“I see,” he mumbled.

“No, you don’t. Not really. I asked one thing of you,” I started to say. There was no need to finish though as I felt his whole body stiffen behind mine.

“Not to get caught stepping out on you,” he groaned and released his hold on me to roll to his back. I turned over and watched him as he stared up at the ceiling.

“Those people, the ones who took pleasure in breaking me that night, don’t deserve to see that life is still beating me down,” I whispered. “I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that the man I married thought as little of me as they did.”

“Mina, please, stop, you’re killing me here.”

“You told me to be honest. That was why I asked you not to get caught. I didn’t want to give them something else to laugh at.” He turned his head so that our gazes were locked. “I know that I’m not someone people are attracted to. I’m too short, have no curves, look way younger than I’m supposed to unless I use a ton of makeup to trick people. I’m not anything that someone looks for in a partner or a girlfriend. I get that. I knew I was never your type, but they didn’t need to know that. They didn’t need to know it was fake or that you were out there hooking up with people who are your type.”

“Mina, that’s where you have it all wrong,” he groaned before looking back up at the ceiling.

“No, I don’t. You told me,” I insisted.

“Yeah, I told you what I thought you needed to hear so that you would run far and fast from what was proposed. Did your father ever explain to you how long that plan had been in the works?”

“No,” I answered hesitantly, wondering just how much my father had kept from me.

“When I came back from Helsinki after the summer, my grandfather sat me down and explained that the board was getting nervous about me. They had seen some press about all the partying I had done over the summer. I was with the same woman the whole time, but there were pictures of some of her friends leaning on me, or kissing my cheek, or whatever. We all laughed about those photos together when they came out, because the press had it all wrong. It never occurred to me to care what the press or anyone else thought. The people who mattered knew the truth.

“The thing was, after I found out Venla was cheating on me, I came back to the States and I made the headlines again, but that time, the press had it right. I was sleeping with those women they had me pictured with because I was trying to forget the one who I thought got away. I was a choirboy in college. Never stepped a toe out of line. So, the fact that people were concerned about what I was doing as an adult, at 25 and 26 years old, pissed me off. Maybe it was the rebellion I was meant to have in my late teens or early twenties, but I missed that mark.