Chapter 87 87

Chapter 87 87
ADELINE
“So…this was all about aunt Dahlia.” He flinched, that far away look took over again for barely a second before the blank look took over.
The lines on his forehead deepened as he processed the question, “In the beginning…yes.” He held my gaze, taking every word slow like he was being careful, like I was a minefield and he had to be careful not to step on the wrong spot, or in this case, get on my last nerve.
“So you knew about her before you gave my father the loan.” I was trying to wrap my head around the whole thing, be more understanding, try to give him the benefit of the doubt, but his track record wasn’t helping. “Was the plan to punish me?” I blurted. It added up. The silent treatment, the late nights out without explanation, the passive aggressive way he always responded when I could get him to speak with me. It was never about me the entire time. It was about my aunty. It was all about a woman who left me for a… wait a minute!
“When did your father divorce your mother?” Scared was an understanding for what I felt asking that. A part of me already knew what he was going to say, I could feel it in my bones, asking was only a formality to be certain.
His chest heaved as he took in a deep breath, sighing like he had had the life force drained out of him. He wasn’t the one being pumped full of liquids he knew nothing about though. “I was wondering when you would ask that.”
“When, Grayson?” I pushed, not giving him the room to change the subject. He’d been doing that for heavens know how long. I needed answers. I deserved answers, the truth Infact.
I was inching, almost at the edge of the bed. If I had the powers, I would probably have sucked the information right out of his mouth to speed things up.
“A little over five years ago, almost six years now.” I expected him to look away, bow his head in shame. He didn’t. If anything, he didn’t take his eyes off of me, like he was trying to memorize my reaction. I tried to keep a straight face, but how could I when I just found out a man I had pined for, for the past few years was only with me for revenge? Against my aunt!
The beeping faded to the background, nothing could compare to the heavy drop of my heart. I could almost feel in selling a pit in my stomach.
“So, this was all for revenge.” I wasn’t even sure what I was expecting him to say. I had been so stupid. How could I even think that it was some magical love story and he only agreed to marry me because he secretly had a crush on me? How did I convince myself that all those years he’d been ignoring me and being passive aggressive, had been because he hated the fact that he was secretly in love with me because of my dad.
Foolish! The words echoes in my head. It was like everything had shut down. The shuffling of feet out in the corridor, the annoying and incessant beeping of the monitor, the drop of water by the faucet not too far from the bed I was assigned. All of it took a shift to the background, the only surviving sound was the ringing in my ear as my make believe world came crashing down.
Everytime I thought it couldn’t get worse, there was still some sort of hope for us, it almost always got worse. Who did we offend? No one. All I wanted was a man to love who loved me just as much, if not more, and all I got was a man who would go as far as getting married, just for revenge, he almost risked his own child and the mother, me, for the same revenge. And after so many years too.
It shoved a dagger straight through my chest even thinking it, but Jay had been right. All Grayson would do, and all he had done was hurt me and even now after everything, when I thought there was nothing he could possibly do or say that would be worse than still being married to his ex wife, he showed me a new brand of surprise.
“It started out as that,” he reached for my hand, but before he could even touch my fingers, I pulled away. I needed to be thinking straight and that meant no contact. Contact was just a source of weakness for me when Grayson was involved. No more.
“And I’m supposed to believe that, why? I have stupid written on my forehead, don’t I?”
“Because, Adeline, I have absolutely no reason to lie.”
You mean you’ve been caught in a web of your own lies and are only trying to dig your way out now. I wanted to say, but I held my tongue. My head was pounding and the last thing I needed was to start an argument. So I let it die.
“Why tell me now?” The question had bugged me the entire time. I could understand trying to get me to calm down after the whole Scarlett thing, but even then, it wasn’t reason enough to just blurt his deepest secrets out like that. Unless…no, there was no way. I would know! Would I?
“Because I predicted a lot of things around your aunt, but I honestly had no idea I was still married to Scarlett.” He rushed to add, once again redeeming himself. “She ruins everything. Scarlett won’t stop until she get what she wants and unfortunately for me, it happened to be me.” He sighed and rubbed aggressively at the spot between his eyes.
I nodded. Not in agreement, but in a sort of truce because while I could lie to myself and pretend it didn’t eat at me everything they were together “So what now? You don’t expect me to believe you suddenly gave up something you’ve been on for over five years.
“Well, I did. But you don’t have to believe now. I promised you happiness and I haven’t delivered on that. Revenge means keeping Scarlett around, doing that means letting you go, or pretending I don’t care about everything that concerns you already.” He shrugged, leaning deeper into the chair, the foam dipped as he rested his full weight on it. “It just isn’t worth it.”
My cheeks burned from how focused he look and despite my best attempts at hiding it, his eyes swept to my cheeks, making them burn even bright as a slow, devilish smirk stretched his lips thin.
“Is there any other way to get rid of Scarlett?”
“Yes, but she might get custody of Johnny?”
“Then you can’t give up now.”
“I know, I’d find another way but you are import- Wait, what?!” He gasped, his eyes widened in shock.
“I said… let’s make the bitch lose some handful of her net worth.
“You’re so damn perfect and I’m such a lucky man!”
He beamed from ear to ear. “Let get rid of some pests.”