Page 11 of Yours Suddenly

We're both breathing heavily and he descends on me once again to plant a kiss on my lips.

“Amazing,” he says. “You're fucking amazing.”

I look into his eyes and see something.

Somethingwrong.

He straightens up and because the window is behind him, daylight spilling in through it, I can't really see his face. It's cloaked in shadows.

I sit up and again he kisses me, threatening to arouse me again. Then his phone starts to ring. A muscle twitches in his jaw.

“I gotta take this baby.”

He walks out of the room and leaves me there with his cum oozing out of me, aching deliciously…

***

I knew I wasn't imagining things because from that day on, things started to change slowly, like a storm building up. He's starting to become more and more distant and he won't tell meanything.

When we have family dinner down in the dining hall at the big table, he’s deep in thought, looking up at the giant chandelier. Occasionally, he cuts his gaze to me and a softness comes over his face like it always does.

“You've barely touched your food,” Adrianne says to him.

“Right?” I say to her. She’s my new best friend now.

“It's always work, work, work with these men and that’s why I’ll forever be single,” Adrianne continues. “If you like work so much, maybe that should be your wife.”

A slightly amused smile comes on Roman’s face.

“And before you say work is what gives us this life,” Adrianne continues, “no you do not need to be working as much, you're a billionaire.”

“Thanks, I needed the reminder,” Roman says.

“Look,” I say, pointing at his cousin Ryan’s son, who is standing on his chair, singing the same song he sang at our wedding. “Listen to Nathan's voice. He’s a future star, for sure.”

Mama is watching the performance with tears in her eyes and she occasionally dabs at them with the Burberry scarf around her neck. The image reminds me of my own mother crying when I graduated high school only four years ago. A depression threatens to grip me. How I miss her and Dad so much. How I miss Evie so badly. The chandelier my husband keeps staring at? Evie would have lost her mind. And my dad would have taken a liking to Tristan, who is as stoic and business-minded as he was, even more stoic than Roman is.

“Coming to bed?” I ask Roman when the staff comes to clear up the tables.

“Have to make a quick call,” he says. “There's a development just outside of town that I'm interested in acquiring.”

“Okay,” I say. Then, “I miss you.”

“I miss you too.” And then he turns away to get on the phone.

Chapter 6

Alexandra

When I was younger, I worried about my parents splitting.

I had a friend, Ella, whose parents went through a nasty, profanity-laden, property-destroying divorce and it became the talk of our small town for weeks. Ella spiraled into a depression she never recovered from while she spent most of her time in Wisconsin with her mom and then dull summers in North Dakota with her dad.

I always wondered what made her parents split, afraid the same would happen to my own.

Now I'm afraid it's going to happen to me.

We're not fighting or anything. We’re just becoming more and more distant from each other.

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