11

School sucked. More specifically, being back at school after spending a night and day at the beach, made being back there that much worse. I already had short-timers syndrome. Knowing that there were mere weeks separating me from my degree, and getting that shiny new diploma in my hand, made it feel like I had already done all the work necessary.

My professors failed to agree with me though. So, I found myself loaded down with two more papers to turn in, along with exams to study for. I had not been one of those students who saved the worst, or hardest, courses until the end, thankfully, but the ones I did have to complete were still required, and I valued my GPA enough to want to do well.

I had been back from Florida for four days by the time my parents realized there had been negative press about their new son-in-law's adventures with other women. Four days, in which I peacefully moved through my classes, and studying while ordering takeout to the hotel room I'd been staying in before someone thought to check on me.

At first, it was just a simple phone call from my mom. When I wouldn't tell her anything, there had apparently been numerous visits to Tucker's apartment, and since he was in Finland hooking up with women who were not me, there was no one there to answer the door. That was when the panicked texts started, the ones demanding to know where I was staying and why I wasn't at home.

Instead of putting Bea in the middle of things, as I usually did, I decided to face the music and finally went to see my father. His office wasn't all too far from the campus where I attended college, so once my last class of the day was over, I made my way there. The minute I walked through the door, Gabby, his receptionist for the past fifteen years, smiled brightly at me. "Mina, your father will be so pleased to see you," she announced.

It was nothing for her to say that. Actually, she said this every single time I came to visit my father at work, and it never failed to be the truth. My father might have been business-centric, with questionable judgment in business partners, but he loved his family and was always happy to see us.

"Mina Katherine Robeson!" He growled when he came out of his office after Gabby announced me. It startled both of us, as her eyes came up to mine, looking larger than life. She had never heard my father three-name me, much less sound angry while doing it. To be honest, I couldn't remember the last time I heard him do it either.

"Technically, it's Tucker, for now," I countered with a bit too much sass for my father's liking.

"You are never too old to be taken over my knee," was his response. An odd one at that, because I couldn't remember a time when my father had ever spanked my butt. I was the youngest child, and therefore, I was pretty sure he was over the spankings when they never worked on my brother, who was his oldest.

"What exactly do I deserve a spanking for?"

"You have had your mother worried to death about you."

"I don't see why. I told you both that I was perfectly fine."

"She went by that apartment looking for you, and no one is ever home."

"Dad, Tucker is out of the country, and I have been staying elsewhere."

"I'm not out of the country any longer," another voice boomed from down the hall where my father had left his office door open. I ignored that and turned to my father, giving him the evil eye.

"What is he doing here?"

"He came to plead his case with me, in the hopes that I would tell him where you were staying."

"You didn't know where I was staying," I informed my father, as if he wasn't aware of that fact.

"He didn't know that, now did he?" My father chuckled then, and I wondered if maybe the stress of merging his business with the Brighton's was finally taking its toll on him. Surely, he couldn't actually want to help the man who had cheated on his daughter, whether we had an arranged marriage of convenience or not.

"Why don't the two of you use my office and talk while I go out to grab some lunch?" My father glanced down at the watch on his wrist. "I should be about an hour or so, I think."

It took a moment for my brain to engage and realize that my father was throwing me under the bus and trying to force me to meet with my husband. Clearly, neither one of them knew me well enough. Instead of giving in to what they wanted, I spun on my heel and marched my ass right back to the elevator, that thankfully, still sat open. The minute I got on; I pushed the door close button - repeatedly - until the things slid shut as Tucker ran to try to catch it before it happened.

He did not make it, and I enjoyed the peace and quiet of the ride all the way to the ground floor. The moment the door opened; I took off like the building was burning down behind me. Childish? Yes. I was not in the mood to deal with whatever bullshit my wayward husband had to spew though. I bet you're asking yourself how I know that it would be bullshit he spewed at me. Well, wouldn't you think the same thing?

Unfortunately for me, I had not driven to the office. I had walked because it was a lovely afternoon, and why not? Why not, indeed. I was going to have to remember that this was the 'why not' whenever I debated the merits of walking again. Still, I attempted a swift getaway by power walking as quickly as my tiny little size five feet could carry me. Thankfully, I had at least worn sensible shoes and wouldn't have to deal with blisters later.

"Mina!" Tucker's voice called out from somewhere behind me. Surely, he wouldn't approach me, or attempt to have it out with me in public, on the street, just outside of my father's offices. No way could he be that stupid. "Mina, slow down!" Well, that was something no one had ever asked me to do in this lifetime. Slow down. I laughed at the thought that I could ever be speedy enough for someone to…

"Fine, keep walking, it doesn't matter since I already caught up," he taunted from beside me where he wasn't having a bit of trouble keeping up with me. Damn it! Couldn't a short girl catch just one break in life? "I get it. You're mad." Was it possible to growl and not make a sound? If so, that's what I did. Part of me wanted to just claw him to pieces for saying that and the other part of me wanted to curl up in a corner somewhere and cry for the girl who never got to know what a normal relationship was. Not that it was his fault, since he didn't force me to choose this.

"I'm sorry, okay?" He sounded sincere as he apologized, but that didn't matter. Apologies wouldn't wipe away people's opinions, and once I spilled my soul to Luna, I realized that part of my reason for not wanting to be made a fool of in front of the world had a lot to do with that one awful day from my past. It was because the same people who had once befriended me, for the sole purpose of making a mockery of me, might see it. I didn't want them to have that satisfaction.

Even if what Tucker did wasn't something that broke my heart, since I barely knew him, they didn't know that. I was well aware that none of them, or their opinions should ever matter to me. In a perfect world, in a perfect head, maybe they wouldn't. There was a part of me who was still that wounded girl, tied to a chair, while people laughed about how my body looked prepubescent even though I was in college. Damn it. I shouldn't have been thinking about them again. I swiped angrily at the tear that escaped, along with the memory. If only the memory was as easily wiped away.

"Mina," my name was a whispered plea, but one that I ignored as I kept moving toward the hotel where I'd been staying without saying a word to him. "Please, don't cry. I'm sorry. I want to explain. I need to… I don't know… How do I make it better?"

I stopped dead in my tracks then, which meant that Tucker got two steps ahead of me before he realized and turned around. "This," I pointed to my face, "is NOT about you. Not everything is about you. Now, are you here to tell me when and where to sign whatever is necessary to annul our marriage?"

"Of course not," he insisted.

"Then we have nothing to discuss."

"Mina, I don't want an annulment."

"I didn't want you to break your promise and make me look like a laughingstock in the news either, but hey we don't always get what we want in life."

"I said I was sorry."

"Sorry doesn't fix things!" The words were yelled at him, and angrily so. Then I reached out and grabbed the cell phone he had cradled in his hand and I threw the thing. I walked over to where it landed, pieces of the glass scattered around the ground thanks to the force. Then I looked at the phone and spoke, "I'm sorry."

I glanced back at a shocked Tucker. "Well, what do you know? Saying 'I'm sorry,' didn't fix your phone. It's not going to fix what you did to me either." I glanced around and noticed that a woman parked in the car beside us was filming with her cell phone and I flipped her off, then turned in a huff and started walking away as Tucker stopped to pick up the bulk of his shattered phone.

Instead of saying anything else to me when he caught up again, Tucker just walked alongside me until I got to the cheap, no-name motel where I'd been staying. He stood there, shocked for a moment as I climbed the outdoor steps to the second level. I would most likely have to find somewhere else to stay, because there was no telling who was witnessing this, or where their cameras were pointed. Instead, I quickly unlocked my door and entered.

Tucker followed before I could close the door on him. Too bad for that bit of shit luck. Once he was inside, he locked the door behind him and then glanced around, taking in the whole of the room. It had one bed, a queen, and a little table with two chairs off to the side. Then it had the standard nightstand on one side of the bed. An outdated floor lamp on the other and a dresser with a flatscreen television on top of it, were situated in front of the bed. Just beside the TV was a little refrigerator with a microwave on top of it and a single-cup, drip coffee maker was nestled in a tray on the microwave, which rounded out the 'kitchen' part of the room. Off to the side of that was the sink and mirror with a little door that led to where the tub-shower combo and a toilet were contained in their own itty-bitty space. When I say contained, I meant it. The space was so small that I had to practically stand inside the tub in order to get the door shut before I could use the toilet. Thankfully, since it had just been me staying there, I hadn't needed to shut the door for privacy.

"You've been staying here?"

"Obviously," I called back as I moved through the room and picked up my dirty laundry that had been scattered around the floor. It wasn't like I had to care what anyone thought of my housekeeping skills, and honestly, I usually made a mess when I overslept and was running late for school. That always happened when I stayed up too late writing on my story.

"Mina, why didn't you just stay at the apartment?"

"Because I didn't want to see you, and since I asked for an annulment, it didn't seem like a smart thing to do to stay in an apartment that didn't belong to me."

"I told you, I don't want an annulment."

"And I told you, that you don't always get what you want."

"Can you at least let me explain?"

"Why? What's the point in doing that? It happened. You were very publicly with someone else," I accused, and he didn't deny it. "You were seen carrying on with another woman. There were tons of pictures, and then there was the article that followed it up about how someone in your company, or was it your family, basically told that girl to seduce you. That was a lot of fun to read, especially knowing that her hard work definitely wasn't for nothing."

"Mina," that time, his voice came out on a defeated sigh."I spent an entire summer with Venla last year. She was the one person, from my past, who I thought might be the one to settle down with."

"Great. Fantastic. Then you already have my replacement picked out, only you already know that you're at least attracted to her. So, even better for you."

"I don't want Venla!" He yelled at me.

I turned to face him. "Why the hell not? You wanted her just fine last week."

He sighed and sat on the edge of my bed. I just stood there, with an armful of dirty laundry and watched him as he tried to get his breathing under control, or whatever it was he was sitting there doing. "I admit that after a few drinks, when they showed up, I allowed her to get too close to me. I remembered our time together the previous summer and how simple and good it all felt. There was no work needed. No constant worry that I was fucking up with her. She was just easy to be with."

Every word coming out of his mouth, that celebrated how good he had it with her, was also a punch to the gut because it meant the opposite was true of me. "We were reminiscing and drinking. Things got a little out of hand and Wes suggested we take the party up to the room so that no one would be able to see the display we were making."

"Good for Wes, at least he tried to keep your affair discreet for you."

"It wasn't like that. He knew that's all we were doing was taking a walk down memory lane. Hell, the only reason I even had a fleeting thought to be with her was to get back at them." Get back at them? I wondered about that briefly but thought it better to point out reality to my husband.

"I've taken walks down memory lane and they didn't involve people sitting on my lap or being snuggled up in a tight embrace while waiting for an elevator to my private room."

"You're right, and I apologize for the fact that it ever happened like that. I would blame the alcohol for loosening my inhibitions and making me do stupid shit, but the stupid shit started with the fact that I even thought it was a good idea to get intoxicated in a public place. Everything else snowballed from that lapse in judgement. I take full responsibility for my actions."

"I don't think you get it," I explained again. "You taking full responsibility doesn't keep me from looking like the punk-ass wife sitting at home while you happily carry on affairs around the world, and don't care who sees."

"You're right. I can't fix it, and for that I am even more sorry than you will ever know." He sighed again and looked away. "I won't tell you nothing happened with her, because I won't lie, or insult your intelligence. But it wasn't what you're probably thinking either. We kissed. She kissed me, and I let it happen, because damn it she was the woman I had planned on marrying not even a year ago. Being intoxicated helped me forget why it was that I never got around to asking her to marry me." He sat on the edge of my bed and rested his head in his hands for a moment.

"I stopped things from going any further. Told her that I was drunk and so was she, and that it wasn't going to happen. She stayed though. Her friends were in the bedroom with Wes, so we slept on the pullout sofa. That's all we did, I promise." I just stared at him, as if kissing another woman, having her publicly sit on his lap, or so obviously taking her to his room wasn't enough? Hell, they slept together in the same damn bed. I was married to the man and hadn't even slept in the same room with him before. Didn't he realize what he was saying to me? How much it hurt, even if we were only together as a business arrangement? "The next morning, when her friend woke her up to show her the pictures, and she saw the caption about me being married, she freaked out."

"Did she not notice the ring on your finger?" I asked, and don't think I'm stupid, after I came home from Florida and checked into the hotel, one of the first things I did was go over those pictures with a fine-tooth comb, and one thing I did not see in them was my husband's wedding ring. He had taken it off at some point. So, no matter how sorry he pretended to be, the man had gone out that night expecting to fuck up. Otherwise, why leave his ring behind?

The guilty look on his face as I asked that question told me everything I needed to know. "I was angry," he commented. "You wouldn't even speak to me before I left."

"I didn't speak to you, that's true. I also didn't cheat on you at any point, even though I had every reason to."

He hung his head as his shoulders slumped forward. Then, I guess he felt compelled to finish his story, despite not directly answering the question I'd asked. There was no need for him to confirm or deny that his wedding ring hadn't been on his finger, and he knew it. "Venla was so angry. She had no clue that I had been married. I know this, because she screamed it at me. She said she never would have agreed to seduce me if she thought it was to ruin a marriage. She yelled, threw things, and then apologized to you - through me - for her part in everything. That's why her friend did that interview, to make sure you knew that she apologized and would never have done it if she had known about you."

"Well, good for Venla. The fact that she didn't know still means you're the prick who was out there pretending you were single. The least you could have done was to be honest with her upfront that you were married, but that you didn't give a shit about the wife you left at home. Then it would have been her decision to make."

"You say that like she didn't get paid to set me up. She had to know something bad was about to happen, if someone paid her to sleep with me."

I shrugged. "That part of the equation isn't my problem. You, and your actions, are."

"You're right, but you were just defending her. She wasn't innocent. Hell, the whole reason we broke up to begin with was because she betrayed me. I don't know why our marriage mattered to her when others never did," he insisted.

"Yeah, well, her actions weren't a direct reflection on me, yours were."

"I don't know what you want me to say here," he finally mumbled.

"There is literally nothing you can say or do that can make this better. It's one thing that you cheated, because that was part of the deal I signed on for, unfortunately. It's another that you didn't even care about the way you presented yourself in public. I feel like I'm beating a dead horse by saying this again."

"First of all, I didn't cheat – not really. Secondly, why do you even care? You said yourself that you don't have any friends, so who's really going to judge you? The parents or siblings who know this is all bullshit smoke and mirrors anyway?"

"Get out!" I dumped the laundry that I had been holding the entire time, onto the bed, and walked over to the door, unlocked, and held it open.

"Mina, we need to talk through this."

"We just did, and now I'm done. Get out before I call the police to remove you."

"Just come home so we can talk it out. If you want me to promise to only fuck you in the future, I'll fucking agree to it. It has to be better than going through all this drama all the time."

I gasped in both shock and horror at how he had just presented that proposal. My reaction caught his attention, and he must have realized, by the loss of color in my complexion, that he had said the entirely wrong thing. "Fuck! I didn't mean it to sound that way," he muttered.

"Leave!"

He stood and moved toward the door. "Mina, this isn't over. Please, just don't fucking do this."

I said nothing. Instead, I stood there stoically, waited for him to leave, and then I eased the door closed, locked it, and picked up my cell phone before the first tear fell. "I need my friend," I said the moment she picked up.

"I'll be there in ten minutes," Luna assured me.