Page 53 of How to Get Even

Putting it in writing made it real. Telling Paige about the interview was making a commitment. One that, of course, Bella would follow through with. But it was different to sabotaging Chase’s coffee and his chair. It was different to hacking his work account. This was properly, purposefully, ruining someone’s career. Or at least, giving Chester C. Carlton the means to do so.

Astrid will be thrilled.

And what about her? Bella hadn’t even asked about Olly. Wasshethrilled that he was getting terrorised by a chaotic and utterly loveable redhead, a sugar-addicted hamster in need of a diet, and a dog that needed daily walks? What possible revenge would satisfy her?

The question pulled her up short, unknowingly forcing another runner to side-step her at the last minute.

Bella just wanted him toknow. To know how much that had hurt. To know what it was like to have the future they’d discussed taken away from her. To have the floor beneath her shake and crack.

But did she regret it? That he’d walked away from her?

She frowned and pressed on with her run at a distracted pace. Because surely marrying someone who didn’t love her would have hurt more in the long run.

In the last few weeks, she’d been thinking of him less and less. But she wasn’t sure whether that was because she was focused on her plan to bring Chase down or whether it just didn’t hurt so much any more.

She thought about the life she’d wanted. The house, the children, the picket fence, and the charity galas, seeing it for the first time through a bit of a haze.

She’dlovedOlly. Shehad. They’d been together for two years before the wedding. They’d had a friendship that haddeepenedtheir love. And yes, much of it had been spent apart, the long-distance relationship necessary because of her charity work in Upstate New York, and Olly’s socialising in California.

But as Bella slowly looped round to the starting point of her run, she realised just how much of their relationship had been about what happenedafterthey were married. What life would be likeafter. What she would getafter. And for the first time since the wedding had been cancelled, she wondered whether Olly might have perhaps been right to call it off.

* * *

Chase was a glutton for punishment. That was the only possible reason he was here, Chase thought as he got off the train at Secaucus. Immediately he felt as if he’d stepped into an Escher painting, as if the past and the present were colliding staircases of confusion.

Half of his brain still felt stuck in Sascha’s studio. And he had to think of it like that, because every time he looked up to see someone else’s art on the walls he felt like he’d been tasered. Full body electric shock and not for therapeutic, or sexual reasons.

He followed commuters off the platform, down the stairs and out onto the main drag and decided to walk. It wasn’t that far. Forty-five minutes? He could do with stretching his legs.

Coward.

In absolutely no fucking rush whatsoever he started the walk back towards the house he’d grown up in.

When Chase had first made it big, he’d tried to give his dad some money, but it hadn’t gone down well. His father was a proud, hard-working, blue-collar mechanic who looked after his home, his business and himself. The most Chase had been able to do was pay off his mother’s medical bills and the mortgage on a house he knew his father would never leave.

Too many memories here, son.

The cold winter’s breeze took bites from the tops of his ears and he hunched into his coat. He passed by places he remembered as a child. His mother on nearly every corner, collecting him from school, shopping at the grocery store, meeting up with a friend and making small talk while he played in the park.

Urban, but still local, his mother would say with pride. An English teacher at the local high school, he should have dreaded going to school, but secretly he’d loved it. Loved knowing that his mom was in the same building. Loved the fact that she was most kids’ favourite teacher. Enough so that he wasn’t actually given any grief over it either.

He passed a couple walking their dog and looked across the street to where a woman struggled to put a toddler into his car seat.

Get married soon and give me grandbabies, his mother had demanded. He’d been fourteen.

His father had nearly sworn the house down.No fucking kids! Not until you’re at least thirty.

She’d slapped her husband with a dishcloth and his father had swept her up into his arms and covered her in a thousand kisses. His stoic, monosyllabic dad had done that. Because Daisy Miller could make even the hardest hard melt.

Christ, he’d wanted a marriage like that.

His mother had been beautiful. Thick dark,Snow-Whitehair, pale skin, and so damn kind it would break your heart. She’d filled the small square patch of grass at the back with as many plants as she could, hanging bird seed in the winter and any number of different kinds of food for whatever other wildlife could be found nearby. Half of the time, she was feeding the neighbourhood cats, but no one had the heart to stop her.

She’d loved hard,Chase thought, amazed by it, unable to imagine what it would take for him to love like that and that openly after the betrayal he’d experienced. No wonder his dad had all but disappeared in the wake of her loss.

Chase swallowed as his memories of the area turned into the ones of her last few months.

The weight loss, the nose bleeds. It had taken a while for her to be taken seriously by the doctor, in part because they didn’t have a huge amount of money for healthcare but also because she didn’t want to make a fuss, or cause a scene.

---