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Meaning I can’t be a romance novel hero.
And no matter how much the thought of her with another guy — fucking Ezra — fucks me up, I have to remember that this is about her and not me living out my fucked-up fantasy.
Even if she’s lying to me.
She is, isn’t she?
I could tell.
I know she still isn’t telling me the whole truth. There’s more going on in her scheming little brain.
I get it though. I get that I don’t deserve the truth from her. I don’t deserve her trust after all that I’ve done. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to let her get away with it either.
Or play me for a fool.
So if she wants to plot and scheme, I’ll let her.
For now.
Because sooner or later, I’m going to find out the truth. I’m going to find out what she’s hiding.
Part 3
Chapter Eighteen
The phone rings first thing in the morning and I scramble to pick it up.
The voice that comes from the other end makes me flinch. “Where the fuck have you been?”
I blink, confused. “Dad?”
“Why aren’t you picking up my calls?” he thunders.
I swat my hair away from my face and try to focus. “I didn’t… I didn’t know you were calling. I just woke up. I —”
“Well, good fucking morning to you.”
I flinch again but manage to sit up straight in my bed. “Okay, can you just stop yelling and let me open my eyes at least?”
Of course not.
Because his next statement is yelled out too. “You better be thankful that all I’m doing right now is fucking yelling at you.”
I sigh.
Damn it.
This isn’t what I needed right now. Not first thing in the morning.
I’m not a morning person at all. I need at least two to three cups of coffee before I can form a coherent thought and once I did that, I was going to call him. I knew I had to and I also knew that he wasn’t going to be happy with what I had to tell him.
But he got there first and now I have to do damage control, half-asleep. “Dad, listen —”
“Don’t you fucking ‘Dad’ me, you bitch,” he seethes. “You owe me something and despite being very, very clear, you still haven’t delivered.”
I clench my eyes shut.
He’s right.
I owe him a wedding date, or rather a preponed wedding date, and no, I haven’t been able to deliver. Turns out, Ezra and I couldn’t connect at all over the last week like he’d told me we would. I couldn’t even get him on the phone, and I did try. Every time I’d call he’d be busy, and truth be told, I understood that.
I mean the guy is busy with an international merger and this huge hotel project that he’s going to oversee. Of course he’s busy. Plus it’s not as if we are BFFs and we talk every day. Our marriage is a business arrangement, and not being able to get ahold of each other is not that uncommon.
In fact that’s exactly what happens in all the marriages that I’ve ever known. My mom and dad go weeks, sometimes months, without talking to each other or knowing what the other is doing.
Although I also understand that my situation is different.
Not only is this a business arrangement, but I have a little something that I need to tell him too. Something that I’m not very sure how he’d react to because we never got to finish our discussion that day at the restaurant, but he still needs to know.
He still needs to be on the same page with me.
And frankly, like I told him at our dinner date the other night, I think this is a good thing.
Not only for me but also for him. For his image. For keeping his father and other people like his father off his back.
But now he is gone.
He left yesterday for Korea and I’m certainly not breaking the news to him over the phone. I’m also not going to harass him about the wedding date over a phone call either.
Which means everything will have to wait until he gets back.
Which could be in a couple of months — optimistically — but it could also be longer. It all depends on how things go for him over there. The longer his return gets delayed though, the more I’m going to get anxious about telling him.
But that’s still fine. The bigger problem is my father.
He’s bound to get pissed, the longer Ezra’s return takes.
And that does not bode well for me or my brother. So I have to somehow convince my father to keep a lid on it.
Meaning I can’t get angry and/or sarcastic with him. “Yes, about that. I think —”
“I need that wedding date, you understand,” he tells me again, his voice growling. “I need this merger to happen. I need that fucking money and if you think for one second that you can sleep on the job, I will make it so that you can never sleep for the rest of your sorry life. Do you hear me? I’ll make it so that every time you close your eyes, you see your brother’s ugly mug —”
