Aiden couldn’t be in that place any longer. In that ballroom, or even in that hotel. He couldn’t shake the pitying looks people had given him as he’d forced his way through the crowds to the exits.

Stan and Barb had been standing nearby, and Barb had called out to him. Aiden had shunned her, ripping his arm out of her grasp when she tried to stop him.

The anger and frustration unleashed within him raged in every fiber and nerve. He slammed his heels down with every step he took through the dark and empty street, the noise ricocheting off the closed storefronts. His hands kept balling into fists, his fingers digging into his palms, until he forced them to relax.

Everything he’d been bottling up since the whole thing started had chosen that moment to burst out, the inner vault in which he kept all his feelings safely tucked away exploding spectacularly.

Would you feel the same way about him? He remembered the recorded voice asking. No, of course I wouldn’t, Gwen had replied. Of course I wouldn’t. Of course... Aiden couldn’t turn it off.

Nor could he turn off the images flicking in rapid succession through his mind’s eye. The picture of Ben kissing her hand. The way she stood there in the ballroom, shaking her head. The look of utter satisfaction on Judith’s pinched old face at the whole scene.

He thought of Ben, that sleazy reporter, and his fists clenched again in anticipation of pummeling that face until it was no longer so charming. It takes two to cheat, remember, he reminded himself as he again recalled that image Judith had projected.

His phone started buzzing in his pocket and he thumbed the button for the privacy mode that would automatically route all calls to voicemail.

It was Gwen calling. Of course it was Gwen, he knew even before the picture of her smiling face appeared on the fingerprint-smudged screen.

He wanted to doubt what he’d heard, what he’d seen. But the smallest part of him didn’t. A small, vocal part of him that sounded suspiciously like Judith. She had managed to get under his skin, he knew. And he couldn’t dig her back out.

Aiden hated himself for thinking that way about his fiancé, but he also couldn’t deny it. It was a nightmare he’d had all his life, that he’d think he’d found the love of his life, the woman who wanted him for who he was and not what he was worth, only for the ugly, greedy truth to finally reveal itself.

That had actually been one of the myriad of reasons for the original girlfriend contract he’d concocted after meeting her. An easy way out of the relationship if he ever at all suspected that she was just in it only for the money.

Had she fooled him all this time? Could Judith be right, and that he simply couldn’t see Gwen for what she really was?

His phone started buzzing again. He glanced at it. A whirlwind of text messages appeared on his screen, all from Gwen, all incoherent. Autocorrect had wrought havoc with most of them in a manner that he might have found amusing under different circumstances.

He locked the phone again and stuffed it back into his pocket, intent on ignoring all efforts to contact him, at least for a while.

He fought against the idea that she would do that to him. It went against every feeling, every intuition, that he’d ever had about her. Yet he also couldn’t forget what Judith had told him when she’d said that you always thought you knew a person until they did something you didn’t expect. Her meaning, of course, was that you could never truly know another person as you knew yourself.

It hurt Aiden all the more in that Gwen felt like a part of him, an extension of his soul. And maybe that was why he couldn’t control his anger, that even entertaining the very thought that she might be capable of doing this to him was repugnant to what made him who he was.

It started getting colder and colder out as the night wore on. The marching pace Aiden pushed for soon took its toll. His legs burned, his lungs pleaded with him to pause and catch his breath. His back ached.

He fought through it and walked faster. The pain kept his mind focused on the present and away from the deeper hurts. He walked and took random turns. He had no idea where he was and he didn’t care.

He kept going until he reached a small, paved circular space with a fountain in the center of it. The fountain was turned off for the night, the still pool of water in its moat reflecting the pinprick stars above.

And there was also a wooden bench set so that passersby could take a seat for a few minutes and watch the fountain. Without guidance from the rest of him, Aiden’s feet took him to that bench.

He sat and looked at the unfamiliar buildings around him. Stopped like that, the chill to the air began getting to him and he stuffed his hands into his pockets. His fingers brushed against his phone, and he entertained the thought of looking at it before rejecting the notion.

The soles of his feet ached. The shoes he’d pulled on weren’t meant to be subjected to so much walking.

Aiden then thought of returning to the hotel. If he could even find it, that was. However, he rejected that idea, too. Gwen would be waiting back in their suite, he knew. He also knew he could probably just rent another room. But what if someone else came and tried to talk to him?

What if Judith or her butler came searching him out, demanding another audience?

His body also made a compelling argument against even standing up from the bench. He was exhausted in every way a person could be exhausted.

So he lay down on the bench, the wooden boards an unkind pillow. He couldn’t even straighten out, having to keep his legs at an angle in order to prevent his feet from dangling over the ledge.

Despite the cold, the anger, and the discomfort, Aiden passed out within moments of allowing his eyes to shut. The stars twinkling above were his last sight, and the image of Ben kissing Gwen’s hand his final memory.

***

AN UNKIND HAND SHOOK his shoulder. A voice barked at him in a language he didn’t immediately comprehend.

He opened his eyes and regretted it, the harshness of the sun constricting his pupils painfully.

The hand shook him again, the voice growing more irritated with his lack of cooperation. “Yes, just give me a moment,” Aiden said, his voice cracking up through his dry throat.

Trying to guard against some of that light, he put a hand over his eyes as he grabbed the back of the bench to pull himself up into a sitting position.

That was a mistake, too. Muscles tensed and cramped from spending the night on the hard, uncomfortable boards stretched and pulled. He sucked in a breath when his spine began popping.

“Englisch?” the unkind and commanding voice said.

“Yes, English. American, rather,” Aiden said, rubbing at his eyes, trying to rid them of the bruised afterimage the sun had burned into them so quickly.

“You cannot sleep here.”

“Sorry... officer,” Aiden said, blinking rapidly seemed to help. He made out the outline of a tall man in a dark uniform which quickly resolved into the image of a Swiss police officer standing over him, his hands on his hips in a most disapproving fashion.

The officer gave him a once over, clearly confused why a man wearing an obviously expensive suit would have to sleep on a bench. The badge on his cap glinted in the morning sunlight.

The cop watched Aiden impassively as he stood up from the bench, Aiden grimacing at the various aches and pains that accompanied such a procedure. Aiden tugged at his jacket, which now had several creases in it from being slept on. His slacks were the same way.

His hand strayed to the pockets where he kept his phone and wallet, and he experienced a momentary relief when he discovered that neither had been stolen from him during the night.

“Am I getting a fine?” Aiden asked.

“Did you have a good reason for sleeping on that most uncomfortable appearing bench?” the officer asked.

Aiden sighed and nodded as all the memories from the previous night, no longer held at bay by sleep, charged back into his thoughts.

“Then perhaps a warning will suffice,” the officer said. “I will, however, insist that you leave the area as well.”

“Of course, yeah. Thanks,” Aiden said. He started off, going back down the way he thought he’d come. He quickly realized that he had no clue where he was, and hadn’t any idea how to get back to the hotel.

He thought about going back and asking the police officer, but he wasn’t certain what sort of reaction he could expect by returning to the place he’d just been evicted from.

He wandered off in the direction he thought the hotel lay in, still not certain whether he even wanted to go back there or not. The night’s restless sleep had done little to dispel his confusion or help him decide on how to deal with his feelings.

For instance, he knew he still loved Gwen. You couldn’t turn that sort of thing off and on like a light switch. However, Judith’s words still poisoned his thoughts toward her. The thought that Gwen could do this to him opened a deep chasm inside of him, and he wasn’t certain how to close or fill it.

He wanted someone to talk to about all this. The trouble was, Gwen was the person he normally went to, and he couldn’t exactly go to discuss this with her. He couldn’t even be sure he could see her.

So he wandered for a while until he came to a small café on the corner of a quiet intersection, only a few cars passing by, the hum of their engines quickly fading.

He took his phone out. Half a dozen new calls and three times that many texts deluged him. Most of them from Gwen.

He took a seat at a bistro table set up on the modest patio in front of the café. The table had a large umbrella that blocked out the blinding light of the morning sun.

He made the call, the phone ringing three times before someone answered. It was a gamble. He didn’t even know if she was still on this continent. “Hi. I’m hoping I’ve caught you on time. If you’re still here, could you come meet me at the café at the corner of...” he squinted over at the street signs and spoke them into the phone.

“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.” The line went dead.

Aiden waited. A waiter came out and he ordered two espressos.

Her heels clicked on the pavement, announcing her arrival. Soon, she sat in the chair across from him. “What’s up? Also, did you sleep in that suit?” She wore a grey skirt and matching jacket, her glossy black hair free around her shoulders.

“Thanks for coming. I wasn’t sure who else I could speak with,” Aiden replied.

“Well, my trip was already paid for. I figured, hey, Swiss vacation,” Catherine replied.

The espresso arrived and she sipped at hers right away. Aiden liked the smell of it, but wasn’t sure whether to risk putting anything on his stomach just yet.

“Thanks for the caffeine. I take it from your hobo chic clothes and stubbly face that all is not well in the world of Aiden?”

“Something happened last night and I just sort of retreated from everything.”

“Well, don’t keep me in suspense!”

Aiden told her what happened. Everything. The meeting with Judith beforehand, the engagement ball redux, and of course the recording and its visual accompaniment. “I just don’t know how to feel and what to think about all this. I want to believe that Gwen isn’t like that, but I can’t get Judith’s warning out of my head. What do you think?”

Catherine smiled wryly and put her espresso cup back down onto its saucer. “You know, this really is helping in that whole getting over you thing I’ve been trying...”

“Glad to hear it,” Aiden said, “Any other thoughts?”

“Yes. And keep in mind I’m saying this for your own good. Not in any way, shape, or form related to your rejection...”

Aiden gave her a taut smile, “Yes. I’m sorry to sound a bit rude here, but can we get to the point?”

“Fine,” Catherine said, “You, Aiden Manning, are an idiot. A moron of such epic proportions I’m getting the urge to pen said epic about your idiocy. You’re so stupid that...”

“Okay, enough,” Aiden said, flinching at her every word, feeling that he somehow deserved each syllable. “What am I such an idiot about, pray tell?”

“Judith’s played you. She’s played you like a rock guitarist who then smashes their instrument on the stage at the end of the show. She’s gotten into that pretty, apparently empty head of yours and poisoned you against Gwen, and the worst part is you’re letting her do all this. Gwen loves you, you big dolt. I mean, of course Judith had that recording doctored! And that picture? I could grab your hand and kiss it right now long enough for someone to take a snapshot... Oh, relax! I’m not going to. It doesn’t mean a thing. It’s all so screaming obvious. Can’t you see?”

Aiden withdrew his hands from the table and clasped them on his lap. “I see,” he said.

“You know, I can’t believe I ever liked you as long and as much as I did. All this?” she said, waving her hand in a circle to indicate Aiden, “I can’t believe I never let myself see it before. Talk about your rose-colored glasses.”

“Are you quite finished?” Aiden said. Catherine’s constant stream of insults and jeering both irritated and, more surprisingly, cheered him. “I get it. I’m wrong about this and apparently I’m wrong about everything else, too.”

“Finished? Not yet,” Catherine said, leaning forward, “All this stuff makes you an epic dummy, but if you don’t get back there and sort this out with Gwen you’re going to lose her and that will make you quite possibly the biggest bonehead of all time. And just remember, if you let that happen, you no longer have all this...” She leaned back and indicated her body with her hands, “To fall back on.”

“You’re right! My God, you’re right. I need to get back to Gwen,” Aiden said. He put his words into action by putting some money down on the table for the espressos and then standing up followed by walking a few paces away.

Then he stopped and turned back around to face Catherine, who watched him with an amused smile. “I don’t suppose you know how to get back to the hotel from here?”

Catherine added an amused nod of her head to the smile.