Page 20 of Yours Suddenly

I take a step toward her, and she takes a step back and it's like somebody has lodged a knife in my heart. I don't let it show on my face, though.

“You're coming back with me. You're mywife.”

“I am not going back with you, not after you humiliated me, in front of all those men and—and that woman. You're crazy!”

Crazy about you, I want to say. Obsessed. Enchanted. All I want to do right now is kiss her, and hold her and never let go.

“I have several meetings to attend back in New York,” I say. “I don't have time for this. Get your things, we're leaving right now for the airport.”

“Like hell I am,” she says, and she runs out the door.

Fuck's sake.

I follow at a safe distance because I don't want the old woman calling the fucking cops on me. I walk down the hallway, past the reception area and out into the warm sunlight.

She’s walking briskly down the driveway of the B&B and then she’s on the town’s main road. She turns left and heads down a street with more quaint little buildings. I don't know how anyone can stay in a small town for longer than a week, I'd go crazy. Too used to the shadows of skyscrapers and alleyways.

Her legs are noticeably shorter than mine so she has to do a little jog to keep a safe distance from me. All I have to do is walk at a medium pace to keep a maintained gap from her.

She walks towards the edge of a forest. Could be cougars and shit in there. As soon as I begin to walk briskly, she runs and I run too, catching up to her in three bounds.

“Alexandra,” I say, seizing her around the waist and lifting her off her feet.

She struggles. “Let me go! Put me down!”

“Baby, please,” I say. “There'snowhereyou can hide where I won't find you. This is pointless. You're wasting your energy.”

I put her down and she faces me, tears glinting in her eyes. I wipe both wet trails away with my thumbs before they fall past her cheekbones.

She's looking up into my face so earnestly, so passionately, and I know she wants back me as much as I fucking want her back.

“I want a fucking divorce,” she whispers, looking me right in the eye.

Damn.

I won’t lie, panic erupts inside of me and if I was a little bitch, I probably would have started crying right away. For the record, no other woman has made me feel like this in my twenty-five years of life.

“Over my fucking dead body,” I growl. “You're my wife.”

“How many wives do you have?” she grits out. “At this point, I don't even know.”

I open my mouth to argue that there's no one other than her and that there neverwillbe anyone like her. I move my hands from her face to lightly caress the back of her neck but she winces.

What’s this? I turn her head to the side and I see a bruising there.

“What the fuck happened here?”

She brings her hand to the bruise, purple and spreading on her pale skin. She steps back.

“Alexandra, what happened to you?” I say.

“What do you care?” she snaps. “You haven't spoken to me in over a month! You don't care about me anymore! You don't look at me the same. You come back from wherever at one in the morning smelling like other women! What thefuckdo you care, Roman?”

I step forward and gently turn her head to the side again.

Somebody did this.

“Who is it?” I whisper. I can feel the blood pounding in my ears.

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