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Charlie announces she is heading to bed due to an early morning court case. She leans down and kisses Lex before disappearing to their bedroom. The cushions surrounding me move as Lex shifts uncomfortably dressed in his pajama bottoms and a white V-neck tee.
“Andy is asleep in Amelia’s room. Why don’t you sleep here?”
I nod, agreeing. It’s all I can muster up. Silence falls between us, and I wish Lex would leave me alone, so I can cry myself to sleep, but he continues to linger.
“Adriana, please stop doing this to yourself,” he orders. “I don’t like seeing you like this…” He is quick to avert his eyes. “I can’t stand to see you like this again.”
He has seen me at my worse, and I mean at the bottom of a hole alone in the dark kind of worse. Sometimes, it feels like I’m a burden on my family, and those are the times I sport that fake smile of mine and reassure everyone I’m great.
This isn’t one of those times despite how much he wants us apart.
“It fucking hurts. I hate that it hurts. Why would he be with someone else?” I don’t expect an answer. I was asking the question to someone who loathes Julian.
Lex’s expression is conflicted, and he lets out a long-winded breath obviously debating whether or not he’s the right person for this conversation. “Fuck, this is hard to even talk about. It’s the case of two scenarios, Adriana. Either it’s not what you think it is, or he is trying to use her to forget you.”
“Is it that easy for a guy to do that? I mean, to have sex with a stranger just to forget?”
“Yes.”
“But I don’t understand. I couldn’t even imagine touching someone wit
hout having a connection.”
“Guys don’t care. I don’t think Charlotte knows this, but after that day I saw her and Julian in the restaurant for the first time, I was desperate for anything to take my mind off her. I thought I was going insane.”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything, the chick did.”
“Oh.”
“I hate even talking about this, and it proves how much I love you, sister, but I have no doubt that it would’ve been the same for Charlotte with Julian. I mean, she runs into me, and her life is turned upside down. What’s the first thing you do?”
You fuck the brains out of your fiancé to forget that your ex, who left you without an explanation nine years ago, just walked back into your life. I don’t know who that hurt the most at this moment, Lex or me. How can I be jealous of something that happened in the past? Where was I three years ago? I was married to a man I had planned to spend the rest of my life with. Julian has a past, and so do I. If I didn’t dwell so much on the past, then maybe our future may have had a chance, and I wouldn’t be in this predicament.
“You must really love me to admit that. You know, Lex, this was never about hurting you or Charlie.”
He tilts his head and cracks his neck. “You have to understand my position here, Adriana. He did things that are unforgivable.”
“We all do things that are unforgivable. You aren’t exactly perfect either. We make mistakes, but they are only mistakes if we don’t redeem ourselves and learn from them. I know Julian has his flaws, and I also respect your stance on this, but at the end of the day, I deserve to be loved again, and if it’s with him, you need to accept that. The heart wants what the heart wants.”
“You don’t know what he did to Charlotte—”
“I do know, Lex. You’ve told me, but who am I to judge? It’s like we just sit in this circle of pity and point fingers at each other. Julian has his flaws, but fuck, so do I, and stupidly enough, I let that get between us.”
He bites back without resisting. “You think it’s easy for me to see him near Charlotte given his past? If I lost her… I just couldn’t—”
“You won’t fucking lose her. She loves you. You have two children together, and because he made a bad decision, it ended up saving your wife and child’s life. I can’t understand how you can have what the two of you have and still be so insecure.”
“And so, you tell me you love him and yet look at where you are? Did your insecurities not get the better of you?”
Touché. It did get the better of me. It’s ugly, a disease that spreads like wildfire and can’t be tamed.
“You’re right. Look at where I am. I failed. I just couldn’t control the jealous side of me. With Elijah, it was easy. It’s not like girls didn’t look at him, but it was never like this. Everywhere I turn, some woman has their eyes on Julian or even their claws. Who’s to say that one of those women will give him what I can’t?”
“And if you asked him the same question, he will probably say the same thing. You just deal with it, Adriana. Charlotte is… well, fucking stunning. I don’t turn a blind eye to every glance she gets, but I can’t exactly dress her in a burlap sack and place garlic around her neck to fight off the dirty fuckers who look at her.”
“True, but Charlie will make a burlap sack look hot. You’re screwed either way.”
