Page 33 of Scandalously Yours

Alessia

In the weeks that had followed Boston, I tried to put Kristopher’s soon-to-be ex and her little visit out of my mind. Something about the way she said the word “secrets” had me slightly fearful. Not of the man I loved, per se, but of what those could be, and why she seemed to think they could tear us apart. I even was concerned about the other woman she had mentioned, and waited about two weeks to ask him, and that had only been when my curiosity had become too pressing to ignore.

It’d been one of the nights when we had both gotten off of work, and instead of being able to go out and eat dinner together, he had ordered us dinner from the Seaport Grille. He told me that one of the Titans owned the resort, and that it’d been the same one that owned the place where we had first met in the Bahamas. The restaurant was now owned and run by the man’s wife. Everyone seemed to belong to this big circle, and I was on the outside of the perimeter, looking in.

“I want to ask you something, but you need to promise not to get mad at me,” I’d said.

“You can ask me anything.” he assured me, and I wasn’t sure he would feel the same once I got the question out.

“When Hayley came to—”

“Why would you ruin a perfectly good conversation by bringing her into it?”

I giggled, but then sobered immediately. “She said something that has been sitting in my head for a while now.”

“What did she tell you?”

I had told him some of the conversation I’d had with her, but not all. “She said you almost made a girl kill herself. She was lying, right?”

That had been the night that things seemed to change for us. He’d explained a little about how he was back in high school. It was unfathomable, and I couldn’t wrap my head around him being that sort of jerk, especially knowing the man that he was now. If the words hadn’t come out of his own mouth, I wouldn’t have believed him. Kris told me about the various bets he would do with others, and detailed exactly what the one with Jonas Courtland had been. It sounded a lot like one of those teen rom-coms that I used to watch with friends back in Providence, but with a darker twist. It was one thing to have made the bet, but then to have been the one to release the tape for the entire school to see was another.

That poor girl. My heart went out to her, so imagine my surprise when I later found out that the woman was Kenzie Courtland. A few years back, she had reunited with Jonas, and they’d forgiven each other. More importantly, Kenzie had forgiven him, however, I could tell from his tone that he hadn’t quite done the same for himself. As terrible as the whole bet had sounded, it couldn’t have been too bad if the two ended up married. Hayley must not have thought Kris would give me the whole story, and had thrown that out there to intimidate me. That tale was one thing, but she’d also mentioned secrets which I asked him about right after.

“I’m an open book, Ale.” I found that hard to believe then, and I still did weeks later.

“Everyone has secrets of some kind,” I had told him another night as I laid on my bed with the phone to my ear. “Even I have some, I’m sure.”

“What are yours?” he’d asked, and I heard the hint of concern in his voice.

“Well, let’s just say that the one I did the surrogacy for is famous.” I shouldn’t have even said that much, but I didn’t tell him how the couple reached fame. It could’ve been any number of people. Maybe it was my own naivety, but I hoped by sharing something, he would feel comfortable enough to do the same.

“That’s pretty cool. I’m guessing you might have seen the child since then though because of the parents. How does that make you feel?”

“Unh uh,” I told him. “That’s cheating.”

“What is?” He was laughing now because I could hear it in his voice. God, how I loved seeing his smile and hearing his laughter.

“You’re trying to change the subject.”

“Okay,” he admitted. “You’ve got me. I have a huge secret.”

“You do?” I sat up in bed and waited for the confession.

“I’m in a secret relationship with someone I wish I could hold right now,” he’d started to say, then stopped.

“Just hold?” I knew where this was going, and I had been right.

Kristopher went on to detail the number of things he would do to me if we were together in that moment. While his naughty words aroused me, they also gutted me because we couldn’t do those things right now. He had mentioned seeing an investigator tailing him, and he thought it might have been the one who caught us together in Boston. We couldn’t be alone together at all. Not now, or at the hospital. I wanted to kiss him in the worst way, and feel his hands roaming every inch of my body as he promised. I also wanted him to thrust into me, and bring me to an orgasm I didn’t have to use a toy to achieve.

This was worse than being single as far as I was concerned. It was absolute torture. Oftentimes, I found myself at the hospital watching him from afar. I’d see his interactions with the other doctors, nurses, and medical professionals, and I had been envious that it couldn’t be me. To make things easier, I had started filling in overnight for one of the doctors who was out on his own medical leave. That ensured that I would only catch a glimpse of Kristopher when one of us was leaving, and the other arriving.

There’d been so many other nights as well. We would talk to each other for hours. He told me about his life in Texas, and what it was like growing up a cowboy. I couldn’t imagine him riding a horse, but he had managed to send me pictures of it. Those were things that I treasured, and they were also the things that made me cry. Right now, we could be building those same kind of memories together. We could be taking selfies like other couples in love, and just being with one another, but he wasn’t divorced yet, and his ex was a maniac.

Now tonight, I was curled up on the sofa listening to him talk about places he wanted to go. I wanted to be there beside him, but with the current circumstances, all we could do was dream. I was tired of living in a fantasy world. All I wanted was the man I love to sit next to me and threaten to steal the blanket. He’d insist on watching some action movie when I wanted to see the newest release featuring one of his best friends. We’d fight over the popcorn flavors. I would want it drenched in butter, where he would prefer something lighter. We’d fight for the remote control, and it’d somehow get lost in the blanket which would end up on the floor. In the end, it wouldn’t matter because we would make out on the couch before going into the bedroom where movies, popcorn, life, and everything else would be forgotten as we made love all night long.

“That’s a great picture you paint there,” he told me as soon as I finished describing it.

“It just doesn’t seem like it’ll ever come true.” I hated to be the doubter, but sometimes you had to face reality, no matter how bleak it seemed.

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