like this. This is above glee. He looks complete. Whole. Not close to the miserable, sad person I’ve become.
The mysterious woman is blonde, short, and gorgeous. And she has a noticeable yet still tiny baby bump that Mikhail caresses when she joins him in the premium seats.
What the?
My breath hitches in my throat as anger overtakes my curiosity. Mikhail was expected to be here and to interact with a woman with more class in her pinky finger than I have in my entire body. It is, after all, his grandfather’s will reading. But this—a baby—is a slap in the face I’m struggling to ignore.
It burns knowing he’s moved forward with the planswemade.
My back molars are nearly ground to stubs when I notice the generous rock on the blonde’s ring finger. It is too many carats for her tiny finger to hold up, and it screams, “I married a rich man.”
I stop endeavoring to singe a hole in the conference room table to discover if Mikhail is the man in question when the lawyer clears his throat, announcing the commencement of the will reading.
I try to focus on the meeting that stripped the last of my funds for half a tank of gas, but it is a struggle when Mikhail slips off his chair before he offers it to the blonde.
His left hand is now exposed, but too many people separate us to see his ring finger.
The crowd coos in sync when he assists the unnamed blonde onto his seat before pushing her in and standing protectively behind her.
He still has charm by the mile, and no chance in hell of utilizing it on me.
I was determined before I arrived to steer clear of him. His pretty wife and her teeny-tiny baby bump seal my resolve beneath a slab of concrete.
I don’t care how attractive the package is. If it belongs to someone else, I won’t even look at the packing slip to unearth what’s hiding beneath its layers of tape and cardboard.
Cheaters don’t deserve to breathe air.
They’re on par with men who leave you at the altar.
A pang of nostalgia hits me when the lawyer reads the will. He starts at the multiple charities Andrik Sr. initiated when his campaign for office ramped up.
Not all my memories are good.
Mikhail shared many stories about his grandfather when we were together. They strengthened my belief that Andrik Sr. was a cruel, vindictive man with a heart of ice.
He didn’t deserve his success or the utmost devotion of almost everyone in the room.
As the lawyer drones on, I glance at Mikhail, wondering if he is being hit with a similar sting of regret.
He had to abide by his grandfather’s terms.
I merely had to live with the results of them.
Mikhail seems as captivated by his grandfather’s charity work as the people who divide us do, but a hint of the boy I once loved remains behind his impassive expression. His left hand, now hidden in his pocket instead of beneath a conference room table, is balled, and his right hand is fiddling with a thread in his trousers that not even the world’s best tailor would have noticed.
He’s keeping his mind on anything but the proceedings occurring, silence still his prime go-to coping mechanism.
The room suddenly shrinks when Mikhail’s eyes slide my way. As he scans the faces of the multiple people sheltering me, I ponder what he’s thinking and if he’s noticed my presence.
The air grows dense as memories of our past swirl around me.
No matter how large the crowd or how big the gathering, Mikhail always found me.
A smile plays at my lips as more memories load. I lost count of how often I hid from him when we went out. It was my favorite game, but it ended brutally when, on the one occasion I wanted him to find me the most, he never did.
Seeing Mikhail again has stirred something within me, something I thought was long buried. It honestly hurts remembering how close we came to happiness before he cruelly stripped it away. Our relationship was a fairy tale that became a nightmare in less than twenty-four hours, and he’s now living his happily ever after with someone else.
As I wipe my cheeks to ensure they’re dry, I sink toward the exit. I shouldn’t have come. It was foolish of me, but desperation can lead you to act in a way you swore you never would. I had to know why they summoned me and couldn’t postpone my curiosity.
