The show comes back on, and I settle back into the warm indentation waiting for me on the sofa cushion when the faint chime of the doorbell interrupts the fight that’s about to break out on screen.
I don’t hear the shower running anymore, so I think Ace is out, but I doubt he’s appropriate yet, so I pop up and tromp downstairs to get the groceries.
“Just a minute,” I call out, taking the steps two at a time and almost tripping over my makeup case, which I forgot I’d left at the bottom of the landing.
Flinging the door open, I expect to be met by a man in a grocery store uniform lugging several bags worth of food.
Instead it’s a woman.
Hair the color of onyx.
Eyes like wild violets.
“Who are you?” she asks, a single brow arched.
I stand before her paralyzed, unable to speak.
The thumping of Ace’s feet coming down the stairs behind me almost drowns out the pounding of my heart in my ears.
“Kerenza,” Ace says. “What are you doing here?”
Kerenza?
It’s her.
It’s “K.”
I was right. I was right all along.
The woman with the violet eyes stares at me, her glare cold and incredulous. She looks at me like I don’t belong here, like she didn’t expect to see me and she wants me gone. I know women can get territorial sometimes, like yippy little harmless Chihuahuas, but this woman looks to me like she could be quite the opposite of harmless.
She looks downright vicious.
Beautiful and vicious, but vicious nonetheless.
“Alessio,” she says, smoothing a manicured hand down a silk blouse; white with tiny black polka dots.
Her nails are red; the color of broken hearts.
“Why are you here?” I hear the grit in his voice, and if I looked at him right now, I’m sure I’d see a clench in his smooth jaw.
My eyes are trained on Kerenza. She’s easily one of the most attractive women I’ve seen in my life, and that says a lot, because given my line of work, I’ve seen more of them than the average person.
Tall and lithe, everything about her is refined, even the way she flicks her long black hair over one shoulder. Her delicate wrist holds a tiny gold watch encrusted in diamonds, and her waist is whittled to a narrow point before blossoming to femininely curved hips that would make Marilyn Monroe green with envy.
“You’re not welcome here,” Ace says, his voice resonating in the small foyer we share. “You need to leave. Now.”
“I was hoping we could talk.” Kerenza tries to smile, her eyes searching his. I’ve suddenly become an afterthought to her. “I . . . I saw you on TV. I read your interview in the Times. I’m glad to see you’re doing better. I thought maybe it would be important if we . . .”
“What, just because you chose him and he left you, you want to come crawling back?” Ace spits his words at her, and when I glance up at him, I see his expression is hard and his blue-green gaze flashes intense.
Kerenza’s crimson lips form a fleeting smile. “I’m not crawling back, Alessio. We had something. Something real. And the way things ended . . . there were a lot of loose ends that need to be tied up.”
Ace scoffs, and then he looks down at me, expression softening when our eyes meet.
“You had your chance. You made your choice,” he says to her, his hand moving to the small of my back and his fingers hooking around my hip.
“Wait,” she says, holding a dainty hand in the air as he slams the door in her face.
“Fuck.” Ace’s voice is a deep roar that echoes off the walls in the small landing and sends a tremor through my body. I jump back, startled. His jaw is clenched, and there’s a bulging vein in his forehead I’ve never seen on him before. He takes a balled fist, driving it toward the wall in front of him, stopping before he smashes through. And then he turns to me, breathless, eyes pleading for forgiveness. “I’m sorry, Aidy.”
“It was her, wasn’t it?” I ask. “She’s the one who did this to you. It wasn’t the accident or losing your career. It was her all along.”
“It was a little bit of everything.” His words are careful, yet his tone is defeated, doing nothing to keep my heart from shattering into a million pieces.
We were having a lovely evening, and he wasn’t expecting to see her. I can be sympathetic to that.
But I want the truth from him once and for all, so I’m going to ask the hard questions.
And I’m going to demand answers.
“The journal was yours. You knew it all along. Admit it,” I say, arms folded. My mind flicks through memorized excerpts from the journal. Everything fits. Everything matches up perfectly. “I don’t care that it was, I just don’t want to be lied to.”
“No,” he says, turning to me, his eyes dark. “I told you. It wasn’t mine. I’d never seen it before in my life.”
“You’re a liar.” My accusation shocks us both, and I take a step back, covering my lips with my trembling fingertips.
Ace’s head angles to the side, his brows furrowed enough to cause a deep line between them.
“Why would I lie?” he asks, voice low. He’s seething, his shoulders rising and falling like some surly animal’s.
“I don’t know?” I shrug. “Because there are some really personal things in that journal. The kinds of things people don’t tell other people. You’re a private person, Ace. I’ve known that about you since day one. You don’t let anyone in. You don’t even let me in most of the time, and we’ve been hanging out almost every day for weeks and weeks. And now I see why you’ve been so walled off. It’s because of her.”
I want him to argue with me. I want him to tell me I’m wrong and that I’m being ridiculous and that I don’t know what I’m talking about.
But he says nothing.
My eyes burn hot, brimming quickly with salted tears.
I’m not usually one of those girls – the kind that cry at the drop of a hat over every little hardship thrown their way. I’m not one of those girls who tend to make dramatic productions over everything. I’m not one of those girls who make a habit out of testing her boyfriend, pushing him away to see how hard he’ll pull her back.
But I’m desperate here. I’m grasping for straws. The reality of the past several weeks is slipping through my fingers like sand, and everything I thought we had feels like it’s disintegrating before my very eyes.
“Maybe,” he says, “but not in the way you think.”
There we have it.
The truth.
He is holding back because of her.
That’s all I need to hear. No explanation necessary. Before I say another word, I’m tromping up the stairs, grabbing my purse and my shoes.
“Where are you going?” he follows.
“Save it.”
“What? Why?” Ace scoffs, throwing his hands in the air before running them through his still-damp hair, pulling fistfuls as he groans. “Aidy, don’t do this. It’s not what you think. I’m not in love with her anymore. And that fucking journal isn’t mine.”
My jaw slacks as our eyes meet. He’s still lying. He’s lying to my face.
“I can’t be with someone who can’t even be honest with himself.” I face him at the top of the stairs. My bottom lip quivers. “You know, every time I’ve tried to ask you about your past, you shut me down. And when I ask about your family? Your brothers? You don’t talk about them. It all makes sense now. You can’t talk about them, or your past, without thinking about her.”