It puzzles me. How can she not see how beautiful she is? How can she devalue herself the way she does? Allow me do the things I do to her instead of fighting against me?
I spend a few days keeping her at a safe distance, we share meals together. I actually abandon my office, to sit and do some work in the library while she reads. Allowing myself her company, but I don’t fuck her. No matter how much I tell myself I’m punishing her. I know that really I’m punishing myself.
She’d been giving me that needy look tonight, over the dinner table, then again in my office when she popped her head around the door to say goodnight.
She doesn’t push me though, and I’m grateful for that.
I decide to give myself an early night too. I’m exhausted. Controlling the tendency to fuck her sore every time we’re together, overloading myself with work that I usually delegate to my directors just so I’d be distracted around her. I’m even debating going to the office tomorrow for some breathing space.
I get into bed after a forty minute work out that I hope might pry the last bit of frustration out of me. It doesn’t work. So, I give up and let it lie within me. Take a shower, then get into bed, hoping that tonight my dreams won’t be a replay of the past.
My work is done for the day. I flew in from New York a few hours ago to make sure everything is going to plan, and I’m more than ready to go back. New York may be one of the largest cities in the world, but at least there it’s easy to be a stranger. My office is just a few miles outside of Cannonville, all my staff left a few hours ago to spend their weekends with their families.
They wouldn’t be working in this office for much longer. I’d already secured an office building in Cannonville for when I was ready to make my move. It’s much smaller, but exactly where I want it to be, right under Sorrento’s fucking nose.
He may be looking down from his castle, but from up there, it will only be a better view of all he’s lost.
A number I don’t recognize flashes on my phone. It’s a strange time to call for business, but I’m never off the clock. So, I answer it.
“Ethan?” I recognize her voice as soon as I hear it, even if it is a little more fragile and cracked than I recall. But, it still makes the splintered fragments that were left of my heart cut inside my chest.
“Ethan, is that you?” she repeats, and my mouth is too dry to answer her.
“Ethan, it’s me… It’s Millie. Please say something.”
“I’m here,” I manage to speak, my guts churning themselves over as I try to figure what she might want.
Why after all this time is she calling me?
“Oh God, it feels good to hear your voice.” She snuffles back tears, and my instinct to protect her returns as though it never left.
I want to know why she’s crying, and worse, I want to fucking fix it for her.
“He’s out of town, in Georgia on business. Can we…” I hear her nervous swallow.
“I’d really like to see you, Ethan,” she tries again.
I should say no, tell her that she made her decision five years ago. But the pain in her voice, along with my curiosity, has me arranging to meet her at a trucker’s bar eight miles outside of town. I don’t need to ask her where she’s living now. As soon as her and Sorrento got married his father gave them the family home as a wedding gift. Over the years the old man has slowly handed over the town to his protégé, and Sorrento has all but buried it. My plans-if executed correctly, will stop Sorrento from ruining Cannonville completely and leave him with no option but to watch me succeed.
I make sure I get there early, the place where I’ve told her to meet me isn’t the kind of place a lady should be waiting around on her own. That being said, it’s the only place I can guarantee she won’t be recognized as Ivan Sorrento’s wife, and I’m assuming she wants our discussion to be private.
I order myself a drink at the bar while I wait. There’s every chance that she’ll back out. Somewhere between leaving her fucking castle and getting here, she’s sure to have second thoughts.
She proves my theory wrong when the door to the bar swings open and she steps inside. If it wasn’t for her blonde hair and the way her eyes search the bar so innocently, I wouldn’t have recognized her. She’s thinner, her skin so much paler than I remember. The bright lustrous eyes that used to illuminate a room, now sunken and murky with depression. I watch her shake the rain from her jacket, and scan the room to locate me.
Her eyes don’t take long to link with mine, a modest smile plucking up the corners of her mouth, and nearly knocking me on my ass.
She rushes toward me, and I brace myself. Then I see her face drop at the same time as the reality washes over her. We aren’t’ best friends anymore. We barely even know each other now.
She steady’s her pace, more focused on the sticky bar floor than me as she settles herself on to the barstool beside me.
“Whatcha havin’, honey?” the woman behind the bar asks her.
“Oh um… a martini,” Millie looks up and smiles.
The woman cocks her head sideways, as if she’s waiting for some kind of punchline.
“No…okay then, perhaps a white wine and soda?”
