Just a Number (31 page)

“I can’t believe he did that,” Amelia says angrily, digging around until she produces a small bag of frozen peas. “He didn’t even give us a chance to explain! And the way he just up and punched you? Ugh!”

“Amelia,” I groan, the cut in my lip protesting every time I try to get a word in edgewise between her frustrated rants. “He’s not the bad guy here.”

She flops down on her sofa next to me, her knees resting against my thigh as she gingerly presses the frozen vegetables to the side of my face that’s been throbbing non-stop for the last twenty minutes. “Well, neither are you! He had no right—”

I shake my head, replacing her hand with mine on the makeshift ice pack. “He had every right.” I stand up and pace the room, exhaling heavily. She looks hurt, clasping her hands in her lap while looking up at me beneath her furrowed brow, and now I’m feeling sorry for a whole different reason. I just keep fucking up when it comes to her.

I’m definitely on edge after what happened outside, but I’m letting my frustration rule me, which means I’m being short with her, and that’s not right. Alan’s reaction has put tension on our relationship, but I refuse to let this tear us apart; it’s detrimental for us to work through this together instead of letting our emotions toward Alan cloud how we plan to handle everything. I’m not about to lose Amelia now that I’ve finally got her in my life, so I plan to bury any remaining frustration as deep as possible and show her that no matter what happens, we’ll make it through this…together.

Dropping the peas onto the coffee table, I kneel in front of her and take her hands in mine, hoping to reassure her of us with my touch as well as with what I’m about to say.  “Look, sweetheart, I don’t mean to sound like an asshole, or like we’re the villains in this, but you can’t just slough his reaction off as”—feeling weary, I swipe my hand over my face and groan—“unreasonable. He reacted the way any father would in his situation… Hell, how I’d have reacted in his position.”

Amelia sighs, dropping her gaze to our hands as she twists hers and laces our fingers together. She doesn’t say a word, leaving the floor open for me to continue. “Jesus, Amelia, if
I’m
so fiercely protective over you, can you entertain the thought that maybe your father might be too? Probably more so. And it isn’t going to matter to him that the man you’ve chosen is someone he’s trusted for over thirty years and knows would never hurt him or his family. Not right now, anyway. ”

It’s obvious when she concedes defeat, and I lean forward and kiss her hand. “Okay, yes, I understand that he’s just being my dad…but that still doesn’t make what he did okay. You guys have been friends forever, Owen. How could he just throw that all away without hearing our side of it?”

“He hasn’t thrown it all away,” I try to assure her, even though I’m not so sure I believe it myself. “But, as far as he’s concerned, I’m just taking advantage of you.”

“Yeah,” she grumbles, “he made
that
pretty damn clear.”

I chuckle, standing up and sitting back on the couch with her, even going as far as to pull her onto my lap. “Look, like you said, I’ve known him for years, and I’ve seen him like this before. He just needs to blow off some steam while he processes everything. Maybe he’ll come around on his own…maybe he won’t. It’s hard to say. What I do know is that we can’t force him to just be okay with it or to listen to what we have to say just yet.”

Pouting a little, Amelia’s eyes meet mine while her fingers toy with one of my shirt buttons innocently. “I’m not sure I like your logical approach to this. You should be pissed off right along with me.”

“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I am upset, but not necessarily at your dad. Sure, he should have called and given either one of us a heads-up instead of just assuming that he could drop in unannounced—and I’m sure he’ll realize this himself once the storm in his head has cleared—but I’m just trying to play Devil’s Advocate. We can’t place the blame solely on him. We were wrong to keep it from him this long—no matter how sound we felt our reasoning was.”

She’s silent for a minute, quietly letting everything we’ve discussed sink in before replying softly. “I know this isn’t his fault. I really do get that. I guess I’m just so hurt that he’d completely ignore the fact that both of us are happier than we’ve ever been and not let us explain ourselves. I get that he needs to process our relationship, but wouldn’t it be easier for him to digest if he had all the facts?”

“Ideally, yes,” I reply, running my hand up and down her back, noticing for the first time since we came in out of the rain that we’re both still completely soaked through. “But he’s probably not feeling too rational right now. Which is why we should give him time.”

“How much time?” Her voice is soft, barely above a whisper.

“Honestly?” I shrug, uncertain. “I don’t know. As long as it takes, I suppose. He’ll talk to you again.”

Her eyes grow wide with worry, glistening a little. “What about you?”

In truth, I’m not holding out hope that my relationship with Alan is even salvageable at this point. Yes, I want to be able to look back on this as one of those things that brings us closer, but I just don’t see that happening.

Instead of telling Amelia this, I offer her a weak smile and kiss her forehead. “Why don’t we worry about that later, hmm?” She shivers in my arms, and I’m uncertain if it’s because of her cold, wet clothes or the kiss. “Come on,” I add on, “you’ve got to be freezing in those clothes. Let’s get you into something a little warmer.”

She notices how I avoided her question, but she doesn’t press the issue, knowing that it’s got to be hard for me to talk about. “Okay,” she agrees, pushing off my lap and heading to the bathroom where she leaves the door open.

I hear the shower start before she calls me in to join her, and for the first time in the weeks we’ve been together, we shower together without it progressing into anything further. The passion of our relationship still remains, but that connection is deepening as we try to work through the first real crisis we’ve forced ourselves into.

After our shower, we lay on the couch for a couple hours, our bodies dry and warm, huddled beneath the thick down comforter from her bed, and we talk while the TV plays in the background. Some of this talk revolves around Alan, but we’ve exhausted that topic and are just talking in circles, so I try to lighten the mood by talking about the ball the night before.

This makes Amelia smile, and she props her head in her hand. “It really was wonderful. I loved getting all dressed up.”

“That was the highlight of my evening as well,” I tell her with a smirk.

She giggles in response. “When the hell did you turn into such a cheeseball?”

I playfully ponder this for a moment before replying. “I think it was this one weekend in November. I’d recently just escaped thirteen years of hell and had a beautiful young woman help me through it.”

“Well, she sounds amazing,” Amelia quips.

I shrug. “She’s all right, I suppose.”

Laughing so hard she almost snorts, Amelia pushes me—or tries to; it seems all her energy has been expelled into her raucous laughter, and it’s a nice change from just a few hours ago. “Ass!”

I wrap my arm around her waist and tug her to me, flipping her over until her back is pressed against my chest and our bodies are completely aligned. When my lips touch her bare shoulder, she sighs, settling into my embrace and draping her arm over mine as her fingers dance along the back of my hand. “We never really did talk about it,” she whispers.

“What’s that?” I inquire.

“What Gretchen wanted last night.” My silence must worry Amelia, because she shifts in my arms to turn her face toward me. “I know now’s not the most ideal time to talk about her, so we can wait if you’d like…I was just curious is all.”

Offering her a small smile of assurance, I kiss the tip of her nose. “It’s fine. She came to talk to me—something she assured me would have remained civilized—and when she saw I had a ‘plus one,’ she got jealous.”

“She admitted to that?”

I laugh. “Her actions spoke louder than her lack of confession.”

“Okay, that makes a little more sense.” There’s a beat of silence before Amelia speaks again. “What was it she wanted to talk about?”

Sighing, I shake my head. “She told me she refuses to sign the divorce papers until we can work out some kind of financial agreement.”

Amelia’s eyes widen and she sits up. “What? She can’t do that? Can she do that?”

Hoping to calm her, I pull her back into my arms and hold her again. “Stephen assures me she can’t, but that doesn’t mean she won’t try something underhanded.”

I can tell that Amelia’s deep in thought with every silent second that passes, and I’m just about to ask what’s on her mind when she finally speaks. “Can she use our relationship against you? I mean, I know we didn’t start seeing each other until after you left her, but we did sleep together that very weekend—before you’d even filed for divorce. I get that she has no real way of proving any of that, but…is it possible?”

“I suppose she could try,” I tell her. “But I don’t think it would hold up.”

Another moment of silence passes, and Amelia cranes her neck to look at me again. “You know I love you, right?”

My lips curl up into a huge smile, and I nod. “I do. And I love you. Why do you ask?”

“Well, I don’t want to be the reason that the ice-bitch walks away with more money than she deserves after what she did to you, so maybe we should try to—”

“If you’re going to say ‘keep our relationship hidden,’ I’m going to have to point out how famously that’s worked out for us with your father,” I remind her, my remorse returning ten-fold. I push it down and continue, in hopes of helping her understand why it’s a potentially bad idea. “It’s possible that keeping us a secret from Gretchen will only give her more ammunition to say that I’ve been sleeping around behind her back. It may not be true, but if she goes to the judge with this allegation, and proof of our hidden relationship surfaces, how would that look?”

“Not good, I suppose.”

“Exactly.” I kiss her shoulder again and rest my chin on it. “And besides, I’m tired of hiding from the world. Now that your dad knows, I say we try to go on with our lives. Together. Out in the open. What do you say?”

She hesitates a moment before slowly nodding her agreement, but I pick up on her lingering sadness and try to soothe her. “I just wish he’d call,” Amelia whispers, her voice cracking.

There’s nothing I wouldn’t give to make this all better for her, and I wish I could erase this horrible night from her memory altogether. I sigh into her hair, closing my eyes. “I know, sweetheart. Me too.” I glance at the clock on her DVD player and notice that it’s almost two in the morning. “What do you say we move this over to the bed and get some sleep, and we’ll try to call him again in the morning?”

Snuggling further into my embrace, Amelia’s head bobs. “Okay.”

I gather her blanket in my arms and carry it over to the bed before we crawl in, and Amelia sidles up to me. “Goodnight,” she whispers.

I kiss her neck. “Goodnight. I love you.”

“Mmm,” she hums with contentment. “I love you, too.”

It doesn’t take very long for her breathing to even out and deepen, but I stay awake a little longer to watch her. While she sleeps, the worry lines on her forehead from tonight soften before completely disappearing, and I vow to do everything I can to make things right with Alan…

Because I have a feeling our relationship will depend on it.

I wake the next morning to an empty bed. Remembering everything that happened the night before with Alan, I panic, unsure of where Amelia’s gone off to or if she’s all right. The last thing I want is for her to feel like she needs to go off to cry over her falling out with her father. When I hear the fridge door close, and Amelia’s body appears behind the counter that separates the kitchen from the living room, most of the tension leaves my body.

“Hey,” she says when her eyes find mine. “You sleep okay?”

Running my hands over my face and through my hair, I climb out of bed and head for the kitchen. “Yeah, I guess.” I kiss her temple, and she laughs lightly.

“That was almost convincing.”

“Sorry.” I smile before amending myself. “I slept as well as could be expected under the circumstances. You?”

Her eyes fall to the Chinese leftovers she’s laid out in front of her. “Same.” She flattens her hands on the countertop and sighs. “I called him again.”

Wanting to comfort her, I wrap my arms around her waist and rest my chin on her shoulder. “And?”

“No answer. As usual… But I got his voicemail, which means he got all the other messages I left and chose not to call me.”

“Amelia…” I begin softly, turning her around to face me.

She leans against the counter and laughs dryly, wiping a lone tear from her cheek. “I know you said I need to give him time, but I just thought… You know?”

I pull her into my arms, holding her tight to my body and tucking her head under my chin. “I do,” I assure her. “And I know that your desire to fix everything is strong, but believe me when I say that the silent treatment is far better than the alternative.”