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“How do we stop this?” I ask in a quiet voice. “How do we end all this bullshit? You can’t wait to keep on going the way we have been.”
He leans back again. He glares at me and says nothing for a solid minute before tapping a finger against the table.
“First, you have to publicly apologize. Get Baby to write another article. Make the apology real and make it believable. I want the world to understand what really happened.”
“And what really happened? Nothing Baby wrote was a lie.”
“We had an arrangement. Our relationship wasn’t real. I misunderstood the parameters—”
“You misunderstood how being engaged works?” I try not to let the absurdity of the situation get the better of me.
His jaw twitches. “It wasn’t real, Marie.”
“But it was real. Just because it was arranged doesn’t mean you were going to be allowed to run around town embarrassing me. You’re mad that I made you look bad, but imagine if you were in my position. Imagine you were married to a man that was constantly sleeping with every single willing woman in a ten-mile radius. How would you handle that?”
His eyes harden. All the softness in him drops away as he crosses his arms over his chest. That’s the William I expected. Haughty, selfish, angry. The hurting William, the sorry William, that man is buried once more. “It doesn’t matter, because that’s not what happened. We could’ve handled our disagreements in private. Instead, you made it public. You made it worse. Now you’ll make it better or I’ll give Heiko the green light to ruin you.”
I slide sideways, getting to the edge of the bench. “You’re threatening me now, which means this conversation is over.”
“Marie—”
“No, William. I’m done dealing with your entitled bullshit. I’ll admit I made some bad, emotional decisions and I made this worse. I shouldn’t have gone to Bella Baby the way that I did, but you still don’t get it. You deserve some of the blame too, and even more than that, you should be ashamed of the way your family’s been harassing me.”
He grunts once and his face tightens. “So you’re playing the victim card then. I hoped you were better than that, but I guess not.”
“God, you’re awful. I really thought you’d turned the corner, but no, you’re the same old asshole you’ve always been.”
“If you walk away, Marie, there’s no chance. You’re finished. I won’t hold back anymore.”
I shift out of the booth and stand at the end staring down at him. I don’t want to turn my back and leave right now but his face, his posture, it’s all telling me that this is a lost cause. William’s not going to admit he was wrong and he certainly won’t fix the problems he created.
In his mind, the only way to get past this is for me to fall on a sword and make him look like he was the victim all along.
To hell with that.
“Give me a reason to stay. Stop making demands and tell me you’re going to quit harassing me and Pride and everyone around me.”
“Like I said, publicly apologize—”
“All right, William, we’re done. You’re never going to change.”
I turn to leave. There’s no coming back from this. He’s going to make more and more demands until I’ve all but admitting that I’m a liar and I faked the whole thing. He’s not interested in working with me, only interested in me working for him, and that’s the problem. He’ll never see me as an equal, which is why he can’t understand that what he did was wrong.
That would’ve been our entire relationship. William would’ve seen me as his employee, not as his equal or his partner. I would’ve been expected to play the role of his wife, and he never would’ve cared about me as a person.
There would’ve been no warmth, no joy, no happiness.
I dodged a bullet when he cheated on me.
I’m about to shove open the door but he calls out before I can slip away.
“You’re making a mistake,” he says. “This is your last chance, Marie. You walk through that door and you’re finished.”
I smile at him sadly then step outside.
Chapter 20
Marie
“Next time you want to run off and throw yourself at the mercy of the man who wants to hurt you the most in this world, check with me first. I might try to talk you out of it. And you just might listen.”
Ansell sits back on his desk and glares at me as I pace back and forth across his office. I felt too guilty not to tell him, but I’m also a coward so I waited until we were back at work the next morning where he couldn’t punish me—too much.
“I know it was stupid and impulsive, but I swear he almost opened up to me. There was a minute—”
