Total pages in book: 148
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 135517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 678(@200wpm)___ 542(@250wpm)___ 452(@300wpm)
Chapter 40
*Elena*
“Elena, please, just let me come in so we can talk.”
“No, it’s too late for that.” I felt such rage inside that I was almost afraid of what I might do. The tears that I’d been fighting so hard to contain were winning, and I hated that for myself; I hated showing any kind of weakness in front of him.
How dare he show up here like this? Acting so blasé, as if he wasn’t the monster who had hurt me in the worst possible way. How dare he think that all the pain and hurt of the last five years could just be swept away and forgotten by his mere presence?
In the past, it was always like that. I was always quick to forgive him and move on from whatever idiotic thing he’d done. Because I believed that that’s what love was. Long-suffering, forgiving, merciful. All the things an innocent young girl should believe. But look where that got me.
He made me a laughingstock, something to be ridiculed and laughed at, someone to be pitied. “Damn you, I told you to go away. It’s too late for explanations and excuses; I don’t care. I stopped caring a long time ago.” Lies, all lies, but thankfully he couldn’t see my eyes clearly because he’d know. He always knew me as well as I knew myself.
“It will never be too late; please, just let me come inside. Let’s sit down and talk. I’ll tell you everything; I’ll hear you out, whatever you have to say. You can even hit me if you want.” He smiled in that boyish way of his, and I wanted to knock his head in.
“Don’t tempt me. Besides, I don’t need your permission to do anything; you’re on my property. Wait, does anyone know you’re here?” I have a very lovely garden that needs fertilizing; his carcass might be just the thing it needed.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” Color me innocent.
“Like you’re thinking of where to hide my body.” Now it was my turn to smirk, all the while not believing or understanding what the hell was going on. I was standing here half-dressed, having a somewhat civil conversation with Ryder Sumner.
In some ways, it felt as if the years had not gone by, as if time stood still and it was the day after we last met. I should’ve done more to prepare myself for this happenstance. But I just never imagined that he’d ever be here again, not like this.
I had thought that maybe some years down the line when we were both old and grey, we’d run into each other in some café in town. We’d say a polite hello, and then as if in passing, I’d finally get the answer as to why he’d screwed me over.
By then, I would be over it, over him, already, and it wouldn’t really matter; it would just be something to close a door that had been left open. But this, even after five long grueling years, was too soon. I wasn’t ready; I hadn’t prepared myself for seeing him here like this in the flesh standing before me.
The longer we stood there staring at each other wordlessly, and the more I thought of what to say to him, the venom I wanted to hurl at his head burned a path from my lungs to the tip of my tongue. “Where’s your wife, Ryder? Does she know you’re here? I don’t need to deal with her brand of insanity right now, so if you please, just go.”
“Don’t call her that.” Oy, what’s this now?
“Are you high, Ryder? I thought they said you were clean.”
“I am clean.” He seemed a bit put out by my asking, but what the heck did he expect? He just showed up here out of the blue, asking to come in as if nothing ever happened. What am I supposed to think other than that he’s high off his nut?
I knew he was clean, though, because I’d met with Heather Saunders, who just called me up out of the blue, and how could I not meet with the empress of Hollywood? I knew from the tabloids that her husband was working with Ryder on a movie, so when she called, I wondered what she wanted with me. I was deathly afraid that she’d ask me to make a movie with him, which would’ve been the worst possible scenario.
The truth is I still don’t know what that day was about. She’d just asked me out to lunch as if we were old friends, and once we met, things got even stranger. We talked and laughed about the shows we’d been in though she hadn’t acted in years.
Then things became personal, and she asked me about myself and how I was doing, very probing questions as if she were checking in for someone. She’d made slight mention of the fact that he was clean, just threw that in there nonchalantly, even mentioning that she knew our history and how sorry she was that things had happened the way they had.