CHAPTER TWO: SIX YEARS LATER
1094 Words
Nadia's POV
I didn't sleep.
Not even close.
I lay in the bed with the monitor on: Liam was six, he would be afraid and I didn't have the energy to engage in any discussion. I stared at the ceiling and thought about Ethan Voss.
I had lived six years making sure that I would not have to be in the same room as that man was.
Six years.
And Priya had let all my effort go to waste with a single phone call.
I picked up my phone at midnight to call her and tell her to cancel the whole thing.
I put the phone down.
Picked it up again at 2 am
And put it down again.
The restaurant would be closing in three weeks. There was nobody else, I knew that.
I put the phone in the drawer so that I would stop picking it up. I laid there until 5am then I stood up, made coffee and stood at the kitchen window watching the environs of the city. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw my reflection. Tired eyes and the clothes that I hadn't taken off yet because I was too anxious to change into a wear.
I had survived Diana Voss.
I could survive one meeting with her son.
The meeting was in the penthouse of an exquisite building.
I looked at myself once more in the mirror.
“You look fine,” Priya said.
I looked at her with raised eyebrows.
“I didn't sleep all night,” I said.
The reception led us to a conference hall. I sat down and straightened my clothes: I knew that he was going to walk through that door, I had known about it since last night.
I had rehearsed my composure forty minutes before the meeting and none of it had worked. The door opened and I felt his presence before I looked up.
I mustered all the courage that I could get and I looked up.
He was taller than I could remember and was colder. He was putting on a dark suit; and had a calm look on his face.
His eyes found mine.
His expression changed for a moment before it reverted back to normal.
“Nadia,” he said in a cold voice.
“Ethan,” I responded.
Priya had a confused look as she looked at us.
“You two know each other?” She asked curiously.
“We used to,” he said and sat in front of me.
He asked the questions and I gave him the answers. In the middle of the discussion, I noticed that he wasn't looking at me the way you look at someone who you used to love, he was looking at me like a problem that needed solving.
“Three days a week on-site,” he said as we were approaching the end of the conversation.
“It was an oversight during the transition,” he added.
“Is there a problem?” He asked further.
“No,” I replied. “That's fine.”
I signed the document where it needed my signature.
When I stood up, my phone buzzed. I took it out without thinking, Liam's school photo was on the lock screen, his gap-toothed smile.
I pressed it towards my chest as I realized it too late.
Ethan had seen the photo.
He didn't say anything, he only looked at me for a while before he looked away which made my heart race a bit.
I walked out of the building and stood on the pavement for a moment.
Priya was talking, I could see her lips moving but no sound was coming out of it.
I was thinking about the way his expression had changed for a bit before it had reverted back to his original countenance.
He wasn't over it.
He was acting like he was.
We entered a cab and the cab was silent as I pondered on this new development.
“You are quiet,” Priya said.
“I'm always quiet,” I replied.
“This time, it's different,” she added.
Seeing that I wasn't ready for any conversation, she let out a sigh and let the matter die down. She always knows when to let things go, I had not told her that because I knew that she could use it against me.
I didn't tell her the truth either, that Ethan was not only someone that I used to know, he was the man who I had built my entire future on before his mother's interference.
That night, I sat at the kitchen table with the contract in front of me and read every single clause, looking for a catch.
There wasn't one. Just an oversight clause, three days a week, indefinitely.
Liam wandered out at some point dragging the dinosaur and climbed into the chair that was beside me and looked at the papers, then looked at me.
“Why aren't you sleeping?” He asked.
I looked at him like one who had grown two heads
“Why aren't you sleeping?” I fired back.
“That's not fair, I asked first,” his tiny voice sounded.
I chuckled lightly.
I made him warm milk and fed him, sitting with him until his eyes were heavy and carried him in my arms.
He woke up in the hallway and asked in a sleepy voice.
“Mum?”
“Yes,” I replied
“That man from the meeting, is he going to come to the restaurant?”
I stopped in my tracks. “What man?” I asked
“The one that Priya was excited about. I heard her on the phone.”
“Maybe,” I said. “For a little while.”
He nodded his head slowly then I tucked him to bed.
I sat alone in the kitchen staring at Ethan's signature at the end of the page and placed my hands on my jaw.
Ethan was going to be visiting the restaurant three times a week: there's a possibility that he might run into Liam and would do the calculations.
I would manage three times a week, I had managed worse and I knew how to keep things separate. I had been doing that for the past six years.
I had drifted to sleep when it hit me.
Ethan had seen the photo
And I had just signed a contract that would put him in close proximity with the very secret that I had tried so badly to hide.
- Writer
