El is asleep on the couch when I arrive home. I dump my belongings and squat in front of her. Her lashes flutter but she doesn’t wake. A smile flits to my lips as I observe my wife. I peck her lips, she sighs softly and rolls to her side. Maybe she is tired. Gently shaking her awake, I tuck a piece of hair behind her ear.
Her eyes open, she blinks morosely for a few seconds until my presence registers. “Hey,” she says as she gets into a sitting position. I slip my arms around her waist. Her eyes dart to the wall clock. “You’re late.”
“Yeah. I lost track of time.” She nods, rubbing the back of her hand against her eyes. “They are asleep?” I motion to the stairs, she nods again. I squeeze her butt, bury my face in her chest. “Baby. Sorry I'm late.”
Ed might need to return to work tomorrow because I can’t deal with the unfiltered calls and emails. The young man deserves extra credit for all that stress. I missed the chance to hug and kiss my babies before bedtime. Even our plans. I look up to El's face, puckering my lips for a kiss. Maybe it’s not too late.
“It’s fine.” Her lips descend on mine for a brief kiss, she cups my jaw. “I need to ask you something.” My pulse spikes, she tugs on my beards and smiles. “But after you have had dinner, yeah? Have you eaten?”
I haven’t but now I have no appetite. I help her to her feet. “No.”
The pounding of my heart drowns our footsteps as we march outside. She just needs to ask a question. No big deal. I have answered tons of questions in the past but why is my heart beating like a caged beast? I watch El heat the meal in the microwave. I see her lips moving but I can’t make out her words.
A snap of fingers in my face forces me out of my trance, she eyes me worriedly, a wedge between her brows. “Hey.” My lips refuse to reciprocate her smile, she takes my hands and palms her face. “Are you okay?” I am not. I can’t be until we discuss. She squeezes my arm. “Brandon. Baby, are you okay?”
“What do you want to know?” I run a hand through my hair and she folds her arms on her chest. Her frown deepens. I feel guilty and I don’t know my sins yet. “You wanted to ask me something, what is it?”
“Oh, that.” She plants a kiss on my lips. Her face lights up as she pinches my cheeks and my worries ebb. “It’s nothing, probably a misunderstanding. A bunch of files I saw upstairs. Don’t worry, I will show you.” The microwave pings, she covers her mouth to prevent a yawn from escaping. “Right now, you need to eat and I need to sleep.” I nod because I don’t know what else to do. What files? I have a few files in the wardrobe. Files I didn’t feel comfortable leaving in the office. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
I shake out of my reverie, offer her a tight smile as I cover the distance. “Like what?”
She shrugs. I bop her nose, she rubs her cheek against mine. We sit at the island, I do all the eating while El does all the yawning. Left to me, the meal would come later but I will not get a single word out of her if I don’t finish my dinner. She taps the smooth surface as I chew as slow as a sloth, sighs and shakes her head. When she props her elbows on the island, jaw resting on her palms, I have trouble swallowing.
“You are stalling,” she murmurs. “You always stall whenever you have done something wrong.”
The food goes into the wrong pipe, I open and close my mouth soundlessly. My eyes water, she jumps out of her seat to pass me a glass of water. I wheeze with a cough, avoiding her gaze as I down the water.
Shit.
What have I done this time? The files. What files did I leave in the wardrobe? Brianna’s? Vincent’s?
Her hands descend on my shoulders for a massage, I push my half-touched plate aside. “I’m done.”
Some other day, she might have protested the waste of food but I guess we are both curious to hear what each of us has to say about the files. She stops me when we are in front of the bedroom door to hug me tight.
“Relax,” she says, “you are too stiff.”
“I love you,” is my reply to her.
“Love you too, baby.”
The door creaks open. El goes in before me. The first thing I notice is our bed laid without wrinkles, then the documents sprawled on the couch. I swallow the lump that forms in my throat. She leaves my side to pick the files so I have a better view of them. My heart plummets when I see the logo at the top.
Fuck.
“I think there’s a misunderstanding. These are from my company,” she says while spreading the files on the sofa. “From Loan Dolphin. I don’t understand.” Her eyes flick to mine, I should say something. Reassure her. Anxiety coats her tone, lashes at my heart and I refuse to take the files she stretches to me. “Please tell me this is a mistake, Brandon.” It’s not. “You mistakenly came in contact with these files. Someone you know dropped them with you.”
Seconds roll by in silence, the air grows thicker with angst. El rises to her feet. I don’t talk. I don’t move. She takes another step forward, leaving enough space between us. “It says here,” she says and taps a line I don’t need to look at to know its content, “that you own shares in my company. Baby, is this true?”
The hope in her voice has me wanting to tell her what she wishes to hear so this night can pass without any drama. I don’t want her to stop calling me baby but I don’t want to continue the lies. Someone else might have bought the shares on my behalf but I own them. I paid for them and I did it to help her. The new name was to avoid any suspicions. She palms her forehead, lips trembling as she awaits my reply.
Being the wimp I am, I settle on a change of topic. “You went through my things?”
El shakes her head. “No.” Her eyes shimmer with tears. “I was packing up for us to leave. I miss home. Our home. The place where we had all our firsts.” She gestures to our luggage at the foot of the wardrobe, I recoil with shame. “You have been stressing a lot so I thought I would help you pack.” Her face contorts, she presses a hand against her mouth but a sob still escapes her. “Now I wish I didn’t.”
It makes more sense now, the thing Ava tried to explain about good intentions yielding bad results. If she hadn’t helped me pack, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. But she was trying to help.
“Elna.”
Tears roll down her cheeks. I inch forward, she matches it with another step backward. “You lied to me.”
“I didn’t want to ruin the moment.” Every emotion I feel dances across my face, I plead with my eyes for her to calm down so we can sort this out normally.
Her hands jam together in mocking applause. “Bravo.”
Not bravo. Coward. It was cowardly of me. I took the easiest way out. “You were broke,” I say, tone raw with sincerity. She shakes her head, I take another step. “Your company would have gone down, Elna.”
“I didn’t need your money,” she screams.
The venom in her voice stops me in my tracks. I arch a brow and my gaze sweeps over her body. For the past five years we have been separated, she has acted like my money was gotten from the devil. If it’s not for the kids, then she won’t touch my money. I worked hard for it. Harder than anyone I’ve known.
“But you need T’s?”
Her gaze steels, she squares her shoulders and I brace myself for the worse. She will hurt me. I am not sure when it happened but I can tell we are both past caring about hurting each other with our words.
“Yeah, because he didn’t kill his brother.”
The words are out before she realises, they shoot lasers at my heart. I take an involuntary step backward, eyes wet with unshed tears. Regret fills her gaze but I am already shaking my head. Being remorseful will not change how she feels. At least I know what she thinks of me. I will always be a brother killer to her.
A sad smile touches my lips. “Brandon.” Her voice is calmer, she takes a tentative step forward. “Baby. I–”
“Don’t.” I hold a finger up to stop her. “Apologise.”
I killed my brother. T didn’t kill his. That makes him the more eligible business partner. Perfect logic.
“Ma was going to give me the money, I just needed more time to figure it out on my own and Josh came up with this new person.” El throws the file against the wall, stomps on the unlucky ones littered at her feet. “Josh.” She raises a tear-filled gaze to my face. A new wave of anger clouds her face, followed by a realisation and her head bobs. She stands straight. “Both of you planned this. The Stark brothers against gullible Elna.” Her laughter is wicked and cynical, I want to plug my fingers into my ears so I don’t hear it because it will torment me days and months after this. She smiles sadly at me. “I never stood a chance, did I? Naive Elna.”
Her words claw at my throat, tug at my heartstrings. The guilt promises to suffocate me, my head dips in shame. There was no right time to tell her. I didn’t want to ruin our happiness.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry. Two years later and you couldn’t even tell me. No, you are not sorry, Brandon.”
Her words rip my heart apart but I don’t look up. The tiles don’t have hurt written all over them. “Elna.”
“Every day I am reminded by the things around me that nothing truly belongs to me. So I set out to create something of mine and yet you still took that from me. The one thing I wanted. If building a legacy with your own sweat and money didn’t matter so much to you, you wouldn’t be looking for investors because your family has all the money in the world. All the money you will ever need. So you are not sorry, Brandon Stark.” She stops to catch her breath. Hurt twists my insides. I blink back the tears burning my eyes. “You are just sorry I found out.”
“I would have told you,” I whisper. But there was no perfect time. I lift my head. “Elna, I’m sorry. Baby.”
With each passing second of agonizing silence, I feel her shut down and the gulf between us widens. She strolls to the suitcases, unzips one of them and starts returning my clothes to the hangers. Wow.
It’s really over.
“Brandon.” She turns to me when my clothes are back to the hangers. “This is not working.”
“It’s not.” I uncurl my fists at my sides. There’s no fight left in me. Maybe anger, tiredness but no zeal to fight for her and us anymore. She is selfish. I gave her everything. I put all my cards on the table. I would have given my life. Anything for her and the girls. “Because you never wanted it to. You always hold back.” Her face remains passive but I see beneath her mask. “Flight or flee is your motto, El. One little fight and you are ready to leave. Again.”
A short pause ensues. Her forehead wrinkles as she gawks at me. She blinks. And everything crashes.
“Little fight?” she thunders, eyes narrowed to slits. “I always hold back? I never wanted us to work?” El fists her hair, staring at me with disbelief. “I gave you everything, Brandon. A second chance.” She burst into tears again. Crying unabashedly with snot running down her nose. “I hate you. I fucking hate you.”
“But you don’t hate T,” I state without thinking.
She wipes her nose with the hem of her shirt. “I don’t. I don’t hate him,” she says, too calmly.
It’s her sincerity that spurs my reply. “Because he didn’t kill his brother,” I finish for her.
She smiles. “Because he’s a better person than you will ever be. I thought we were getting somewhere with therapy but you had to remind me how much of a monster you are. Two years.” She walks back to the wardrobe and raises two fingers. “Two fucking years.”
It might have been the hurt embedded on her face, the pain in her voice that causes my shoulders to rotate carelessly. She is right. I am a monster. The honeymoon phase was fun while it lasted, it’s time to face reality. I don’t need any shitty therapy because at the end of the day, I am still the brother killer.
“Can I have the girls for the weekend?” I ask her. El blinks in shock. I think I hear the sound of her heart breaking over the silence that settles over us. I am done fighting for her. If she thinks I am a monster, no point trying to prove otherwise. She can spend the rest of her life with her Mister Perfect. She manages a feeble nod, I create more space between us. “Thank you. You can pick them from school on Monday.”