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Chapter Thirty-Six
Her Beautiful Thorn
She’s gone.
My wife’s gone.
I should’ve known. I should’ve fucking known something was wrong when she not only didn’t call me after the game like she usually does, but also when she didn’t pick up my call. And simply sent me a text saying that she was too tired to talk.
She’s never too tired to talk.
In fact, these past couple of days since I’ve been away, I had to be the one to tell her to hang up and get some rest. So yeah, I should’ve known.
At first I think that she knows.
She knows what I did, how I lied to her, tricked her, and that’s why she broke her promise and left without telling me.
And as I said, I wouldn’t blame her.
But the papers that prove that she’s mine, the marriage certificate, is safely tucked inside the safe in the bedroom where I left it. So it’s not that.
What is it though?
Why the fuck would she leave?
Why the fuck would she break her promise to me?
Is it her dad?
It’s her dad, isn’t it? And it’s that guy. The guy she insisted is just a family friend.
Shaking with fury, with fear, my vision both blurry and red, I call the only person I know who can tell me what the fuck is going on.
Reed picks up on the third ring and I bark, “Where the fuck is she?”
“What?”
“Where the fuck is my wife?”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Her Beautiful Thorn
My wife is getting married.
And the guy’s name is Ezra Vandekamp.
Apparently she’s been engaged to him since last summer. Which means she was engaged the night I ran into her at The Horny Bard and then again, at that swanky fucking restaurant. That’s why she was smiling at him in that way, in her special way.
She was engaged the night I kissed her in her brother’s kitchen.
She was engaged the night I took her out to her favorite bookstore and then later when she asked me to fuck her so she could get closure. She was engaged when I took her to the cabin, the whole time we were trying and the time after that.
She was fucking engaged.
She.
Was.
Fucking.
Engaged.
And I know it’s her dad.
I know it.
I knew it back then and I know it now.
But what I don’t understand is why? How? What does he have on her?
Why the fuck hasn’t she told me about it?
I climb out of my truck just as my phone rings. I wanna let it go to voicemail but the asshole did help me look for my wife so I hit accept. “What?”
“You there yet?” Reed asks.
I look at the posh wedding venue on the outskirts of Bardstown, the address of which Reed gave me only a couple of hours ago. After my frantic phone call, he contacted his ‘old people’ as he likes to call them, and that’s how he found out about her wedding today.
His sister’s and my wife’s.
“Yeah,” I say.
“Listen, this whole fucking plan reeks of my father, do you hear me?” he growls. “Pest would never do this. She’d never marry someone picked by him. I know my sister and —”
“My wife,” I growl back. “She’s my wife. And where the fuck were you when she was sick and miserable and throwing the fuck up all the while hurting because her asshole brother couldn’t get his head out of his ass?”
I hear him breathe in and out for a few seconds, as if he’s calming himself down.
Maybe I should do the same.
Dr. Mayberry would approve. She’s been teaching me breathing exercises. Along with rationalization techniques to take my anger apart and study it from all angles. She calls it the classic ‘think before reacting.’
But I can’t think.
Not right now.
Not when she’s in there somewhere, close to getting snatched away from me.
“I’m not talking about that with you,” Reed seethes.
“Good, because I don’t have the fucking time.”
“But we will have words about the other thing. About how it is that my sister who up until now was just having your babies — as fucking tragic as that is — is suddenly your fucking wife?”
It’s a good thing that he had to stay back because of some hiccup at his shop or I would’ve strangled him with my bare hands.
“No, we’re going to let our fists do the talking and when I win, I’ll let you decide whether you want me to let you live or die.”
“You fuckface, I’m going —”
“And you know why that is, Jackson?” I cut him off. “Why I’m going to win. Because this isn’t some dick-measuring competition for me. I’m fighting for my fucking wife and I’ll destroy anyone and everyone who comes between me and her.”
With that, I hang up and go to find her.
First, I’m going to take her away from here. I’m going to get her to safety.
And then… Then we will talk about all her lies.
