“I have to agree with your mother,” he finally said when we were both secured in the front seat of the BMW. “I’ve never seen a single person stand up to my grandfather that way. It was amazing.”

“You should have been the one to do it,” I countered. “He’s your grandfather. Stop being so afraid of losing your wealth and take a stand when it’s needed. That’s what you should have done in the beginning when you didn’t want to marry someone as the price of a merger or to appease the board. Instead of giving them more fuel for why they should hate you, you should have been working toward proving them wrong in other ways – like your business prowess instead of your bedroom moves.”

“You’re right,” he announced as he put the car in gear, and we started moving.

“Is this even your car?” I asked as I glanced around, looking for any show of personality. The Audi we had taken to the airport at least had a guitar shaped air freshener hanging from a little hook in the dash.

“No. This is Wes’s.”

“You stole his car?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “I had somewhere to be, and he didn’t. Besides, he was already at home.”

“I guess you two are really good friends then.”

“We are the best of. Have been since we were young.” When I didn’t bother responding, he asked a different question. “What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Why haven’t I met any of your friends?”

“Because I don’t have any.”

He laughed, thinking I was joking. When I didn’t laugh with him, he chanced a glance at me. “You can’t be serious. Everyone has friends.”

“No, everyone doesn’t have friends.”

Tucker drove in silence for a few minutes before he quietly asked his next question. “Why don’t you have anyone, Mina?”

“Because people are very disappointing,” I answered, not wanting to dive into the reasons why I stopped hanging out with literally everyone I used to know. Even my sister wasn’t aware of what happened to make me the way I am, and she was probably the person I was closest to on the planet these days. I certainly wasn’t about to trust the worst moment in my life to a man I barely knew, even if he was married to me now.

“Maybe, one day, you’ll tell me why.”

I didn’t bother with false platitudes, because the answer was probably more like, ‘not in this lifetime’.

Chapter 8

“We should have that conversation now,” Tucker called out to me as I attempted to head straight back to the bedroom where I’d been sleeping. I had hoped that when we got to the apartment, he would forget about the talk we were supposed to have. Honestly, I hadn’t lied when I said I had studying to do, a paper to write, a book to finish, and sleep to obtain.

I was running on an empty tank and everything going on in my life outside of those things was tapping what little reserves of strength I had left. Trying to hide my feelings all the time was adding to the stress that piled too heavily on my shoulders. Then, there were the extra emotions, like being angry with myself for wanting to cry over hurt feelings that I should have guarded against.