The Wrong Bride (The Windsors, #1)(52)

The door opens, and I look up when Raven walks into the living room with a sweet smile on her face.

“Look, I need to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

Raven frowns at me when I end the call before Hannah even has a chance to say goodbye. She calls me straight back, and I rush to decline the call, a weird sense of guilt holding me captive. All I did was speak to Hannah, yet somehow I feel like I cheated on my wife.

“Who was that?” she asks, her voice soft.

I hesitate. “Hannah.”

Raven stares at me for a moment, and then she huffs and shakes her head. She clenches her jaw angrily and walks past me, heading straight to our bedroom.

“It wasn’t anything,” I tell her, following her. “I told her we could be friends, but I’d been ignoring her messages, so she called me.”

Raven pauses and looks at me over her shoulder. “Friends,” she repeats, before rolling her eyes.

“Rave,” I plead.

She shakes her head and walks into the bathroom, slamming the door closed behind her.

Fuck. What am I supposed to do? I’m not even sure I did anything wrong at all. For God’s sake. Things have been going so well between Raven and me, and I fucked it all up. I fucking knew speaking to Hannah wouldn’t bode well for me. I know what Hannah wants from me, and I’m well aware I can’t give her that. I don’t even want to, but Raven would never believe that. How could she?

I sit down on the bed we chose together, trying to think of a way to appease her. I promised her loyalty when we got married, and I need her to know that I’d never stray. If nothing else, I want her to know I won’t ever betray her.

She walks out of the bathroom in nothing but a towel and pauses when she sees me sitting on our bed. Her eyes flash with anger, and I hesitantly hold my hand out. “Come here, Rave.”

She narrows her eyes at me, but she does as I ask, standing between my spread legs, her eyes on mine.

I grab her hand and place my phone in it. “Check. I haven’t replied to any of her messages. Check my call history. Today is the first time I picked up when she called.”

“You think I won’t?” she snaps.

I smile up at her. “Baby, I gave you my phone because I want you to check. This isn’t me playing games with you. This is me giving you the honesty you asked for.”

She stares at my phone, and for a moment, pure agony flashes through her eyes. Then she hands me back my phone, her expression grave. “Never mind,” she tells me. “I don’t need to see any of that.”

I stare at my wife for a moment. “You asked for honesty, didn’t you? So give me a moment of honesty. I want to know why you just looked at my phone that way.”

Raven looks into my eyes and sighs. “Do you remember that day that Grandma made cookies, and you filmed Sierra and me fighting over them?”

I nod, my dick stirring at the mere thought of that memory. She’d climbed into my arms in an attempt to snatch my phone away, and I’d pushed her against the wall, her body pressed against mine. It was only for a few moments, but I still remember the way she felt against me.

“When I deleted that video, I saw the last photo you took. It was a photo of Hannah, naked, in bed. I don’t want to go through your phone because I don’t want to be confronted with any of that. Maybe it’s silly, I’m not sure. It’s not like we’re truly husband and wife, but I just…”

“We are.”

I wrap my hands around her waist and look up at her pleadingly. “Grace,” I remind her. “Will you give me some grace?”

She looks back at me, caught off-guard.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Ares. I’m not… I’m not mad at you. I’m mostly just mad at myself.”

I tighten my grip on her and shake my head. “No, baby. You’re my wife. It doesn’t matter how or why we got married — all that matters is that we’re married now. You better believe I’d be pissed as fuck if you were going around calling your ex, so yeah, I did do something wrong. If it’s not behavior I’d accept from you, it isn’t something I should be doing myself. You and I will need to talk about if and how Hannah is going to be part of our lives, but that isn’t something we need to do right now. How about we both think about it, and once you’ve decided what your boundaries are in relation to Hannah and me, you let me know? Whatever you decide, I will honor.”

She stares at me in disbelief. “What if I decide that I never want you to speak to her again?”

I smile at her. “Then I won’t. You are my wife, Raven. I will always put you above anyone and everything else. Always.”

She purses her lips and nods, her expression filled with cautious hope. She doesn’t realize it, but she could ask me for the moon and I’d try to give it to her. There’s nothing I won’t do for her.





Chapter Thirty-Three





Ares





I scroll through my camera feed, the feeling bittersweet. Hannah always hated taking photos together, so most of them are of her alone. There aren’t many of us together, and I can’t find a single one of the both of us in which I’m smiling. All of these images look forced, as though I knew she was humoring me by taking a photo with me.