The Wrong Vow, My Perfect Match

Chapter 6

Evelyn

I was returning to the same place that broke me, not as a broken person but as someone who would break all of them soon.

"Evelyn, are you ready yet, we are going to miss our flight," Julian called from the doorway, his voice carried that familiar edge of impatience that told me he had probably been standing there longer than he was letting on.

"I am almost done," I called back, zipping up the last of my carry-on bag before hauling it off the bed.

"Mama, mama, mama!" Leo came bursting through the door like a small tornado, his socks slid against the floor as he skidded to a stop in front of me, thrusting his iPad inches from my face. "Spider-Man killed the villain, look mama, I told you he won, I told you!"

I blinked at the screen, then at my son's absolutely victorious expression, and despite everything sitting heavy in my chest, I laughed. "Aww sweetheart, I am so proud of you for believing in him, but Leo, baby, you need to put your jacket on, we have to leave and it is cold outside."

"Yes mama," he announced with great solemnity, then immediately spun on his heel screaming, "I am going with the speed of Spider-Man!" and tore out of the room. Two seconds later, a loud crash echoed from the hallway followed by absolute silence.

Julian and I both froze.

"I am fine," Leo yelled from somewhere on the floor, and I pressed my hand over my mouth to keep the laugh from becoming a full performance.

Julian dragged a hand down his face, shaking his head slowly. "That child."

"He is four, Julian."

"He is a hazard," Julian muttered, though the corner of his mouth was already betraying him. "Such a stubborn kid."

"He is learning from you," I replied, reaching past him to grab my handbag from the hook.

Julian turned to look at me with an expression of pure offended innocence. "No, no, no, we all know every single ounce of that stubbornness came directly from his mother, let us not rewrite history here."

"So now I am stubborn," I teased, brushing past him into the hallway where Leo was picking himself off the floor with tremendous dignity, his iPad was miraculously still in one piece.

"Amanda," I called out to the housekeeper who appeared almost immediately from the kitchen corridor, "please clean up here and make sure this young man has his jacket on before he steps one foot outside."

"Yes ma'am," Amanda replied, already moving toward Leo with his jacket in hand, which told me she had been anticipating exactly this chaos.

Julian followed me back into the bedroom doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms crossed, and I could feel the shift before he even opened his mouth. The teasing was gone.

"On a serious note," he began, and I kept my back to him, pretending to check my handbag, "you have everything you have ever dreamed of, Evelyn. A real life, a good business, Leo, stability. You do not need to walk back into the Thorne world and get yourself cut up simply because you want revenge."

I stopped moving.

The silence stretched between us and I let it, because I knew if I turned around too quickly he would see my face before I was ready for him to.

"Julian," I finally said, turning slowly, "that man threw me out of his house like I was nothing, after three years of everything I endured, everything I swallowed, everything I gave even when he gave me nothing but cruelty in return." My voice was steady but my chest was not. "And Serena, my own sister, she planned it, she sat somewhere comfortable and watched him destroy me and she enjoyed it, you know she did, you know everything."

The memory came whether I invited it or not. Serena's face the day she walked back through that door, those green eyes finding mine over Charlie's shoulder, and that small, slow smirk that she had worn like a crown. She had wanted me to see it. She had needed me to know that she had won and that she had won deliberately.

I felt the tears before I could do anything about them and I hated it, hated that even now they could still pull water from me.

Julian crossed the room without a word and pulled me into his arms, one hand pressed flat against my back, and I let him, just for a moment, just long enough to breathe.

"Alright," he murmured against my hair, "since you are this sure, I will stop pushing."

"Thank you," I whispered, pulling back and wiping my face with the back of my hand before Leo could appear and ask me questions I was not ready to answer.

I straightened up, rolled my shoulders back and walked to the bedroom door. "Amanda, please send the bags down to the car."

"Already ahead of you ma'am," Amanda called back cheerfully.

Leo came thundering down the hallway, jacket on, iPad tucked under his arm, looking deeply pleased with himself. "Mama I am ready, I am faster than Spider-Man."

"You crashed into a wall," Julian pointed out.

"Spider-Man crashes too," Leo replied with complete seriousness, and I grabbed my son's hand before Julian could respond to that, pulling them both toward the front door.

I picked up my handbag, felt the weight of it in my hand, and exhaled slowly.

Julian opened the door and Leo darted through it, already narrating his own adventure in a voice loud enough for the entire floor to hear. Julian stepped out after him, glancing back at me with a look that was equal parts concern and resignation.

I took one last look behind me, then stepped through and pulled the door shut.

"A lot of things will be set on fire this week," I said quietly, more to myself than to him, as I turned away from the door for the last time, "especially my sister.”