Marie
Everyone in the kitchen stared at her as she fled to her office in tears. Jamie came after her, the ever-faithful friend he was, but she didn’t want to be disturbed. Not right then. After several knocks her assistant let her be. She would talk to him, in time. But not yet.
The locked door rocked in its frame as someone tried to enter only to find it wouldn’t open. The same person grunted, then wood shattered as Garath simply ripped it from its hinges. She didn’t even have to see him to know it was him.
“Now what are you going to do?” she asked calmly as he stood there holding the door, almost comically looking around for a place to put it.
Finally he decided to push it back into the frame. It didn’t fit very well, but it stayed, giving them a modicum of privacy.
“I’m going to give you a chance to tell me everything,” he said, standing in front of her desk. “To come clean about the pictures of him.”
There was something about the way Garath spoke of Liam that triggered a warning, but once again she couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Whatever it was it had to be important, but her brain just wasn’t able to unravel the mystery.
“Fine. But not with you looming over me like that. I’m not going to do this like I’m being interrogated.”
Garath sat stiffly in one of the three chairs opposite her desk, wasting no time.
“His name is Liam.” Start with the basics. “We dated and then were engaged, yes. That is why there is a picture of us. Everything was fine. I fell for him, he wooed me, whatever you want to call it.”
Joints popped in his knuckles as he gripped the arm rests of the chair, wood cracking and snapping under his immense strength.
“Will you stop ruining things?” she barked. “This is all in the past. I wasn’t a virgin when you met me, okay? It’s not like you were either. You don’t just get to be that good in bed without any experience. So stop acting all holier-than-thou on me, got it?”
Garath nodded, but he didn’t relax. Fine, whatever.
“You weren’t wrong about us being together.”
The gray-eyed giant grew visibly more irate at that admission. His lips, already thin, were now compressed so tightly she could barely make them out. Red filled his face, but it wasn’t from embarrassment, it was from fury. Like a volcano ready to erupt he sat across from her, biding his time.
“Why shouldn’t I leave right now?” He spoke in tight, clipped tones, the calm a complete façade for the tempest swirling underneath.
Marie slammed a palm onto the table. “Because then you’d be just like him, and just like every other guy. Leaving me right when I need you the most. When you’re supposed to be with me and support me. Instead you’d leave me.”
Garath’s surprise was complete. “What?”
“See? You’re rushing to conclusions when you don’t have all the information. Liam left me.”
“He did?”
“In the worst possible way.” She looked down, feeling embarrassed and hurt all over again as she remembered that day. “It was on the wedding day. I walked down the aisle, and he walked out. Leaving me on the altar. Alone.” Tears started to fall. “Do you have any idea how embarrassing that was for me, Garath? To be up there in front of hundreds of friends and family, most of whom were from my side, and be humiliated? All of them staring at me, asking questions.”
“I’m sorry.”
She ignored him. “What’s so wrong with Marie that Garath left? She must be a control-freak. Maybe she’s broken. Messed in the head. Maybe she cheated on him. Or he cheated on her because she wouldn’t put out.”
“Nobody said that,” he protested.
“Of course not. Not out loud. But in their heads they were thinking it. All while I stood up there and cried, my perfect makeup ruined as the man I thought I loved walked out on me.”
“No explanation? Nothing?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It’s because he’s a scumbag piece of shit, Garath. That asshole left me there and ran out of the chapel. He stole our wedding ride. It was my father’s pride and joy, a classic 1971 Plymouth Hemi Barracuda convertible that he left to me in his will.” Her voice finally cracked and she reached for a tissue.
Garath beat her to it. He pulled one out and then handed her the entire box.
“It was all decorated too. Tin cans, a Just Married sign, the works. He ripped that all off and just ran off with it. He stole it from me.”
“I’m sorry.” The big man’s face was filled with shame, and he refused to meet her eyes. “Then just now, I walked out on you without warning or reason again. It must have been like it was happening all over again.”
“Yes.”
“There’s not much I can say to make up for that, is there?”
“No. It’s weird, I get it. The pictures of him. But I keep them there for two reasons.”
“What are those?”
She smiled sadly. “This is what you should have asked before you walked out. One reason is as a reminder to myself of how I failed my father. I’ve never gotten the car back. The police weren’t able to track it down. My dad trusted me to take care of it, and I let it get stolen. What kind of daughter am I?”
Garath looked poised to protest, but she didn’t let him.
“The second reason is a tracking board.”
“What?”
“I’ve never stopped looking for that bastard,” she snarled, her voice cold. “Every picture up there besides the engagement one is from a recent source. I tracked him down to this base, and those are pictures from news reports, newspapers, things like that, where he’s shown his face. He’s here somewhere, and I’m going to find him.”
She finished with another slam of her fist onto the table, but Garath’s reaction surpassed that and then some.