With a frustrated sigh, I turned back for the bed and climbed beneath the comforter, and for the first time since moving into the mansion, I cried.
I wanted the truth. I also wanted us to go back to the way things were, but a part of me knew we never would. Not when there was a possibility I could have been wrong about Roland and he may have been lying to me this whole time.
I needed answers, and perhaps I was becoming obsessed with the whole idea of him and Melanie, despite the fact they’d been over for years, but I couldn’t help myself.
For all I knew, my life could have been in danger and if it was, I wasn’t going down without shedding some light on the truth for the whole world to see.
* * *
At five in the morning, the day after having breakfast with Kell, I got dressed and went to the shed. Kell had left three hours after breakfast to catch a flight back to Florida and told me he’d dig for information on Miley right away. Roland was avoiding me as much as possible and I had no words for him, so we stayed apart, sleeping in separate rooms and eating separate meals. I couldn’t live like this for much longer, so that left only one thing for me to do.
I had to finish reading her journals. And this time, no matter how much Roland knocked on the shed or how obsessed I felt, I wasn’t leaving until I got to the very last page of the very last journal.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Roland never did ask who I’d cheated on him with and after what’d happened, I didn’t have it in me to tell him it was Dylan. I’d hurt him enough.
Months went by, and eventually I transitioned from the master bedroom to the room Miley used to stay in. Miley had been bumped up weeks ago to a manager’s position in a department store and had moved out. She’d found her own place and was able to pay for it with her job. I was proud of her, but I also missed her.
I slept alone in her room every night, and every morning that I woke up, I thought about the night in Hawaii. The rage in Roland’s eyes was terrifying. I’d never seen him like that before and a part of me feared he really would have killed me if he could. Now, when he was around, I practically walked on eggshells around the mansion, all while he and Dylan boasted and laughed and were the best of friends.
I hated everything about it. If Roland knew it was his own cousin who’d fucked me, he wouldn’t have been so friendly with him. I wanted to tell him, just to get it over with—and to give Roland every reason to get rid of me and let our marriage go—but hadn’t I been selfish enough? First in my marriage, and then with my sister, and now I wanted to sabotage Roland and Dylan’s bond because it wasn’t fair to me.
But I’d made this bed and perhaps I deserved it. Instead of kissing Dylan back, I should have pushed him away and told Roland what’d happened right away so he could kick Dylan out right on his ass. But I kept going back for more.
I couldn’t stand to look at myself in the mirror anymore. I began losing weight from my lack of eating. I was hardly sleeping, so I’d spend time in the shed, glued to a computer screen, making designs people probably wouldn’t buy because that was better than sitting in a room in the mansion, being ignored.
Who would buy from me anyway? I wasn’t popular. I didn’t keep up with my Instagram account, mostly because I didn’t care for posting a ton of images of myself, even though the public expected that of me.
I didn’t want to be the basic athlete’s wife who took pictures of herself, waiting for likes, flaunting my athletic husband and all the money he had that I got to spend. I didn’t want to be the wife who people assumed had only started her clothing line because she was married to a famous person and wanted to profit off the status.
I wanted them to know this was my idea—that I’d built this myself without Roland’s help. I’d used his money to kick-start it, yes, but all the ideas, all the designs, all the paperwork and business licenses—I did it myself, without his help.
I once had this vision of starting my own clothing line and selling a ton of items, but even when it came to that, I was losing my passion for it. That night in Hawaii with Roland had completely drained me of any creativity, any love, any desire. I needed help but I wasn’t going to get it from anyone inside the mansion.