The jeans were definitely my size, so I took them and tossed them over my arm. Next she handed me a black, long-sleeved T-shirt and a lace underwear set with an eight hundred-dollar price tag still on. Also black.
“Based upon what you were wearing last night, your style seemed very much like mine,” she explained when she caught me eying the all-black garments piled in the crook of my arm. “I love black.”
Evidently.
When I just shrugged, she passed me Chad’s black jeans, washed and neatly folded, and a black wife-beater. “JK’s a little more built than Chad. Chad’s taller and lean, and I wasn’t sure how JK’s shirts would fit him, so I thought this singlet would be a safer choice, yeah?”
She was a lot friendlier than last night. The night before she’d been flat-out glaring at me, and now she seemed like she was trying to atone for that unwarranted hostility.
“Thanks,” I muttered, taking the wife-beater then bending down to pick up our boots. Chad’s were well and good, but the laces on one of mine were burned off at the ends.
As I made to leave, Saskia said, “He’s a good man.”
“What?” I asked, because that statement was laughable. She couldn’t possibly be talking about Chadrick Niiveux being a good man.
“I don’t know how bad the things are that he does—he or JK won’t tell me—but relationship-wise, he’s perfection,” she asserted. “He’s monogamous. If it’s you, it’s you. And he’ll treat you like no other woman exists in the world but you. Don’t hurt him.”
Oh, that explained it. She knew the fake Chad. The pretend-to-be-a-normal guy Chad. But I knew the real Chad. The one who’ll wrap his fingers around your throat and squeeze the air out of your lungs just minutes after confessing he’s falling in love with you. The one who whispered threateningly sweet things like “It’s me, or no one”.
She knew Chad. She didn’t knowChadrick. Half-RussianKah-had-reek.Heir to the Devil’s pitchfork.
This woman with her easy life, her increasing wealth and fame, and her husband who loved her so much it seemed he was going mad, did not know the real Chad.
I did.
“Do you love him?” I questioned.
She took umbrage at this, her shoulders squaring in defense, pussy-cat gray eyes narrowing. “I love myhusband.”
“Well, if you truly love your husband, be a good wife, carry his child, and keep your nose out of my and Chad’s business. It’s safer for you.”
I turned and walked off before she could shoot a rejoinder.
Why did I say all that? I had no idea. I guess I was just jealous about the whole “he’ll treat you like no other woman exists in the world but you”. Right. She should know. Why did she get the queen treatment and I got the rough, abusive treatment?
Maybe because she’s never tried to kill him or abuse him before?my snarky mind suggested.
Clutching the apparels while trying to keep the sheet around me intact, I re-entered the bedroom and found Chad still on the balcony. No longer on his phone, though. Just gazing out at the rolling green hills.
“Pssst,” I hissed, dumping the garments on the bed.
Chad turned around, saw me, and padded into the room, all wind-tousled hair, rippling abs, sexy V, and artistic tattoos on glowing olive skin.
“JK burned our clothes,” I told him, “so we have to wear theirs.”
Chad nodded once like he couldn’t care less, took up his jeans from the pile and started getting dressed. “All the shouting, marital problems?”
“Yep,” I confirmed. “She’s pregnant. He’s ready for it. She’s not.”
“Hmm” was all he gave out.
Chad had on his clothes before me and sat down at the edge of the bed to tug on his boots, and I rushed on my pieces in a slapdash manner just so I could sit down next to him and tug my boots on, too.
“Did you have feelings for her?”
A pause, then, “Yes.”
“Strong?”
