Chapter 358

Somehow, we managed to pack, navigate to the airport and fly to JFK as a group with very little meaningful chatter. Mostly small talk and nursing hangovers from our heavy night previously; a sombre mood, and the strained atmosphere is so thick it’s almost opaque around us. Gino seems very aware of my turmoil about being Mrs, and after a brief joke about a shotgun wedding, Alessandra elbowing him hard in the ribs, no one brought it up again.

Alexi didn’t react, just kept his eyes on his phone, which he used so he didn’t have to talk to me after we left our room. He seemed completely disengaged, from all of us, abnormally sombre and quiet and disinterested in anything. He even bailed on dinner with our companions and left the three of us to eat while he was in the room, working apparently.

Consumed with a text conversation with God knows who, he left me to sort myself out, follow him at a distance and try not weep at the fact he was blanking me. It was a quiet, less animated group of friends returning from an exhaustive two days with a lot to think about.

I feel lost. Wretched, prickly, emotional and just all out of whack. Trying to keep my ‘give no shits’ facade and pretend like he isn’t literally messing with my head on multiple levels with this whole icing me out, cold shoulder bullshit.

Alexi is closed off and simmering. He doesn’t touch me once in transport from Vegas back to New York. Keeps a distance between us, only speaks to me briefly when directing or giving a yes/ no answer, and although not making it so obvious, I can tell he is trying to avoid me when he can. Always a few feet between us no matter where we are, and he rode up front with the driver on the way to the airport. He has never, in all the time I have escorted him, sat up front, for any reason at all.

Clipped, polite and commanding. All affection and love have been pulled back into that little emotionless bubble around him for the time being and I left him to it. In his icy orbit with prickly terrain. Knowing when to poke the bear, and honestly, I don’t have the emotional energy right now. I am all out of sharp sticks.

I’m bruised inside from how cold he seems, a little mad at him for doing it this way but understanding that this is Alexi hurt. Experience has taught me in the past that he lashes out at me when I hurt him and this is, I guess, a less volatile reaction. He doesn’t want to punish me for damaging his heart so he’s keeping us apart and limiting interaction. I don’t have to fucking like it and nausea swirling in the pit of my stomach is definitely linked to my emotional anxiety, rather than the residual hangover. He has me all kinds of tense and stiff.

Another pointer that he really is trying to show me I can trust him in every way, by not flipping out at me and doing something heinous to wound me back. We will never go back to the way we used to punish each other before.

It’s depressing though, clawing at me internally so I get fidgety and restless and glance at him obsessively. Craving his attention. Wanting him to just stop and love me again. Be my Lexi. Just look at me, even for a second.

I end up sleeping most of the flight just to avoid bursting into tears at the huge loss I feel at his manner. Breaking inside with how easily Alexi can fuck me up and how dependent on him I have become. This one change in his demeanour towards me and my whole security and happiness is on a shaky ledge over a crumbling precipice into a hellish abyss. It’s sad that I’m that easy to dent, but it is what it is.

I love him so much that it kills me to be denied his softer side, even for mere minutes. I need it to feel sane. Without it I rip myself to pieces with over thinking, insecurities and lack of faith that he loves me. I’m pathetic and weak and needy. Doubting all of this.

Easy to screw mentally, when your name is Alexi. Not that I don’t deserve it, but still. My chest aches with the effort to breathe and my heart feels like he has rammed about ten knives in there between my ribs.

I allow him to usher me from airport to cab, sit well apart silently and then to the private airfield for the second leg of our journey out to The Hamptons. It’s the early hours of the morning when we finally land in the little private plane and stumble through the tiny office to an awaiting driver. Barely taking in the scenery at all while I obsess over that jerk. A standoff of sorts as we walk parallel, zero conversation or contact and he never once looks my way.

Every tiny instance just notches another cut in my already pining and bleeding soul.

Alessandra is leaning against Gino as we walk and looks ready to fall asleep as soon as we get in the limo. Spreading out to face one another in the interior and Alexi immediately pulls out his phone and slides away from me on the seat to sit against the window and look out. The gap between us is not huge, but it feels like a massive gulf to me. Sitting opposite a cuddling couple of lovebirds who are wrapped up, intertwined lovingly, only draws attention to how lonely he’s making me feel. Aching and craving just one touch, one look to settle my agonising worry and remove the insecure pangs of panic growing inside my icy veins.

No hand holding, no touches, kisses, caresses. He barely acknowledges me at any point. I don’t know how much more of this I can take. I feel emotionally distraught and so fragile like I may crumble at any moment.

Outwardly though, good old Camilla is doing her finest at acting like she doesn’t give a shit. Tired, confident and just seems bored. That impeccable mask that shields everything and always has done. Two of us, alarmingly alike in our accomplishments. I always knew my ability to act my way through life would be my one saving grace in all things. I never thought I would have to revert to this with him though. I guess some habits die hard.

Alessandra nudges me with her foot and smiles gently, catching my attention and I smile back. She can see it too and she’s trying to soothe me with an ‘it will be okay’ look. It doesn’t take away the huge cavity forming inside me, but I just put more effort into appearing absolutely fine, so she believes I am.

I must have dozed off as we drove from the small airfield as next thing I know, a warm hand brushes my shoulder to rouse me, and I flick my eyes open. A slight moment of joy that he’s finally over his sulk, but Alessandra is the one leaning over me gently. Crouching in the car to accommodate her so she doesn’t end up sitting on top of me.

“We’re here, Bambina. Alexi and Gino have gone to open the house and switch on the lights. It’s very early.” That sexy Italian sultry accent of hers, so thick and familiar but it just adds another wound to my heart; he left her to wake me and bring me in rather than do it himself. That instant dissolving of a tiny flicker of happiness, and I’m left with a gaping hard dark hole inside of me. Straining to smile while my face aches to crumble.

This is getting beyond a joke.

There’s sulking and there is being a cold fucking bastard who is trying to punish me by freezing me out.

There is a fine line between the two and I’m starting to think it’s the latter. Proof that maybe I was right all along about him being a dickhead in marriage. He’s punishing me and now it’s blatantly obvious.

“I’m coming, go ahead.” I clear my raspy throat, teetering on the brink of tears over something stupid and move in my chair to bring my dead limbs back to life as she moves away and climbs out of the limo ahead of me. I just need a few moments to wake up fully and compose myself before I burst into a flood of pathetic tears.

He’s making me feel much like he used to. Like I’m a worthless nothing to him that gets discarded when he’s had what he wanted. It stings deeply, crushes my throat so swallowing and breathing become laboured, but I hold it in and push myself into numbness.

One last look around to make sure I have everything as I pull my shit together and realise my coat and bag are all still rumpled on the chair beside me, shoes on the floor by my feet. I have got so used to him picking those things up for me to carry that I just see it as another reason to feel pissed and broken. It’s stupid and subtle but it’s a clear fucktard message from Alexi. He’s trying to get to me with these trivial things.

Wanker

Clever, devious fuck. Sulking and pissed because I won’t do what he wants. Hurting me for hurting him in that manipulating way of his. To anyone else, I look like a crazy bitch for reacting to something like this, but I know him.

I should have known better than to think he was just hurt by rejection. It’s starting to feel more like he’s pissed at my disobedience.

Or maybe I’m just grouchy, tired, jet-lagged and in much need of unbroken sleep and some headspace, and I’m over thinking this completely. Either way, he can fuck off and leave me alone if he is going to be like this for the rest of the night. I’ll go to bed and leave him sleeping somewhere else. I don’t need him toying with me this way, and I swore if he ever did, I would run from him as fast as I could and as far as I could so he would never find me.

I won’t let him see he is getting to me.

I’m better than this.

I clamber out of the car, into the cold dawn air and grey light. I shudder and freeze when the house comes into view, stopping me in my tracks as my foot hits the pavement, the chauffeur patiently waiting with the open door, averting his eyes from me. It’s like an assault I’m not expecting, and I guess my fragile mood is the reason it hits me in this way. Already simmering and boom … a blast from the past to fuck me up even more. My heart drops to my feet and I stand motionless for a few seconds as I take in the building before me with a sense of dread.

I have so many memories of this place from last time I was here and the haunting flickers of seeing Gino and Alexi’s cars on the lawn the night I ran away from here hit me harshly, deep in my stomach. I haven’t been back since that night and all that followed and the goosebumps that run across my entire body send a cold wave of mixed fear, sadness and pain through me.

It’s hardly a good feeling to stand here now with this huge house bearing down on me in that strange twilight between dusk and dawn when I’m all alone. Staring up at illuminated windows, rustling trees and can feel the oppressive weight of the past, reminding me of how cruel he can be. Not when I’m feeling this insecure and shaky with how things are between us.

This is the house where I think he finally broke the first major piece of me off and turned it to ashes. Reducing me to hysterics in the bedroom up there, behind the window I’m staring at, and I shiver involuntarily as I blink away that memory. A tear fills my eye and I brush it away, angry at my weakness, my own pathetic lack of resolve when faced with nothing more than a distant memory. Body stiffening from cold, both externally and internally.

He holds so much power over me already, and we have only just begun.

I take a breath, pull myself to a full stand and let it all out heavily. Refusing to be beaten this way. Mind over matter, push it away, don’t let him get to you. Never again. It’s just a house, a moment from the past that can’t hurt me now.

I walk purposefully up the path to the huge doors, trying hard to push all the little visions, noises, feelings, and horrible thoughts away. The doors are still ajar for me and I brace myself before stepping inside to the brightly illuminated grand hall. Taking one last breath for courage and steeling my nerves.

Unsteady legs, turning to jelly, my hand trembles as I clutch my coat and bag to my side, dropping them on the chair by the door as I get inside. Just trying to be calm.

Memories flood back instantly as my eyes scan the familiar hall. Alexi pacing in here angrily and his brother holding him back, devilish and about to commit murder for my attempted escape. The night I ran because he corned me upstairs and used my past to destroy me.

My blood runs cold, brain fighting me to stay in the present and I wonder why I’m having so much trouble shifting these thoughts.

I spent months with him since being here and have never been plagued as I am now. It’s like the house has kept all these images lingering in the air to push back into my brain the second I laid eyes on it. Tormenting me, putting me back in my place to quell the last ounces of resolve I had brimming before I walked in here.

I jump when a warm hand touches my back and I spin like a shocked deer in the headlights at the huge form standing behind me to one side. Tall, male in shadow as the lights behind almost darkens him out completely. Like a blast from the past and distant haze of hospital rooms and sinister first meetings. My heart skips a beat, lurching in fright and for a moment I swear I don’t know where I am. I flinch, lift my hand defensively and cower impulsively, eyes wide and I gasp in panic.

Head so lost in another time and place with that flight-or-fight instinct switched on while my emotions are all over the place.