“Ready?” I ask Ember. “Just like when we got off the plane. Just keep walking.”
Her eyes dart to the reporters, then to me, and very slowly, she nods. “Ready.”
The rush of blurred sound nearly drowns us. I’ve found myself on Page Six a time or two in my life, and I’ve been captured by the paparazzi a few times with my celebrity friends, but absolutely nothing could have prepared me for this insanity. It’s louder and more aggressive than at the airport. Maybe because they know that once we are inside, we’re safe and may never come back out. Regardless of how relentless they are in trying to get the best picture and to force me to answer their questions, we charge forward to the door that Ms. Evans now has opened for us.
When the three of us enter and the door is slammed behind us, it’s as if we just escaped a blizzard and finally found shelter. I wrap an arm around Ember and kiss her on the forehead. I can’t imagine how that had to feel for her, and yet she remained strong through it all.
“Christopher, it is so good to see you… alive!” Ms. Evans says as she stands before me, face pale, eyes wide, and mouth slightly ajar. “When your mother told me…. What a true blessing this is.”
“Thank you, Ms. Evans. It’s good to be home. Really good.”
“Christopher?” I hear a shaky but familiar voice to my right.
I turn my head and see Marissa standing there. I realize she’s been there all along, is watching me stand there with my arm around Ember, and is having to absorb the fact that her boyfriend she thought was dead is far from it. Out of respect for her, I take my arm off Ember and step away just to give a little more distance.
“Marissa,” I say, but I have no idea what else to follow it with.
She closes the distance between us and hugs me. “When they told me you were dead….”
She starts sobbing against my shoulder, and I rub her back in comfort. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. I can feel Ember’s eyes on me, but I don’t have the courage to meet them.
“What happened?” she asks but doesn’t pull her head away. “How did this happen?”
“A sick man knocked me out, kidnapped me, and made it look like I died. It’s a long and twisted story I don’t even know how to tell, to be honest.”
“All that matters is that you’re back,” she mumbles against me, tightening her hold. “You’ve come back to me.”
“Marissa,” I say again, swallowing down the awkwardness I’m feeling, knowing I have to take this situation by the balls whether I want to or not. “I need to introduce you to someone.” I break the embrace and take a few steps back so that I’m closer to Ember than I am to Marissa. “This is Ember. She was with me in Hallelujah Junction. We were held there together before we escaped.”
Marissa looks at Ember and offers a weak smile as she wipes at the tears on her cheeks. “Ember, it’s nice to meet you. I’m so happy Christopher didn’t have to be alone while there.”
“She’s my wife,” I blurt, not knowing how to say it gently and in a way not to hurt Marissa. I have to rip off the Band-Aid. She deserves to know the bitter truth as soon as possible.
Marissa takes a stumbling step back as if I just punched her in the face. She scans Ember from head to toe and then looks at me. “Your wife? What are you talking about?”
“The man—Richard—who held me captive forced me to marry Ember. He considered Ember his daughter and… well, I was kidnapped with the intention for me to marry his daughter.”
“Christopher was forced to marry her,” my mother chimes in. “He had no choice. He was chained to a wall, and after that, he was chained to this girl.”
I still can’t look at Ember. I should. I should stand by her side and hold her hand in solidarity, but at the same time, the pain that is now on Marissa’s face is killing a piece of me slowly. I don’t want to hurt her. Hell… I don’t want to hurt anyone. But there is no way I can walk away from this situation without someone’s heart getting decimated.
“You’re married now?” Marissa asks in disbelief. “Why would you…? Married?
“Not really. Not legally,” my mother tries to reassure as she looks at Ember with a level of disgust on her face I’ve never seen before. “He was kidnapped. He had to do what he had to do to survive.”
I finally look at Ember, who is staring at Marissa with just as much confusion and shock as Marissa has painted on her face.