Paper Marriage Proposition

Nineteen

The house was silent tonight.
    Four months had passed, and every day of living with a fake family had been silent, wretched torture.
    Frederic stared out the window, not really seeing the manicured lawns outside. He was in his room, alone. Just him and the divorce papers. His bedroom had never felt so empty. The furniture couldn’t fill the space. Nothing could fill the vast feeling of loss and emptiness.
    Mask and Brindle, who’d taken to sleeping with Leo now, were down the hall in the boy’s room.
    And Lisa…
    He didn’t know where she was. What she was doing. They barely spoke a word to each other. He knew she worked long hours at the computer during the day, and that she waited by the window when Leo arrived from school. He knew she slept with the door halfway open to hear anything amiss in Leo’s room at night.
    He knew that sometimes, when tired, she spoke in her dreams. And he knew that most of those times, she spoke his name. He’d also heard her cry once. Soft sniffles at midnight, coming from her room, making him toss in his empty bed wondering why she cried. He didn’t hold his breath thinking it was him she cried for.
    They’d been with him for four months now, four months and twenty nine days. Living with them felt like living with a ticking time bomb.
    It was impossible to explain to Alex, who’d been asking questions, or to anyone, what he’d been feeling all this time, seeing Lisa every day, seeing her son frolicking out in the gardens during the afternoon. Her son, who was the same age Nathan would’ve been.
    Longing didn’t hold a candle to the emotions that bombarded him. Now his every muscle was taut with tension, tension which could find no relief, no kind of comfort. Because the tension that most gnawed at his gut stretched between Lisa and him—and it was always home as long as she was.
    He had to get rid of them, both of them.
    He had known, from the moment he’d seen her in his hotel room, that she attracted him. He was a man accustomed to analyzing before acting, and he’d believed he’d somehow be able to remain immune to Lisa’s effect on him.
    He hadn’t.
    Just as he hadn’t predicted how badly he wanted to make things right for her. Even in ways he hadn’t been able to make them right for himself.
    No matter what she’d done to him, no matter that she’d lied and betrayed him, Frederic had given her his word. She would have her son back at any cost, and Frederic would have Jungkook’s head.
    It had been four months and twenty nine days. Why had he not celebrated his victory over Jungkook yet?
    Because she’s still here.
    Frederic wrenched off his tie, shoving it into his pants pocket. Jungkook didn’t deserve to be walking on the same planet Lisa and her son were. And therefore, he would not. He was answering to a hell of a lot more charges now and would probably spend the rest of his life behind bars. Not only had the insurance companies sued him for millions the man in all likelihood did not have, but the District Attorney had charged him with distribution of illegal substances, and criminally negligent manslaughter . His situation was bleak.
    As bleak as…Frederic’s bedroom.
    “Damn it,” he cursed. Before he knew what he did, he removed his coat, rolled the cuffs of his shirt, yanked the door open, and scoured the house for his wife.
    She’d tried talking to him several times, always uneasily, but the intense sting of betrayal he felt kept building inside of him, and it left no room for listening to Lisa. No room for coddling her. No room for anything except waiting to recover whatever life he’d had before her, and forget he’d ever married her.
    He found the door to her bedroom partway open. Something tightened inside him as he pushed it wider and gazed into the dimly lit room. “Lisa? Can we talk?”
    Lisa sat at the vanity, brushing her hair as though the act calmed her, and stopped when she heard him. She spun around on the upholstered ottoman with wide unblinking eyes, her mouth slightly parted. The picture of Jungkook leaning in unbearably close to those pretty pink lips came back to Frederic, making him want to rip down the drapes and toss them out the window.
    He wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her, take her, but instead his hands curled in on themselves, clenching tight at his sides.
    “I thought you were at dinner with your brothers,” Lisa said.
    “They were irritating me, so I left them to irritate each other.” He propped a shoulder against the door frame, struggling to steady his heartbeat. He’d been inventing dinners all week—anything to stay away from home. From her. But tonight was different. “I merely wanted to see if you were all right.”
    Her smile held a hint of sadness. “So now you’re talking to me.”
    He did not deny his lack of attention. How could he? He didn’t want to see her, couldn’t stand eating with her, could barely keep on living in the same house with her without going insane. Holding her little hand in his at court had been painful. Hearing her say she loved him with the same mouth she’d both kissed and lied to him had been among the most painfully mocking things in his entire goddamned life.
    She rose to her feet in an easy, effortless move that made her body sway under the loose pastel green robe she wore. “Frederic, about what I said at court—”
    “I didn’t come here to talk about what you said,” he interrupted.
    The hurt that came to her eyes made him want to charge across and do something to erase it. But she quickly wiped her expression clean, and he quickly dashed the thought of doing anything for her except what he’d promised he would and had already accomplished. Getting her son back.
    Made visibly nervous by his visit, since he’d been doing a damned fine job of staying away from her room for weeks, Lisa chewed her lower lip. “What did you come up here to talk about, then?”
    I wanted to look at you one last time.
    “I came to let you know…” His blood swirled. After the brutal feel of his own exposure at court, admitting to a room full of people what he had not admitted even to himself, every atom, cell and nerve in his body vibrated with yearning for her. Every night, every day. He had to leave, now, before he regretted it. He clamped his teeth and shook his head, frustrated with himself. “Forget it.”
    He spun around, but she called his name.
    “Frederic!”
    He stiffened, and his head came up a bit, but he didn’t turn until several slow, painful seconds passed. He faced her once more, not wanting to notice how her hair fell in a golden waterfall past her shoulders, framing her delicate face, not wanting to think that she looked vulnerable and beautiful and ready for bed.
    “It’s about the divorce, isn’t it,” she said.
    Something cracked inside, but he’d be dead before he showed it. He nodded. “I wanted to say goodbye.”