Page 287 of Mangled Memory
Two and a half years… Something about that should be connecting for me. But an early morning, drinks at the bar, the bourbon, not to mention the emotional fallout from Seamus Murphy’s bullshit, and I have nothing left. Sleep sucks me under, and I welcome the oblivion.
I reach for my phone sometime in the middle of the night to adjust the thermostat. It’s too warm, and there’s not enough airflow. The settings we have downstairs are perfect for that room, for our bed linens, with two people. Here it’s stuffy, without the right circulation, and the temperature is off.
It’s three-thirteen a.m., and that’s solid heat at my back. Sure the covers are too thick, too… unused, and the air isn’t right. But the heat isn’t because of the mechanical system in the house or the airflow. It’s— Nope. Nuh uh. I need space. I need?—
Lips hit my lat muscle just as I throw the covers back and exit the bed, turning to stare down at Ayla, wide-eyed and vulnerable.
“What the fuck are you doing here?”
“Where else would I be?”
Where else would she be? The traitor could be with her sack of shit father. The liar could be with her mother at the hospital.
“Anywhere but here. I give no fucks where that might be.”
“At the risk of pissing you off?—”
“What do you meanrisk? I’m furious.”
She sits up, stares into my face and says, bold as brass, “I took vows. You took vows. And I damn well expect you to honor and keep them. I don’t give a fuck if I can remember them or not.”
The fuck? Did she just throw my commitment to her back in my face?
“You think I trust anything you say?” I scoff.
“I think—” She extends the back of her left hand out to me. “You made a commitment, and so did I. I think I’m your wife in good times and in bad. I think you trusting what I may or may not have said doesn’t undo your obligation to this marriage. And I think?—”
“I don’t give a fuck what you think.” I storm out of the room, waiting for her to charge right behind me.
Instead, I find myself alone in the kitchen, thirsty as shit with a raging headache. She just threw in my face what I said to her the night we got home. Those words are burned on my brain because I replayed that conversation over and over again when I was in the shower that night. Was I too harsh? Was I brutal in my honesty? I’d worried.
But I was speaking from love. From commitment to my wife, to the life we made with each other. I was reiterating my vow.
Her words, instead, are a trap. Or a trick. She’s trying to hold me in something that she alone created. And like hell will Ifall for it.
Four hours later, I’m at my desk downtown. I’m exhausted, hung over, and run out with where my mind and heart have gone.
I worked out again until I was so physically spent, I couldn’t do another rep. I showered and got the fuck out of the house. And here I sit, staring out the window, no good to anyone in my businesses. No good to myself.
I pull up the house cameras on my laptop and watch the goings-on in my home. The cleaners are there. Come to think of it, I’ve never once paid attention to faces. The company was vetted, fingerprinted, and signed the NDA. I’ve never even considered their employees.
Ayla works in her studio. The redhead is in a stare down with that damn eagle.The Eye of the Stormwas a more appropriate name than I could’ve known. How fucking prophetic.
I wish there was something I could do to get out of my head, out of the torment, away from the sadness or the hurt I refuse to feel.
Anger is easier. Anger is cleaner. Anger is me fighting back, not me being played by someone I trusted.
Vibration from my desk draws my attention from my melancholy. Cian Murphy’s name flashes across the screen before I direct the call to voicemail. It immediately rings again, and again, I do the same.
Cian Murphy: Answer the damn phone, Barone.
Oh joy. My day is getting better and better. Even my own sarcasm falls flat.
When the phone rings again, I answer. “Yeah.”
“Yeah? Fuck you, Christian.”
“Okay. But what did I do this time to warrant the anger and mistrust of a Murphy?”
