It was almost…cathartic, talking to her. Hearing her side of everything, learning I’m not the only member of thegirls Chase has fucked overclub. I’m not sure I’m ready to completely forgive her, but at least I understand it better now. Of course he lied to her. That’s what men like him do, isn’t it? They lie. Manipulate.
Pretend they aren’t married…
Stop thinking about them, I scold myself, fluffing my pillow. But the fluffing starts to feel more like punching, as my anger takes over.Alec, Chase, all of them. Stop it.
I prop my very well-fluffed pillow against the headboard and burrow against it until I’m comfortable, wriggling as I grab my book. I finally have some time to myself to just lie about and catch up on my reading. This ismetime, no distractions, no thinking aboutmen,nothing but me and my favorite escape mechanism.
I crack open the book and make it exactly two sentences before my mind drifts.
Does Annika know?
Nope, stop that. Gnashing my teeth together, I rearrange myself on the bed and open my book again. I am reading. That’s what I’m doing. I am reading.
Filled with a violent determination, I start back at the top of the page. But my mind wanders before I even make it past the third word.
Crap.
I can’t stop thinking about it. Them. Alec, with another woman. Alec,marriedto another woman.
It makes me feel sick, unwell. I can’t stop picturing her perfectly manicured nails scratching down the dark skin of his back. I can’t stop imagining Ash pressing into her from behind while Alec kisses her, touches her, holds her the way he held me.
It’s not fair. He’s not mine, never was. But the idea of him with someone else—anyone else—makes me feel sick. It makes me feel violent.
Does she know? Did he go home to her after our dates, get into bed with her, touch her?
I throw my book down, bury my face in my hands, andscream.
She deserves to know, doesn’t she? If the positions were reversed, and I were her, I would want to know, wouldn’t I? I mean, just recently, Iwasher.
Shit. Shit, fuck, goddamnit, shit.
Before I can pull myself back from the brink, I grab my phone and pull up the search engine.
Annika Basso and Mason Alexander Sterling, I type into the search bar.
Over half a million hits. My heart sinks. But scrolling through them, I realize quickly there’s plenty about Alec—article after article about him, his company, and his plethora of charity organizations—but nothing about Annika.
Annika Basso, I try searching for, instead.
Nothing. Not a single mention of her on any news site. No social media presence. No photos, no email, nothing. No way to contact her, even if I wanted to.
Confused, I try a third time:Mason Alexander Sterling wife.
This search yields more results, but not what I’m looking for. A few articles speculating on who he might be dating. An interview where someone asks if he’s looking for “Mrs. Right or Mrs. Right Now?” A question Alec tactfully avoids answering.
I scroll farther down the page and find myself reading a scathing Op Ed piece in The Fortune City Gazette from a few years ago. A Pastor Daniel Whitmore pontificating about the “moral decay rotting Fortune City from within” and Sterling Enterprises’ role in it.
“How can we trust the soul of this city to a man like that?” the article asks. “A man with no moral compass? Mason Sterling is no family man, and certainly no man of God. Why would we put so much faith in a man who treats this city like a prom date he’s trying to coax into bed, and not a wife he wants to honor and protect?”
A few clicks later and I discover that despite his supposedly low opinion of the Sterling name, Pastor Daniel Whitmore was given a position on Sterling Enterprise’s board of directors just a few months later. The Op Eds stop after that.
Frustrated, I set my phone aside. Even if I wanted to reach out and contact his wife, there doesn’t seem to be a way to do it. It’s like she doesn’t exist. But I know she does. I saw her photograph, and I saw the ring. I saw the marriage certificate.
He admitted it. He admitted he was married.
After he fucked you, my mind hisses.After he pushed you into the mattress, put his fingers in your mouth, and made you come so hard that?—
Stop.
