Page 47 of Cruel King

Standing, I give him a kiss. “I’m going to go outside and get some sun for a little while. I can’t remember the last time I spent any time outdoors recently.”

“That’ll be good for you. Try not to be too hurt by what he did. Some people just can’t be happy.”

I walk outside to clear my head, but I can’t stop thinking about how angry Matthias was. As I walk along the road, I wonder if we’ll ever get back to the way we were that day.

“Ava! Wait up!” Theo calls from behind me, and I turn around to see him jogging to catch up.

“Hey, did you see your father?”

He shakes his head. “No. He was sleeping, so I figured I’d take a walk around the estate. Turns out I miss a lot of things about this place. I don’t think I ever realized how beautiful it is in springtime, you know that?”

I look around at all the trees with their green leaves and all the flowers the groundskeeper planted and have to agree. “It is. I think I never saw how incredible this place was until last spring. Something about the flowers and how they seem to go on forever. It’s just beautiful.”

As we walk, he quietly says, “I’m sorry about before with my brother. I don’t know what his problem is.”

“His problem seems to be me.”

When I look up at Theo, he’s smiling and shaking his head. “Well, then Matthias is dumber than I thought. And blind.”

I think for a moment that I should explain that his brother and I spent those days together and I don’t understand how he could be so horrible to me after that, but I don’t. Pressing my lips together, I keep the words in.

There’s no point in dredging up a past only I remember and care about.

CHAPTEREIGHTEEN

Matthias

I slamthe door and step a few feet into my bedroom before memories of my time with Ava wash over me. Fuck, I don’t want to think of that. Not now. Not ever. Just the sight of her sitting there with Theo like they’re two happy peas in a fucking pod made me want to kill someone.

Looking around at the room I spent so many years in, I have to laugh. I hated this space for no good reason. I understand that now that I’m back here again. This house always felt like a prison.

How foolish I was back then. I had no idea of what a prison really felt like.

I walk over to the bed and sit down, exhausted from the trip back here. Well, that’s only part of it. All those hours spent getting here were made worse by all my thinking about the past.

About Ava.

Christ, it was a mistake coming back here. My father doesn’t need to see me before he moves on to the next life. We haven’t spoken in ages, unless I can count King Industries memos and the company Christmas card everyone receives around the holidays.

Closing my eyes, I don’t stop my mind from drifting back to that one Christmastime I can’t seem to forget. Twenty-two of them came before it, but I can barely remember a single thing from any of them. Five of them have come after that day, and not one of them made me as happy as that time I spent with her.

I’ve tried to forget. God knows I have. I knew it wasn’t fair to marry Jillian when I was still in love with Ava. I thought I could be the husband I needed to be to make it work, but she’s not stupid. She knew. Jillian didn’t know who always made me keep her at arm’s length or how much I couldn’t stop myself from thinking about the time I spent with Ava those two snowy December days, but she sensed I wasn’t hers, even though I asked her to marry me.

Not that it was ever my idea. Our marriage, like everything else in my life once I joined King Industries, happened because it was good for business. My father and her father decided merging our two families would benefit their bottom lines. So we got married two years ago, even though I still loved someone else.

I look up at the ceiling and try to remember a time when I wasn’t so unhappy. All that comes to me is that time with Ava. How is it possible that a few hours could mean so much to me? I’ve had thousands of hours since then. Why couldn’t a single one of them bring a smile to my face like those I spent with her?

Fuck! It’s like she haunts me, and I don’t know how to get rid of her. My life would be so much better if I never had those days with little Ava Sutton.

Lying back on the bed, I take a deep breath in as the truth echoes through my brain. No, my life wouldn’t be better. It would merely be empty, and I’d have no reason to ever want to come back to this place.

When I found out from my father’s estate manager that his illness had reached a point that there was no hope, all I could think of was seeing Ava again. Even after all the hurt, I only thought of her. I can’t help my father. His cancer is going to end his life, and that’s the simple fact.

I considered not even returning here. What’s the point? I did everything my father asked, and in return, he thought he gave me the world. Should I now tell him in his final days that all he did was ensure I’m the most miserable person anyone could ever meet because I did as he demanded?

He got what he wanted, and in return, I’ll be the head of King Industries at the ripe old age of twenty-eight. I’m sure it seemed like a fair deal in his mind. It’s not like I ever had a chance to do anything else. He wanted me to go to college for business, so that’s what I did. And when he wanted me to join the family company, that’s what I did. So now when he dies at barely sixty years old, never having the chance to retire and enjoy life outside the walls of King Industries headquarters, I’ll again do as I must and take his place.

Every time I think of that eventuality, I feel like someone’s placed a thousand-pound weight on my chest and I can’t push it off. It threatens to smother the life out of me, but how different will my existence be once I step into his shoes and take over as head of King Industries? I have little else in my life other than work. My wife and I barely talk to one another anymore. We have no children, thank God. I can’t imagine bringing a child into the sham we call a marriage. I have no real friends. They’ve all fallen away in the past few years.