F E I G N E D | elounor

~ f o r t y f i v e ~

~ E L E A N O R ~

I told Louis I'd stay but my attitude and the look on my face gave him a clear sign that I didn't want to be here. That he hurt me and I was mad.

"Why did you just run off that day?" He asked me, his voice full of annoyance.

"What do you mean why? Your father gave you—US a pretty great deal. Neither of us wanted to be in this marriage to begin with. I saw your face when he mentioned Danielle. You guys are so weird with your love-hate relationship! It's like one day I'm sure you hate her, and the next you'd do anything for her!" I ranted on.

"Eleanor let me be perfectly clear, there's nothing about that woman that I love. You know better than anyone that it was never a real relationship to begin with." Louis said, no hesitation in his voice.

"Then why would you think about it? I saw you!" I yelled.

"Eleanor, the man was making a deal with us! Can you blame me for not thinking about it?! He was giving the BOTH of us freedom! You said do yourself, NEITHER of us wanted to be here. My father said we could call this off and I could be with Danielle! All you heard out of that whole sentence was Danielle!" Louis said pointing a finger at me like I was a child. I pushed his finger out of my face.

But he was right. Maybe Louis wasn't even thinking about Danielle. Maybe he was thinking about the possibility of us just being out of this fake marriage. Louis's father just threw Danielle's name in there as well.

"Well. . ." I trailed off defeatedly, my pride killing me right now.

"And then you just run off? What the hell was that? Why?" He asked me.

"You never reached out to me either!" I threw out there.

"I wasn't sure you wanted me to!! You! Just! Left! And the last thing you told me before leaving was that you didn't want to be in this marriage anymore!! Why would I reach out to you?!" He asked me.

God, why was everything he was saying making sense. It made me want to pull my hair out how reasonable he was being.

"You went out with Danielle. I saw it in the papers. You couldn't have waited until the divorce was final?" I said disgusted, and crossing my arms. How was he going to explain that.

Louis rolled his eyes, and walked to the edge of the bed to sit on it.

"My dad had reached out to Danielle without my knowing, asking her if she would be interested in possibly being my wife. I was told my dad would be at the restaurant but I showed up and Danielle was already at the table." Louis explained shaking his head.

I slowly uncrossed my arms. "What happened?" I asked, trying not to sound to curios.

"She just said she saw the headlines about our marriage going down the drain. Asked what happened. She asked if we were really over. . .if we were getting a divorce."

"I told her the media was taking it out of proportion, that I haven't even filed for divorce." He said, his eyes quickly looking to me before he went on. "I just basically told her that every married couple has their problems and we're just in a rough patch right now. But we're working it out. That's all I said." He admitted.

"Wait, so you didn't file for divorce yet? Why not?" I asked him.

"I would at least want to have a proper conversation before we did anything like get a divorce. That's not how you end things. So if this has to be that conversation then so be it, but I wouldn't do things like that." He said looking at me a little offended. Like I almost questioned the kind of man he was.