After the Divorce, He Begged Me Back

Chapter 8

Elena's POV

Why on God's green earth is he stalking me now?

Silence fell over all four of us in the room. Adrian and I held each other's gaze. If I was not mistaken, he looked just as confused as I felt, completely out of place in the way only a city man in a tailored suit standing on farmland could be. But I knew Adrian.

Three years of knowing him had taught me one thing above everything else. He had never once been anywhere without an agenda.

Had he come to bring the signed papers?

Something settled in me. Quiet and certain. He did not know whose land this was. And I was not going to tell him. Not yet.

"I will be right back. Sorry for the intrusion, please be patient." I said to Gran Gran before stepping out. Adrian followed without much resistance until we were outside in the open air.

"Looking for a job so quickly?" he said, his voice laced with amusement. His eyes moved over me slowly, taking in my work clothes, the dirt on my hands, and the absence of anything he would recognize as the woman he married.

"And what if I was? What business is that of yours?" I folded my arms across my chest. I wanted him to state his business and state it fast.

"It is my business because I know you. The first thing you do the moment I close my debit card is run out looking for work on a farm. Just like I predicted." He tilted his head, the smile sitting too comfortably on his face. "You cannot survive without money, Elena. We both know that."

The amusement in it was almost impressive. He genuinely believed I was here scraping for survival. That every move I made somehow traced back to him, to his wallet, to what he had or had not given me. The arrogance of it was so complete it had almost looped back around to being funny.

Then he stepped closer. Not aggressive, not yet. Just close enough that I caught the familiar scent of him, the expensive cologne I had bought him two Christmases ago still sitting on his collar. His eyes moved over my face the way they used to before everything went wrong, and something shifted in his expression.

Something tender, almost familiar, flickered in his eyes and died almost immediately.

"You look different," he said quietly. Not a compliment. Not an insult. Just an observation that felt more intimate than anything he had said in the last year of our marriage.

"These rags do not fit you," he added.

My body was still trying to recover from the impact of nostalgia as his scent wrapped around me. A small pull shimmered somewhere I did not want to acknowledge. Familiar and deeply unwanted.

It had led to all of this mess.

And the worst part, the part that disgusted me the moment I felt it, was that some traitorous corner of me still responded to him.

I straightened immediately. He reached for my chin and I stepped back before he could make contact.

"Do not do that," I said.

"Do what?" The smile returned. "Touch you?"

He scoffed. "So much for s****l inadequacy. You know exactly how much you want me. You can hide behind that smart mouth of yours, but I know where that mouth wants to be." He placed his hands on his crotch, holding his manhood firm, lust and arrogance dancing behind his eyes in equal measure.

It only made me wonder if he had come here purely to provoke me.

"What are you doing here, Adrian? And where are the signed copies of the papers?"

His shoulder tensed at the mention of the divorce papers. The easy expression sharpened into something harder.

"I am not signing them. What are you going to do about it?"

"Sue you."

He laughed. A full, genuine laugh. "You do not even have enough to hire a lawyer right now."

"You keep saying that. As though the only way I exist is through your money." I kept my voice even. "It must be exhausting, carrying that much ego around."

"In case you are not aware," he said, straightening his jacket, "I came to see the manager of this farm. Right now you are standing in the way of that."

I almost smiled.

"The manager is busy," I said. "You will have to wait."

"That is not your call to make, sweetheart." He looked around the land slowly, deliberately, with the expression of a man calculating what something is worth and finding it below his standard. "Besides, I cannot imagine what kind of operation runs out of a place like this."

"Then why are you here?"

"Because my company needs a supply partnership and this farm was recommended as affordable." He said it like he was doing us a favour by showing up. "Though I have to say, walking in here, I am starting to wonder if whoever made that recommendation has ever actually seen the place."

He looked at me then. That particular look he used to give me when he thought I was being naive about something.

"You know what your problem is, Elena? You have always done this. Thought you could walk into something with no experience and make it work through sheer stubbornness. The divorce, leaving the city, and now this." He gestured at the land around him. "Playing farmer. You will come back. You always come back. Maybe not today, but you will be on your knees before the month is out."

The certainty in his voice made my skin crawl. Not because he was right. But because he believed it so completely. He had built an entire version of me inside his head, obedient and dependent and small, and he was standing here on my land talking to that version like she was the one in front of him.

"None of your business," I said. "Now get out. You do not belong here."

"I agree." He straightened his cuffs. "This wretched place, with these peasant farmers. I do not know how you stand it."

That one landed differently.

The disregard for the land was one thing. But calling them peasants? Every person working this soil had more dignity in one callused hand than Adrian had ever managed to find in his entire polished life.

"Every farmer on this land produces food that reaches your table," I said, my voice dropping low. "They are worth more than anything you think you are, Adrian. But of course you would not know that. You have never lived anywhere outside your own head."

His brows pulled together. His lips parted like he was about to say something when a car rolled through the gate.

I turned.

A familiar face behind the wheel. Casual clothes, easy posture, exactly the kind of energy this moment needed.

Brad.

My absolute saviour, as always.

I did not think. I took off toward him. He stepped out of the car just in time, and my arms found his shoulders as I pulled him straight into a kiss.