Page 80 of Honeyed
The crowd is all hushed whispers and awkward stares as Mason grins at my family as if he’s won something.
“If you need to talk, Warren, you know where to find me.” He reaches into his pocket and plucks out a card.
“Do you want me to arrest you? Get the hell out of here before I actually do.” Billy grunts at him.
Mason skulks off like the creep he is, and my heart won’t stop galloping in my chest. I grab Warren’s hand and pull him along, his dead weight making it hard to do.
“Baby, listen to me …”
Half my family interrupts us in the quiet kitchen, and Warren won’t look me in the eye.
“Do you want me to get my PI on that guy?” Cass asks, looking nervously over at Warren.
“Yes, immediately,” Dad answers for him.
“I’ll go call him now.” Cass scurries away as fast as her belly will allow, with Mom on her heels.
“You take him home, get him out of here. He doesn’t need any more of the gossip or attention going on out there, and you both need to comfort each other now. You did nothing wrong, you hear me? We’ll get this guy to stay away one way or another. I love you.” He says this last sentence to Warren as he grips my husband’s shoulder, trying to break through the numbness that has stolen over him. My hands shake with nerves and fear because I’ve never seen him so distant. I know Dad is right, but I’m terrified to be alone with Warren right now for some odd reason.
Part of me knows he’s about to try to make some rash decision, and I won’t be able to stop him because I know him that well.
But we need to get out of here, so I grab our things and speed walk to the car, Warren’s hand still clasped in mine. We don’t speak the entire way home. Not when we get past the front door, and not after I’ve toed out of my shoes and set my purse on the stairs.
My husband climbs them silently. I follow minutes later and find him in our bed, fully clothed, with the lights out.
I crawl in next to him and cradle his body as much as he’ll allow me to.
And we don’t speak through the night.
33
WARREN
Morning light filters through the curtains of our bedroom.
Or I guess this is Alana’s bedroom, but over the past few months, we’ve made it our home. I’ve come to think of her place as mine, of this house as the place where we belong together as a couple.
Now, all I see is every which way my past is going to burn it to the ground.
Alana is breathing softly next to me, one arm thrown over her eyes and the other resting on my chest. Her cool feet are pressed to my calves, and the blankets are a tangle in the clothes we kept on and shed last night. I’m still in jeans, and I guess I took off my celebratory T-shirt in my fitful sleep, and Alana is naked from the waist down but still wearing said T-shirt of her own.
I close my eyes and inhale, savoring the last moments before I ruin everything between us. Last night, or early morning, depending on how you look at it, I awoke with a start in the pitch-black of the room. I stared at the ceiling and let everything from the anniversary party come back to me.
The rage of seeing Mason there, the imminent threat I felt poised in my wife’s direction, the shame of having the entire town hear him announce the documentary, the absolute fury of the cops being able to do nothing but dismiss him from the premises. Numbness doesn’t even begin to describe the out-of-body sensation I feel because I almost can’t believe it happened.
But it did, there is no doubt. Even if Cassandra’s private investigator finds something, even if Alana and I talk through what Mason said to her before I came over, I know what I have to do.
I’ve already put her in enough danger and have subjected the Ashton family to criticism for years because of the family I was originally born into. They’ve been shouldering my burdens for far too long, and I won’t let them get caught in the crosshairs of it any longer.
She stirs next to me, and my heart sinks to my toes, shattering somewhere down on the floor because I know I’m about to lose the woman I’ve loved forever.
Those aquamarine eyes blink to awareness, the world coming in muted tones at her, and I palm her cheek one last time before removing all my body parts from her touch. Leaning up on an elbow as Alana stretches the sleep from her bones, I deliver the blow.
“We need to get divorced.”
The air around us stalls for a moment, as if my saying those words have caused the earth to stop spinning.
“Is this a nightmare? Am I still dreaming?” She sits up, hazy and dizzy from the whiplash I just hit her with.
