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Amelia
The next few weeks were heady. It was as if I was living in a dream. We spent every waking moment together, lost in a lust-fueled haze. I craved him inside me, he’d become my drug. I enjoyed work, but I enjoyed it more when Henry came into the office, locked the door and fucked me over the desk.
Today I’d prepared a picnic for us to take over to Central Park. It seemed desperately romantic, and I hoped we would talk about what Henry had described as the ‘elephant in the room’, my sister. It was time. I was ready to learn about her, other than fleeting bits of information.
After we’d eaten, we sat with our backs against a tree and Henry started talking. He was no fool, and he’d realized it was time to take things to the next level.
“What do you want to know about Veronica?” He asked.
“Just about you and her. I was too young to take in what she said. I want to know what she was like and what you were like together. You know, where did you meet, etc?”
“We met in a bar. One of my friends was trying to pick her up, and she was having none of it. She said to him that he was wasting his time but that his blond-haired friend would have more of a chance.” Henry chuckled. “Luckily my friend was gracious and introduced us. That was it then, we started dating, then after a year we moved in together. I proposed to her on our two-year anniversary and we married on our third.”
“You proposed in a restaurant, right, with musicians playing her favorite song?”
“That’s right. It couldn’t have gone any better though I was stuttering trying to say the words. Luckily she accepted.”
“Why didn’t you have a large wedding? How come you just eloped?”
“She didn’t want the fuss. She just wanted to be Mrs. Carter. She didn’t want a honeymoon either. Your sister was a workaholic. We married in the afternoon and if I hadn’t booked a hotel room, she’d have gone straight back to the office, I have no doubt in my mind.”
I smiled.
He told me many more things about her, her likes and dislikes, and how she said she wished she could spend more time with me. That she looked forward to me being older so she could show me the business and hopefully see a lot more of me. That she wished Henry had a young brother.
“She loved you, Amelia. She might not have seen a lot of you, but she loved you. But, in some ways she was as much married to work as she was to me.”
“Did that not bother you?”
He shook his head. “No. I knew that from the beginning. It was who she was. Then we discovered she was pregnant. Things were about to change. We talked about her taking some time off from the business. I’d bought us a house back at the Hampton’s so she could be near family and your mom could help her with the baby. Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t leaving her side, but I figured your mom would show us the ropes. We were clueless, none of our friends had children.”
“And then she died.”
“Yes. I was showing her the house. She’d had headaches and went into the bathroom. She didn’t come back out. I found her slumped on the floor.”
His face showed the expression once again of a broken man, and I wrapped my arms around him. I’d been told how my sister had died, but to hear it from the person who found her was so raw and emotional. I couldn’t imagine being present in those circumstances.
“After that, everything was gone. My whole future. Gone in the blink of an eye. After the funeral I threw myself into work, into Vee’s plans for world domination of the property kingdom. I didn’t want another relationship, so one night I ended up at the club. Then I bought it. It became my playground. A place I could get my needs met with no emotional involvement.”
“Until Tiffany.”
He moved from my arms and sat back against the tree.
“Yes. Until Tiffany.” He sighed. “She gave me a hint that maybe it was time to move on, but, I don’t know. I couldn’t commit. I sent Brandon to her, and they lived happily ever after.”
“Did that hurt?”
“No. I was fond of Tiffany. She’s a lovely woman and Brandon is a great guy, but I didn’t love her. My feelings were confused at first, she was the first woman I had a prolonged relationship with in a long time, but it wasn’t a healthy relationship. Ultimately it was still about sex.”
He turned to me. “Do you think that’s what I’m doing with you? Just fucking?”
I looked across at him. “No, it doesn’t feel like that to me. Or am I wrong and you don’t feel the same?”
I do feel the same. He said. “Amelia, I love you.”
His words were so unexpected that I burst into tears. This time it was his turn to wrap his arms around me. “Amelia, my Amelia. I didn’t mean to make you cry.” He told me.
“I-, I just never expected to hear those words from you.” I confessed. “Henry, I love you too. I think I have from the moment I saw you.”
