10 Minutes

Time to face the past

November 14/15, 2021

Can read the email and stared at his phone rereading it twice more before setting the phone down on the nightstand. He hadn't slept well at all and was up when he received the email from her publicist. At first he balked at her demands but within moments he realized that he had little choice in the matter. After about 10 minutes of looking back at the phone and thinking of every possibility, he replied to the email by thanking Jaime and agreeing. He stared down at the phone and then searched his contacts until he found her ..... "Askim". He hadn't removed her name and number from his phone and looked at the picture that was her contact profile. It was one of his favorites and he had taken it at the rocks when she wasn't looking and being completely her authentic and free self. His mind transported him back to that time and the feeling of melancholy swept over him like a gentle breeze. Then like so many times before, the image of her laying on his bed barely wrapped up in the sheets that bore witness to their desperate lovemaking; tore through his reverie and brought the weight of guilt crashing down on him. He had been on the verge of burying his anger and accepting her explanations and truly believing her until a knock had come at the door and the final knife to his back had been pushed in to the hilt. He made the decision to leave her right then and there. In that moment he had believed that she had betrayed him. His eyes burned at the images that he saw and the papers that carried his signature that she had had him sign. What he couldn't understand was why the complete ruse. She was willing to marry him. Build a life with him yet fully prepared to ruin him. His mind was filled with a jealous rage, confusion, and anger and his body fueled with alcohol. Their lovemaking or sexual marathon had pumped Adrenalin like a drug into his system and it had all come together, boiling over, into a deadly and poisonous thought. She lied to him, cheated on him and had spied on them all to make enough money to secure her future. The bank statements didn't lie and neither did the documents nor the pictures. Her words of love and commitment, trust and honor were empty and oh so easily given that he had almost believed them. There was nothing to do but leave her to explain to her family, friends and anyone else that mattered that he had left her. He chose not to give her the chance to defend herself but decided that the accusations brought against her and his father were irrefutable and indefensible and so he abandoned her. That in a way would be her punishment. She had planned to marry him, gain knowledge of his business and give that information to his mortal enemy, Yigit. The pain of that moment still tore at his guts. He had told her what that bastard had done to his own father and what he was capable of. Even then she had told him to extend an olive branch that perhaps he had changed and grown up. She had nearly convinced him but he didn't trust the man. Yigit however had used her innocence to turn every action of hers into a betrayal. She was depicted as a gold digging bitch. The reality couldn't be further from the truth. Yigit had developed a cleverly constructed plan to take advantage of her naïveté. His father had only added fuel to the fire by confiding in her and asking for her help and basically throwing her into the fray with a snake like Yigit. His fathers I'll advised desire to gain control of the company and the respect of his family was used against him as well. Yigit knew all along that they were playing him and so he turned the tables. He did it so well that even he believed it for the smallest moment but that had been all it took. He recalled that as he stood there on the precipice of a life altering moment that he could scarcely look at her without his heart breaking from grief and desire, anger and self loathing but even then he couldn't bring himself to hate her even while he believed in her deceit, her betrayal. He had hated himself then but not her. The realization that he would always love her had almost done him in but he could never forgive her betrayal. That was something that he had experienced before and something that he couldn't forgive. As he stood and watched her from the door his heart begged him to stay but he couldn't make a life with someone he couldn't trust and in the face of more damming evidence he closed his heart to her. He would never get over her betrayal of the love he gave her. He had given her himself and she had taken it and used it against him. Blinding him to who she really was. She had suddenly become someone he didn't know. Someone who along with the man he despised more than any other tried to bring them down. She had been a virgin when they first made love. He remembered that when he had stopped the drinking and some clarity and doubt had entered his mind he recalled that powerful truth. She couldn't have been inauthentic then. That was the real and true Sanem in all her innocence. He had been completely committed to her even before then but that had tied him to her body and soul. How she could have then become Yigit's lover while making a fool of him behind his back was more than he could bear and the thought bewildered him, gnawed at his insides and made him desperate for anything that would numb him of his heartache. The images of the photos and short video clip still played in his mind. It took all of 10 minutes to tear his world apart. His decisions after that pushed him further away from her until he lost her. Now as he blinked the tears from his eyes he reached for his phone. He clicked it and read it slowly. He stopped to look away briefly and then looked back at it, reading it once more. He ran a hand down across his beard and thought about how he should reply. His heart squeezed in his chest at the thought of seeing her once again and so soon but it would be with severe restrictions imposed by her. He knew he would take whatever she offered but he needed to figure out a way to communicate with her without breaking her rules. He began texting her a short message. She had never replied to hundreds of text and emails and the voicemails that he had left her when he had come to his sense and all the time since then. She had never answered a single one. For all he knew she had never read them. As he pushed the send button on his phone a single word left his lips "keske".