“You probably shouldn’t do that,” I say quietly, half sleep ridden.
“Probably,” he agrees.
“I shouldn’t be here.”
“No?”
Keeping my eyes closed, I shake my head and listen to the movie. “We both know I shouldn’t. Your wife…” My throat hurts and tears threaten to spill suddenly from my eyes. “I don’t know why I’m doing this to myself.”
His hands stop moving. “Lena and I aren’t … we’re a bit complicated to explain, Kinley. The public doesn’t really understand situations like ours.”
I can’t help but laugh dryly. There’s a line in my book between Ryker and Beck that sounds an awful lot like this. You can’t always predict when your story becomes relatable, but somehow, I walked right into this narrative.
Literally.
“How’s that?” I play along.
To my surprise, his hands begin moving again as he explains. “Lena comes from a very traditional family. When we started dating, things got serious fast. Expectations were heavy despite our careers pulling us in different directions, but we both wanted more.”
I won’t lie and say it hurts to hear him talk about the woman he married. A woman who isn’t me. Nobody wants to hear about how their ex moved on, complicated relationship or not.
“We rushed into a marriage that neither of us second guessed because we thought it was what was best,” he continues softly. With my eyes still closed, I wonder if he’s looking at me or staring at the TV hoping he won’t see the crushed expression on my face. “Her family helped plan the wedding and in no time we were saying our vows. Things got … intense. Between work, married life, you name it. We’ve barely spent more than a few months together in the years we’ve been married. Our jobs keep us busy. We try making it work and meeting up when we can, but it isn’t that simple. This year we decided it may not be worth the hassle.”
My entire body locks up.
“But like I said. Her family is traditional.”
Now I’m hyperaware of the conversation we’re having. My eyes open but stay focused in front of me instead of at the man who’s divulging secrets that clearly nobody else knows. Wetting my dry lips, I try evening my heartbeat that’s racing from the unknown.
“Lena can’t get divorced without repercussions from her family. She’s worried about what they’ll say when they find out it didn’t work out between us. Her father is strict, her mother tried getting her to reconsider from the beginning. It…”
I hold my breath.
“It wasn’t my biggest mistake in life,” he admits, blowing out a breath. “Because Lena is what I needed for a while. She became something I could focus on without looking back. I’m a selfish man for that, but it wasn’t any different for her. We clicked, had some things in common, but it wasn’t meant to work out.”
I ask, “How do you know?”
“Because we could have tried harder to make it work and decided not to,” he answers instantly. “This project has meant more to me than I realized it would. I knew I wanted to be on it as soon as my agent told me it was an adaptation of your book, Kinley. Being able to see you again? Bring something you did to life? It just felt like something I needed to be part of.”
I sit up and stare at him.
He shrugs and looks at me. “What I didn’t realize at the time was that this story is beyond you and me. It started out as a way to have you in my life again when I thought I needed the opposite in order to stop thinking about you. But then I read the script and I realized that Lena and I are no different than Beck and Ian. We both settled for a happiness we thought we could achieve while pining for other things. This industry feeds off failed relationships, so normally a divorce would only be front page news for a day before the next scandal happened. It isn’t like that for her and me though.”
I try wrapping my head around what he’s saying. “Are you really staying married to someone you don’t love because of what other people will think?”
“Kinley, it’s not that simple.”
“When I wrote Beck and Ian’s storyline, I did it because I wanted to show that some people felt like settling was their punishment for the things they did in the past.” I draw my legs in and wrap my arms around my bent knees. “Beck blames herself for not loving Ryker the way he wanted her to when they were younger. She chose to move on and experience what it’s like to live and date and get attention from other people. You know what she felt?”
“Lonely,” he answers audibly.
I nod once. “Yes. Lonely. Beck knew how much Ian loved her which is why she thought she could find that same love for him as time passed. Why wouldn’t she? He’s a kind, supportive, caring person. In every way, they’re perfect for each other. But she knows that there are other people meant for them—not just how Ryker has always been meant for her, but that some lucky girl out there is meant for Ian. Settling for people that you think you can be happy with just means taking away other people’s happiness.”
“Why?”
I blink. “Why what?”
“Why would Beck blame herself for not loving Ryker from the start? Any logical person would want what she did. Anyone would choose to go out and live their lives instead of being saddled with someone as intense as Ryker.”
“That’s not how love works, Corbin.”
He cocks his head. “Then tell me how it works. Explain it to me, Little Bird, because I’m clearly not following. You say that love is painful and nearly impossible to find. You believe that there’s a right time and place for everything, and that if it doesn’t work out then that’s all there is to it. What happens then?”
My lips part … then close.
“I’ll tell you what,” he says, grabbing my leg and pulling me forward. I yelp when my butt grazes his thigh and his hand grips one of my legs while the other awkwardly spreads to make room for his body as he leans forward.
“Corbin—”
“We fuck up. Over. And over. And over.” He twists his body so he’s between my thighs, hands resting on other side of my torso as he hovers over me. “You said it best. We’ll keep making mistakes because we don’t want to learn. Are you going to deny that you haven’t thought about us? Felt anything for me? Remembered what it was like when we were together?”
My hands shake as they find his chest, but I don’t have the energy to push him away like I mean to. “Are you really asking me that? I’m not the one who walked away! You are. Don’t ask me stupid questions about if I remember what it was like because you know I do. You know how much it hurts that there’s not one thing I’ve forgotten. It fucking haunts me, Corbin. How much I gave to you, expected from you, it hurts so bad that I want to rip my heart out until it’s clean of you.”
“Windows of opportunity open and close all the time in this industry,” he tells me without any real emotion spattered across his face. “If you stop for even a second then you become irrelevant.”
I’m not sure why he says that. “You’ve never been irrelevant, Corbin.”
His hand brushes my cheek. “Not to you, Little Bird. Never to you. But the world I threw myself into? That’s different. If I called you sooner, came home sooner, I would have had nothing to show for leaving in the first place.”