THE DOOR CLOSED quietly behind Anais, and Quinn couldn’t do anything but stand there and stare—first at the door, then at the engagement ring he’d so carefully picked out for her all those years ago, like another target on his new metal and stone coffee table.
Muscles across his shoulders and down his arms twitched with readiness, tempting him to attack it as she had the last one, but before he could cross the room for the weapon that burst of violent energy left him and he dropped to sit on the thing instead.
When he’d come into the room, he’d known it was about to go up in flames, but it had been his own frustration that had lit the spark. His mouth. Four more days and he could’ve handled this entirely differently. Everything would’ve been okay because he wouldn’t have had to look for ways to relieve her fear and get her to the altar too. But tonight…he hadn’t known which one to focus on. Looked like he’d picked wrong.
He needed solutions.
She loved him. She’d all but admitted it and, even if it would’ve been nice for her to say it once this whole time, he knew it without the words.
Rosalie had been the weapon to use on Ben, because he loved her.
His pain had worked on Grandfather, also based on love.
But not Anais. Why not her?
She’d been upset when she’d rung him earlier, asking to meet him, but, like a big dumb ostrich, he’d decided to assume she was just having another harmless Ratliffe episode and wanted to see him for comfort. He didn’t even think breaking up had been on her mind until he’d let the video slip…after he’d failed once again to present solutions when she’d reached out to him.
When was he going to stop doing that?
He replayed the conversation in his mind, looking for something he might have missed. Tonight—he needed solutions tonight. Tomorrow she might speak to the press and the wedding really would be off.
His heart jerked and began to pound. With shaking hands, he grabbed the engagement ring off the table and slid it onto the upper segment of his left middle finger—the finger he’d intended to wear his wedding ring. It helped somehow. Not as much as her hand in his helped every other time he was upset, but…
She’d already been upset, but she must have thought there had to be a solution or she wouldn’t have started the conversation.
Or maybe she’d just been imagining how it could go down from any destructive angle she could, dreaming up new ways to terrify herself. She hadn’t yet had time to process the knowledge of the video. His chest squeezed as the ghostly image of her foundered around the living room. Even when she’d talked about his hand, she hadn’t been that…broken by it.
What was on that video?
His gaze slid across the miles of white that seemed to stretch between him and the bedroom.
Not watching it, not looking at the pictures, had seemed like the respectful thing to do. That was what he’d told himself. Now it seemed like another instance of him ignoring problems so he didn’t have to deal with them.
Even the thought of watching it made his skin crawl.
The video’s very existence had annoyed him since he’d learned about it, and it had taken three shots of rum to soothe his rage after he’d watched only enough to verify that it had been Anais on the film.
Ten years ago, she’d have been seventeen, and he’d assumed she’d been that or older then. Over a decade? Best case scenario was sixteen. Sixteen.
Sending Ratliffe too far away for him to drive over and beat him to death tonight might have been the best decision he’d made since coming home.
With a churning stomach, he forced himself into the bedroom, and through the deafening clicks of the safe dial. Portable hard drive in hand, he loaded it on his computer.
The yellow indoor light on the dingy white walls in the video did nothing to detract attention from the girl drinking and grimacing from the tumbler of dark liquid in her hand. He’d hoped maybe she’d only been so recognizable because he’d been looking for her, and hyper-alert to the situation the first time he’d turned it on, but she was unmistakable.
“Is this alcohol?” she asked.
Ratliffe confirmed, while taunting her in the same breath. Would she prefer a kiddie cocktail? Chocolate milk maybe?
Damn, that was slick…
The look on her face as she stared at the drink, first weighing her options and then determined. The way she looked at him said she was on to him, but she still went along with it, drinking it and asking for another.
Why?
If she’d been sixteen, he’d be surprised. It felt wrong and dirty to watch it now, knowing that the evening had at least gone as far as nudity. His skin squeezed too tight for his body, almost as viciously as his stomach squeezed.
What was teenage Anais getting out of any of this?
Pausing the video, he went ahead to the bar and poured himself a rum. Was this how she’d used the drink, to deaden herself to whatever she’d been going to do? Had she come to the apartment just to take pictures?
He didn’t want to watch it.
He took the bottle with him back to the desk, knowing it wouldn’t be his last for the night. When he’d downed the shot, he sat and started the video again.
She talked very little, but Wayne went on about exploits he obviously thought would impress her. Wrong. That wasn’t her impressed face.
The man refilled her glass when she asked, then trotted out a camera to show her.
Still staying…for some reason he couldn’t understand. The more she drank, the less bored she looked, but she still didn’t look as if she liked him at all, but she did fake it. She twirled her hair around one finger. Anais wasn’t a hair-twirler.
Forced flirting. As if she’d read “twirl your hair” in a How to Flirt book.
Another surge of rage raised the hairs on the back of his neck and he took another drink of the rum, watching the scene unfold before him.
Over the next twenty minutes, she went from quiet kid with her first drink, to obviously drunk and desperate for Ratliffe’s approval.
By the time the man joined her on the bed and Anais’s clothes started coming off Quinn understood why it had happened. She’d said it to him a million times, but all those times it had sounded like such an inconsequential thing to him. Not something Anais, his strong, brilliant wife, could really be hurt by.
“I don’t fit.”
“They won’t accept me.”
“The only thing that’s ever been acceptable about me is my intelligence.”
“You can’t know that it won’t change the way you see me. It was over a decade ago and it still affects the way I see myself!”
That one hurt the most because she was right; it did change things. Just not the way she thought.
It took an hour to speed through the rest, through rum and tears he grew too bereft to fight.
She’d posed while entirely nude, but was so innocent Ratliffe had to tell her how to show her body. He even arranged her on the bed at times. Eventually put the camera down and kissed her.
And she threw up immediately, all over the man’s lap.
He almost smiled, but then she passed out and his gut returned to churning while he waited to see what Ratliffe would do. He wasn’t that much older than her, but at that age…a few years made a big difference. He was more worldly, obviously. Seedier…
Quinn sped through, not relaxing at all until the man went to sleep beside her, and when she finally stirred Quinn choked on his own relief and slowed the video again.
She slid out of the bed, got up, got her clothes.
By the time Ratliffe woke and began making demands—talking about what she owed him—she was ready to go.
He blocked her path. Reached for her.
Quinn regretted the rum; his stomach lurched as he helplessly watched her scan the room for an escape.
It was just a room in a flat. Ratliffe blocked the only door.
She looked to the side, grabbed something and, without hesitation, smashed into his face.
The screen went strange and he realized his hands were latched onto the laptop, squeezing, as if he could reach in and grab her out.
What had she grabbed?
He forced his hands off the screen and the display smoothed back out.
Alcohol bottle—Quinn identified the weapon, then the transition. She’d gone from child to adult in that second.
Ratliffe staggered forward, his hands covering his cheek, blood running through his fingers, and she ran.
Not how he’d expected the video to end. Through his shock, he couldn’t help but feel proud of her.
She’d given him that scar. The scar that people would ask him about for the rest of his miserable life.
Wasted booze. No sex. Puked on. And a lifelong scar? Yeah, that’d cause a wicked grudge. And Quinn hadn’t known anything about their interactions when Ratliffe had come after her for money. In the retelling, she’d sanitized it, and he’d been so wrapped up in the revelation he hadn’t asked. And he’d let him go. Sent him on his way with money, even—something else for him to fix.
The video told him something else. She had it in her to fight for them, but she’d spent so long fighting for herself she probably didn’t know how to do anything but try and stay safe. Apply the lesson she’d learned.
Weight seemed to press down on the back of his neck and Quinn sagged into his chair as another realization hit him; he dropped his head into his hands.
He couldn’t force or coerce her into this.
He had to sign the papers.
* * *
The clock had long past struck midnight by the time Quinn had stopped reeling enough to think straight and start moving again.
Detective called, reports—minimal as they were—gathered, Ratliffe was still in his new flat in his new country.
Though he’d been unable to even contemplate sleep, he had managed to stop drinking in time to be sober enough to drive by eight the next morning, the absolute latest minute he could wait to go to her.
Sharon answered the door almost as soon as he rang the bell, the first thing he’d been thankful for in nearly fourteen hours.
“Oh, no, Quinton Corlow. The last time you came, you said you weren’t going to upset her, but you did. If you want to talk to my daughter, you can do it through a lawyer.”
She shoved at the door and he braced his shoulder against it. “Wait. I brought something Anais will want.” He lifted the bedraggled yellow envelope and held it up to the narrow opening so Sharon could see it. Divorce papers.
Hope was the only thing keeping him upright—that and a plan only an idiot would take comfort in.
It took a few tense seconds, but she begrudgingly opened the door and let him inside, calling over her shoulder, “Anais, Prince Quinton is here.”
Score one for Team Hope. Now just a few more…
Quinn followed the direction Sharon called and, to his surprise, Anais came around a corner from what he could only assume was the direction to the kitchen, considering the apron covering her torso and the flour dusting it.
“You’re baking?” He couldn’t help the question; he’d never really witnessed her doing much at all in the kitchen. She made an occasional burnt grilled cheese, but…
“I do that sometimes.”
As she neared, he could see from the circles under her red puffy eyes that she’d not slept either.
Another spark of hope.
“Can we talk?”
He breathed as slowly as he could, and hoped he didn’t pass out from lack of oxygen. She needed his confidence, even if it was a big fat lie right now.
She led the way up the stairs, another thing to be thankful for—this would be hard enough without his mother-in-law giving him the evil eye.
Once they’d stepped into her meticulously clean bedroom, he went to the desk, pulled out the chair and sat. Maybe that would help his agitated body need less oxygen. Also, his roiling stomach made it hard to keep steady on his feet.
Give her what she wants, then give her a reason to fight for them.
“You haven’t gone to the press yet, have you?”
She stopped in the middle of the room and wrapped her arms around herself the way he itched to. “I assumed you’d want to do that.”
Want to.
He sucked in a deep breath and felt his cheeks puff as he let it back out. “It’s probably better if all marriage announcements come through the palace.”
It was as diplomatic as he could be without lying to her, and he wasn’t going to lie to her. Not today. No matter how much easier it would be to make up some story about Ratliffe meeting an untimely and wholly satisfying “accident.”
She swayed on her feet, and he noticed she still wore yesterday’s clothing. Another nod to hope.
Give her what she wants.
Opening the battered envelope, he extracted the documents he knew she’d recognize, and held them out to her. “I signed them and checked with the attorney to make sure they’re still viable.”
She watched with uneasiness and pain he’d give the rest of his hand for the opportunity to soothe away.
“When will you file them?”
Give her a reason to fight for them.
“I’m not,” he said and, when she didn’t take them, he laid them with the envelope on her desk and turned back to her. “I’m leaving them for you to file.”
“Oh.” She braced for the hit he had to throw.
He’d do it while looking her in the eye, but he wouldn’t crowd her. He stood.
“I’m not doing this because I want a divorce. I don’t ever want to be apart from you. You deserve more than some sketchy mistress situation. You deserve to be my wife, Anais. We deserve to have a family together. But I can’t force you into this. Grandfather has my will held hostage by a promise, and it feels…”
“Bad,” she softly supplied when his words faltered.
“And like he’s not really living, even though the temporary port is fine until the new graft heals enough to use. Not living, just breathing. Existing. I don’t want that for you. I don’t want you afraid and unhappy, even if it means I get to have you with me.”
She shifted on her feet, her arms staying around her body though her hands pulled away, flexing and rolling at the wrist. Tense. “Thank you. That’s kinder than I deserve.”
The words hurt. “No, baby.” His voice broke and her eyes—those eyes he so loved—snapped to meet his, then widened at the tears he felt wetting his cheeks.
Make her fight for them.
Pulling the portable USB drive from his pocket, he let himself cross to her. Taking her hand almost broke him. It might be the last time she let him touch her, and he might be wasting it. Turning her hand over, he placed the storage device on her palm.
“The photos are in the envelope. I didn’t look at them.”
Her hand shook.
“But I did watch the video.”
Color drained from her face and she stepped back. “Why?” She would’ve pulled away if he hadn’t held fast, needing to keep the connection. It was the only thing that prevented that sharp knife he felt at his throat from carving into him.
“I needed to know what I was fighting. I’ve been doing what you and Philip both said I do—waiting for things to work out. You didn’t know what to tell people—to tell our children—if it came to public scrutiny. I do now.”
The short, soft, mirthless laugh said nothing could excuse this.
He tugged enough to get her closer so he could say words that should never be shouted.
“I’d say that feeling alone is terrible for anyone, let alone a child, but you were still strong enough to fight through it. I’d say an evil man hurt you, but you got away and never let it keep you from becoming the amazing woman you are. I’d say…we all make bad decisions when we’re hurting, and that’s the reason you can’t let people stay alone. That’s why we fight for people we love. That’s why we fight for people who can’t fight for themselves.”
Her bitter, teary expression became wary again, then just closed.
“You need to watch it,” he whispered through a tight throat and let go of her hand. “But not alone. I really don’t want to see it again, but I’ll watch it with you if you need me.”
She’d heard him, because she looked at the drive as if to make sure it was still in her hand.
“I don’t need to watch it. I remember everything.”
“I don’t think you do, or you’re just holding that girl to impossible standards.”
She closed her hand over the drive, her chin falling as she stared at it.
“How old were you?”
“It was the week of my sixteenth birthday,” she answered, but didn’t look like she knew why she had.
Days before the age of consent. It didn’t really matter—there was no way for him to make that right, but it did ease him a tiny bit.
“Watch it with Sharon, okay?”
“Quinn…”
“Please. You need to see this. That girl made a mistake, and you don’t deserve to spend the rest of your life afraid of a teenage error in judgment. Watch it; you’ll understand.”
He tried to be calm but heard the desperation in his own voice.
And he couldn’t tell if he’d got through. Her head kept shaking. It didn’t look like she was telling him no, more like she couldn’t accept what she was hearing. It didn’t jibe with what she thought she knew, so disbelief rattled her.
“If he tried to sell that video to any news organization, he would be lynched. He was an adult, which is a crime. It wouldn’t matter if you’d been old enough in hours. Legally, he’d be screwed if he tried to show that video to anyone.”
At this point, he wasn’t sure she was hearing him. She didn’t answer, but she had stopped shaking her head and seemed more together than he had been most of the night.
It felt as if he should stay with her, but he had to give her time to work through this and still squeeze in a trip down the aisle.
Which brought him to the last bit… The scariest bit.
“One more thing.” His hands shook, so he stuffed them into his pockets, then thought better of that and hung his arms at his sides as still and casual as he could, but no amount of trying to slow his breathing would work. “I’m not calling off the wedding. I can’t picture my life any other way than with you in it. If you come to the church on Saturday, I plan on making that life we’ll share amazing. I’ll always fight for you and for us, but I need you to fight too.”
She looked at him again, still listening. “I don’t understand.”
“I’m leaving here and I’m going to talk to the press to make sure they don’t blame you for this if you watch that video and decide you still can’t be there. I’ll do whatever I can to help you stay in the country, or go wherever you want to go if that’s your decision.”
His finger seemed to throb where the ring sat, the thing that had bolstered him through this. Quietly, he pulled it from his finger and placed it gently atop the divorce papers on her desk, framing her decision with two opposite choices.
With everything he’d thrown at her, there was no way for her to come to any decision right now. If she did, it’d still be No without watching the video, and she needed space to do that.
Quinn kissed her forehead, repeated the date, time and location of the wedding for her, asked she watch the video one more time and excused himself while his legs still held him.
All he could do now was wait. And pray…
* * *
Quinn had been gone for over an hour when Anais heard Mom gently tapping on her bedroom door.
“I’m okay,” she called, hoping it was enough to get a little more quiet alone time to make sense of the things Quinn had said.
The one thing, mostly.
Signing the papers was an act of love. The rest of it…some kind of faith she couldn’t even process.
On some level, she knew it was the kind of thing people—especially stupid people like her—would live their entire lives waiting to hear. The kind of words that should bring relief. But she felt nothing. Not even happy to know he hadn’t been lying about the depth of his love.
How could she feel happy about that now?
Numb was at least okay enough to not be actively falling apart like she’d been all night.
“Did he take the papers to submit to court?” Still through the door.
The papers. From where she sat on the edge of the bed, she could only focus on that beautiful ring sitting on top of something so ugly.
“He left it up to me,” she answered, then the door opened. With a deep, fortifying breath, she added, “I don’t want you to worry about this. Stress kicks you out of rhythm, and I’m going to be fine. You don’t need to worry.”
“You don’t look fine, baby girl. You have no color in your face, and you look like you’ve just witnessed a public execution.”
* * *
Watch the video with Mom, he’d said. As if she could bear anyone else she loved to know such things, let alone witness them. Drinking. Making out. Nudity. Then the best part, where she smashed Ratliffe’s face up with a bottle of cheap rum.
All that was her burden to bear. Consequences for bad judgment and immaturity. Life had handed her a lesson—or she’d grabbed it with both hands—and she’d learned from it.
“Sometimes I wish I’d never met him. Then I wouldn’t have had to leave him, hurt him… Hurt me.” The words came out and the numbness left in a blink. “But then maybe I’d be someone worse if things had gone another way. Or I guess maybe I’d be someone better too.”
“Worse implies that you’re bad now. You’re not.” Mom came fully inside and used the apron she wore to wipe the tears from Anais’s cheeks.
“I feel like I am.”
“What did Quinton say?”
She shook her head, sifting words for the ones she could share. “That he still wants me, but he won’t force me because he needs me to fight for us too. I just don’t think there can be a peaceful ride off into the sunset with him. There’s just riding, and more riding, and no end to the riding. I’m not strong enough for this.”
Quinn’s summary didn’t match what had happened, and the parts that did match weren’t parts that made it any less shameful, pathetic, or stupid.
“You’re strong when you need to be. We both are. We’ll get through this, whatever you decide.”
Support. The last thing she deserved. The trouble was she didn’t know what the least selfish thing for her to do was. “I need to sleep. It’s after ten a.m.; that’s close enough to nap time.”
If she gave up her alcohol abstinence, maybe she could sleep her way through the wedding day he refused to cancel.