King and Yara

Chapter 1 (Yara): Flinch

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA

Left with no choice, no options, I had to go back home. Back to my husband.

His car was in the garage when I pulled in, and for a brief moment, I had the horrible thought that maybe he'd brought her here, and I'd be walking into something that would end with two people dead. Steeling my spine, I took a deep breath and hoped he wasn't even worse than I thought and would at least respect the sanctity of our home, if not our marriage.

The relief in his eyes when I walked back in was obvious, but I looked away quickly. He would think my return was because I wanted to work on things. Because, given enough time, he thought I could forgive him because of our arrangement.

He was wrong.

Fortunately, he couldn't study me long enough to figure out my eyes were icy because everything in me had frozen. The children had shrieked, claiming his attention, and had gone screaming at their daddy who they hadn't seen in four weeks. He was occupied with listening to the two little chatterboxes overwhelm him with tales of their Disney adventures, and even though I wasn't looking at him, I could feel the wounded look he shot me. Disney had been a family trip planned for Christmas. And now, I'd taken them by myself and had cut him out of the experience because he was about to cut me out of our family and I would never have the chance to go with them. He'd ruined the refuge I'd taken in our family. In my husband. In his arms, if not his heart.

His arms that had given refuge to another woman, maybe? A woman he swore he didn't give himself to completely in body. But maybe she'd captured his unobtainable heart? Something I hadn't managed in two years. Whatever the truth was, and only he knew, he'd made our arrangement a lie, a meaningless nothing to him that he'd thrown away for another woman.

His first clue came when he found me making the the bed in one of the spare rooms after the children were in their own rooms, sound asleep. Clutching their Disney stuffed animals.

He stood in the doorway, his brows drawn down. "Yara, what are you doing?"I tucked the corner of the sheet under the mattress and ignored him. With the flat sheet on, I began the process of stuffing the pillows into the crisp pillowcases while continuing to pretend my husband didn't exist. Wishing Henry Kingston didn't exist.

With the pillows handled, I threw the comforter on the bed and began arranging it perfectly. Until his tanned hand came over mine and halted me mid-tug on the comforter.

"Yara," he said, low, urgent.

"Get your hand off me, Henry," I bit out, frozen at his audacity to think he had any right to touch me. After he'd touched her. Carmen.

Then it was his turn to freeze. Until today, I'd never called him anything but King.

"You don't look like a Henry," I'd teased him without thinking after he'd introduced himself in the interview when we first met. "You look like a King."

I would never know what had possessed me to say that. In an interview to be a nanny, I'd made a quip like that to my potential employer.

"Every king needs a queen," he'd said with a grin. "Maybe you're meant to be mine." And he'd been serious when he'd called me the next day with his proposal.

"I thought you came back because you wanted to work on things."

"You thought very wrong. I came back because, for now, I don't have a choice, but if I did, let me assure you that I would be gone. That will be coming as soon as I can arrange it."

"Please. I want to work this out, Yara."

"Don't tell me you want to work this out because I will never believe anything that comes out of your lying mouth again. The time to work it out would have been before Carmen."

"I didn't have an affair. It wasn't like --"

"Oh, spare me from the lie that you didn't have an affair. At the very least, you made choices, Henry," he visibly flinched at hearing his real name on my lips so this was going to become my new favorite thing, "and your choices were not in favor of me, our marriage or the family. And the proof was in the pictures that started flooding the internet."

Pictures of Henry having dinner with Carmen. Pictures of Henry with Carmen hand in hand on a street, ice cream cones in their other hands. Pictures of Henry hugging Carmen. Pictures of Henry with his arm around her waist or slung casually around her shoulders. Pictures of them dancing at an exclusive club. And then the one picture...

Had I looked into his eyes, I would have seen the agony in them. But even if I had seen them, it wouldn't have touched me. I was that far gone into the icy numbness. I was beyond his reach, having taken the polar plunge during a phone call two weeks ago when I'd demanded to know what was going on. He'd told me only that it hadn't gotten physical in the way I thought and he'd explain everything when he got home. He'd still had another week to go on his business trip, and I'd gotten his permission to take the children away for a week on vacation to get away from the reporters hounding me about my husband's and Carmen's...thing. Whatever it was, it was nothing good.

Henry had been away on business for three weeks in total, negotiating the buyout of the tech company, and Carmen was the daughter of the owner of the company he was buying. She was also part of that company's legal team. When it was time for Henry to return home, I found I couldn't face him -- pictures were still coming out in the week after I confronted him about Carmen over the phone -- and I extended my vacation with the children for another week with his grudging permission.

"Why'd you dye your hair blonde?" The gentle tug on a lock of my hair pulled me back to the present.

His words were gentle and he sounded gutted, but I slapped his hand away from the curl he had between his fingers. He knew. He knew I wanted to distinguish my brunette hair from Carmen's brunette hair because I couldn't bear to share any similarities with her. So blonde it was.

But I was done. Exhausted. And I didn't owe him any explanations. "Get out of my room."

After a brief hesitation, he said very softly, "I'm sorry, Yara." Then he left my room.

The next night, after I was cleaning up from dinner and the children were getting ready for their baths, Henry walked in from work with a small blue box, wrapped with a white bow. Someone must be feeling Tiffany-level guilty.

He handed it to me with a serious look, and I took it, immediately dumping it into the garbage can and scraping the remains of our dinner over it. I'd purposely planned an early dinner before he'd arrive home so we didn't have to fake a happy family meal. Besides, no way in hell was I going to feed my husband. He could fend for himself. 

"Don't waste your money on bullshit gestures. Maybe Carmen appreciates easy, but I don't."

"There is no Carmen." His voice was steady and calm.

"All that matters is that there was and probably still could be, for all I know. Whatever the truth is, I'll never know."

"I still want to talk to you about everything. There are some things I'm guilty of, some lines I crossed, but I'll be honest --"

That made me laugh, right in his face. "What an oxymoron. And if you think confessing to an affair is honesty, then the emphasis is on moron. An honest cheater. Don't make me laugh."

"Yara, it wasn't an affair like you're thinking. I'm trying to make this right."

"With some lame gift? Well, let me rip my clothes off because you bought me a present. Yes! All is forgiven now!" I hissed at him so the children couldn't hear. "You made certain promises to me when we got married, Henry." 

Flinch. 

"So let me save you some time. You can't make it right, Henry."

Flinch.

Copyright © 2024 by GroveltoHEA