Page 17 of Yours Suddenly

“And—and why are you with Katie? I say to him, my voice breaking.

“Baby,” he says, “did you honestly think that you were going to be the only woman? A man of my caliber?”

The men around him laugh again and I see his jaw twitch. Tears sting my eyes and I open and close my mouth before I turn to leave. They stream down my face, and I wipe them awayfuriously, not wanting him to see I've been shattered into a million pieces.

I leave the bar and enter a bathroom to compose myself. I don't want Adrianne to see me like this when I get back to the car. It's humiliating.

In the bathroom mirror, I frantically wipe my tears, get some concealer from my bag, and dab it to hide how swollen my eyes are. I'm expecting to see him when I step out of the bathroom, hoping he came after me so I can make a scene, but he hasn’t.

I feel like a robot, like I don't have emotions, and I'm just floating along. I drift out of the hotel and head in the direction opposite to where Adrianne and Freddy are parked, walking down a mostly deserted pavement, skyscrapers rising to the night sky...

I don't know where I'm going at first. Then after a couple of minutes of passing people staring at me in Versace, I take my phone out, text Adrianne I found Roman and that she and Freddy don't have to wait for me.

I hail an Uber just as my phone begins to ring again. It's him again.

There have been ten missed calls from him. Oh, now he wants to talk? Instead of ignoring it like I’ve done ten times, I deliberately reject his call this time. He calls again and I reject it. This happens five times before he texts:baby where are you??just as the Uber pulls up next to me.

“The airport?” the driver says, looking at me through the rearview mirror.

“Yes, please,” I say.

Chapter 9

Alexandra

It's lucky I have cash in my purse to pay for my flight. I normally use his Amex Black Card to buy whatever I want, but I don't want the transactions popping up on his phone and telling him where I’m going since he clearly wants to stop me. Not that he should care to stop me. Keri or Annalise or whatever is clearly all he needs.

A sob threatens to escape me as I give the gorgeous flight attendant my boarding pass.

“You look…fabulous,” she says. Glamorous Versaceisa little much for a flight from New York to Portland, Oregon.

“Thank you, you too,” I say to her.

It feels surreal when the flight rises into the air, taking me away from my home. I glance at my phone screen, the airplane-mode icon glowing next to the battery one. Twenty-nine missed calls from Roman. Eight missed calls from Adrianne. As the adrenaline from my confronting my husband ebbs from me, it's then I realize what I'm doing is pretty stupid. Impulsive. Insane, even. I hope Roman doesn't give Adrianne a hard time.

I text himleave Adrianne and Freddy out of this, and to Adrianne I textI'm fine I just need a little break i’ll bebackand then switch off my phone and try to get some sleep even though tears are running down my face.

Is what I'm doing dramatic?Very. But I need a break. I need to reset.

My maternal grandfather’s side of the family is from Oregon, and sometimes Mom, Dad, Evie and I would spend summers there. This is a detail Roman is not aware of, as far as I know.

We arrive in Portland at 4 a.m. local time. I linger in a business lounge, a throbbing in my temple, until daylight creeps in through the vast windows. Then I take an Uber from the airport to a small town called Hereford that's sixty miles from the Portland city center. The Uber driver drops me off at a cozy B&B where I pay the nice elderly lady at the front the amount for a week of stay.

I freshen up in a tiny old bathroom that smells of bleach and then find a local clothes store where I get some jeans, a pair of sneakers, and a couple of oversized T-shirts. Hereford is not the town my grandad was from, that would be Peterson. There's no way I'm visiting Peterson because I have too many good memories with family there, I'll just end up crying more, so I came to Hereford instead because of the horse ranch.

There’s something therapeutic about horses and their big, silky muscular bodies. The owner of the ranch isn't the same friendly one I remember from when we visited years ago, though. This time it's a large, mean-looking man I meet in the ranch office. Inwardly I sigh at the way he ogles me, but I really do want a job here.

“Yes, we're hiring,” he says. “We don't usually take on females for our hands, but I'll make an exception for ya.”

He winks. It's not a good idea to get a job here, clearly, but I need horse therapy. In my pocket, my phone begins to vibrate again with yet another of my husband’s calls. Defiance rises in me, but it also occurs to me that Adrianne and Mama could think I'm in trouble. Or done something to hurt myself.

After signing the paperwork to start work tomorrow, I leave the ranch office and its lascivious owner and text RomanI'm okay. I just need some time away. I'll come back.

And divorce you.

A little dramatic, maybe, but I can't do other women. My parents were extremely faithful and devoted to each other. Almost to the point of annoying everyone else in our town.

I wanted that for myself, to annoy other people with how much in love I was.

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