Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 94436 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94436 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 472(@200wpm)___ 378(@250wpm)___ 315(@300wpm)
My fists were clenched at my sides, and it took a lot of effort not to hurl things at him. Not to think of ugly, cruel and bitter things to say. I wanted to hurt him, wanted to pierce deep enough to cause a reaction to get something from him. I wanted to hurt him like he had hurt me.
“She isn’t my mistress, Stella,” he replied.
The tenor of his voice only served to infuriate me further.
“She has the same fucking bracelet as me!” I screamed, shaking my wrist at him, suddenly unsure why in the fuck it was still around my wrist. I should’ve hurled it into the ocean or something equally dramatic before I’d arrived here for my tirade.
Too late now. “Did you or did you not give her that bracelet?” I demanded.
Jay was silent for a beat. His eyes were measuring. Assessing. He hadn’t seen me like this before. This angry. I didn’t think I’d ever been this angry in my entire life, and even if I had been before, I was never brave enough to unleash it on Jay lest I lost him. But I was starting to question whether I really ever had him in the first place.
“I did,” he spoke finally, the words clipped.
My stomach dropped, and my mouth went dry even though I’d known that to be the truth before he spoke.
“And you’ve fucked her,” I said, not a question, but I silently begged him to disagree.
“Yes.”
I swallowed razors, nodding once. “You have a woman wearing diamonds you gave her—the exact same diamonds you gave me—minus the heart you took from her, in what is supposed to be our house?” I spoke slowly now. Quietly. There was no cause for screaming or shouting anymore.
“There’s more to it to that, Stella,” Jay said.
I nodded rapidly. “Oh, I’m sure there is, Jay. It’s just a shame you didn’t trust me enough to give me more.”
It was then I turned around and walked out.
He didn’t follow me.
Chapter 9
“Dad.” I nestled my phone in the crook of my shoulder as I carried a shit load of couture in my hands. I really, really needed an assistant. “I know I’ve been a terrible daughter, and I owe you about three phone calls, but I’m walking into a photoshoot, and I’m only on one coffee, so my braincells are sluggish. Can I call you back?”
All of this was true, of course. But I also really didn’t want to talk to my dad because I didn’t want him to hear anything in my voice that would cause him to ask questions. Like if I was okay, if things were alright with Jay.
I was most definitely not fucking okay, and things were not at all alright with Jay, but I did not want to tell my father that. Did not want to tell a single fucking soul about our fight. Even though it didn’t feel as simple as a fight. It didn’t feel fixable. The hurt inside me was a living, breathing thing that amplified every time I moved. I’d let him back in too quickly. Hadn’t learned a fucking thing from last time. I’d put too much of myself in this relationship, so when it was splintering, it felt everything inside of me was breaking.
Fool me once and all that.
I didn’t see a way out of this. Didn’t know how I’d forgive him for this lie without wondering how many more he’d told me. And I couldn’t talk to my girlfriends. Zoe because she was only just coming to terms with all of this, and I couldn’t be sure that she wouldn’t hire a hitman at this point. Yasmin would talk to me with calm reason, and calm reason would be to break up with the man who was deceiving me, who had already hurt me so completely before. The man whose life I didn’t even know about.
Wren would be my best bet since she was the only one of my friends who was firmly Team Jay. But I wanted her to stay Team Jay.
And my father was not someone who I could tell because then I would have to explain the entirety of the ‘arrangement’ thing with him, and yeah, that wasn’t exactly something a girl told her father. Especially since that father had come to terms with the idea of Jay being his son-in-law.
Jay had not called to ask for his permission first because he was Jay. My father was a progressive man, but I knew he was a little peeved about that whole thing. Luckily, my dad was not one to hold a grudge, and all he wanted was for his daughter to be happy. And luckily, he hadn’t known that we broke up in the first place. I’d somehow managed to pretend we were still together for the entirety of my time in New Zealand thanks to the time difference and my dad’s inability to read tone via text.