Not Yet Yours

Chapter 27

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Harriet

A t first, I start to spiral, telling myself that my father was right after all, but I think of my therapist and the mental exercises she gave me to do when I started to let myself think that way again. I run through them all until my mind is clear. Ok, my father is still the bastard in that scenario, but it doesn’t feel like I am cursed, like I am destined to just be alone.

I get to the lobby, leave the building, and go to the parking lot, where I go and find my car. I get in and for a moment, I just sit there and debate going home, but the thought of going to my house and stewing alone is too tragic to contemplate. I need to talk to a friend and get this all out. Plus, if I’m at home alone and Liam turns up there, I know I won’t be able to resist hearing him out and I’ve had enough of his bullshit to last me a lifetime.

I get my cell phone out of my purse and type out a text to Max.

Hey. Sorry to bother you, I get that you’re probably at work, but I really need you. Any chance you can take off for an hour or two?

I hit send and hope for the best. I get a response within minutes.

Is everything ok?

My reply is simple and straight to the point.

No.

I feel like I should have said more after I hit send, but I didn’t want to go into it in a text message and I was scared that if I said yes, everything was ok, Max would want to see me after work instead of now and I really can’t wait that long. Her latest text pings straight in.

Leaving work now. I’ll be home in five minutes. Meet me there.

Cullen’s apartment, which is obviously now Cullen and Max’s apartment, isn’t far from here, but I start to pull out of the parking lot straight away. If I have to sit and wait in a parking lot, I would much rather do it at Max’s end than risk sitting in Liam’s parking lot and him coming back and seeing me there.

I drive across the next couple of blocks and pull up in Max’s parking lot. I send her another text message letting her know that I am here and to text me when she arrives. Her reply comes a few moments later.

I’m already here. Come on up.

I guess her office is even closer to her apartment than Liam’s place is. I honestly thought I’d beat her here. But I’m not entirely sure how long I sat staring into space before I considered the possibility that Liam might come home and see me sitting there in the parking lot. Not that it matters but I am definitely glad I didn’t wait around in Liam’s parking lot for a few minutes longer before setting off because I really didn’t need to. Max is here and that’s all that matters.

I get out of my car, walk around to the entrance to the building, and buzz to be let in. The door clicks open, and I go to Max and Cullen’s apartment and knock on the door. Max lets me in, takes one look at me, and wraps her arms around me. The moment I’m in her embrace, I can’t stop my tears from falling and I start to cry.

Without releasing me from her embrace, Max kicks the door shut and leads me to the couch where we sit down, side by side. Max doesn’t press me for answers at first, she just lets me cry it out until I’m done. When I stop crying, she releases me from her embrace and hands me a packet of tissues. I smile gratefully and take one out of the packet. I wipe my eyes and then my nose.

“What’s happened?” Max asks. “Is your mom alright?”

I nod quickly,

“Yes, she’s fine,” I say. “No one is dead or anything. I… It’s Liam.”

“What did he do?” Max says.

Suddenly, I wonder if it’s weird talking to Max about Liam when she’s technically his family now.

“Harriet?” Max says.

“I need to tell you, but I’m worried it’s weird now because Liam is your brother-in-law,” I say.

“Fuck that. You’re my best friend and you always will be. Now let me know what he’s done so I know why I’m kicking his ass,” Max says and that actually gets a genuine smile out of me. The smile fades quickly though when I remember what he’s done and what I have to tell her. This isn’t some cute little fight that will be blown over in a day or two.

“He’s married,” I say.

“What? He can’t be,” Max says.

“Why can’t he be?” I ask.

“Well, I mean he can obviously, but we would know surely?” Max says. “I mean why would it be a secret?”

“Well, I’m pretty sure no one would tell me, being that I was seeing him,” I point out.

“Ok, but I just can’t imagine a world where Cullen didn’t say anything knowing my best friend was dating his married brother,” Max says. “And I met Liam ages before you guys started dating. You would think a wife might have come up in conversation at some point.”

I shrug my shoulders.

“It does sound crazy I know, but it doesn’t change the truth,” I say. “He’s married, Max.”

“Wait,” Max says. “What makes you think he’s married? I probably should have asked that earlier, but I was shocked at the very idea of it then.”

“You and me both,” I say and flash her a quick grin which doesn’t really meet my eyes because I don’t really find any of this even vaguely amusing, I’m just trying to save face a little bit and laughing at the situation feels like the easiest and most natural way for me to do that. “I saw his marriage certificate. He said I could use his laptop in his home office because he got called to go into work. Only now I think work is his wife. But I digress. I used his laptop and there were some papers to be filed so I thought I’d be nice and file them for him. And I found the marriage certificate tucked away in a file.”

“And you’re absolutely certain that’s what it was?” Max asks.

I nod.

“Yes. Dammit. I should have taken a photo of it on my cell phone then I could have shown you and there would have been no chance of Liam gaslighting me and wriggling out of this,” I say.

“Why didn’t you?” Max says.

“I was too busy trying not to throw up or hyperventilate,” I reply.

Max reaches out and squeezes my hand.

“It must have been a big shock, whatever you saw,” she says.

“What do you mean, whatever I saw?” I ask. “Max, you do believe me, don’t you?”

“I believe you saw something,” Max says. “And I believe you think that something means Liam is married. I’m not sure I believe that yet, but I will help you get to the bottom of this one way or the other, I promise you that.”

I want to tell her not to bother, that if she doesn’t believe me from my word alone then fuck it, I don’t need her. But the truth is, I do need her. And I get it. It sounds completely crazy even to me. If this was the other way around, I think I would be handling it the same way Max is. I would believe she believed it, but not necessarily that it was fact.

Max has her cell phone out and she’s typing out a text message.

“Are you texting Liam?” I ask.

“No,” Max says. “I’m texting Cullen and telling him to get his ass back here right now. If he knows something about some secret wife of Liam’s and he’s kept it from us knowing you would end up getting hurt, then he’s in big fucking trouble.”

“I’m sorry,” I say when Max has put her cell phone down.

“You don’t need to apologize,” Max says. “Whatever it is that’s going on, it's not your fault.”

I smile weakly and she smiles back.

“Do you want a glass of wine?” Max says. “I know it’s early but if anyone deserves a drink it’s you after today.”

I smile and shake my head.

“No thanks. I need to keep a clear head for this. It’s crazy enough without involving alcohol,” I say.

If I have a drink, I’m likely to have more than one and I’m scared I’ll wake up tomorrow fuzzy headed, not sure what I saw and what I didn’t see, and I can’t have that. I need to keep that picture straight in my mind so even if no one else ever believes it, I will still always know the truth.

A few minutes later, the apartment door bursts open, and Cullen is standing there.

“What’s wrong Max? What happened?” Cullen says.

He looks genuinely worried, and I glance at Max. What the hell did she put in that text?

“Sit down,” Max says.

“I don’t want to sit down. Tell me what’s going on,” Cullen says, and I can see he is on the brink of panicking now. Max seems to realize this at the same time I do.

“No one is dead or anything,” she says. “But we wanted to talk to you about Liam.”

Cullen looks from Max to me and back to Max again.

“Are you kidding me? Harriet and Liam have some sort of a fight and you text me saying nine one one emergency, get home now,” he demands.

“Really? That’s what you sent?” I ask.

“Yes. We need answers and if I hadn’t said that he would have just said he’d catch up with us after work. Right?” Max says, the first bit to me and the last bit, the question, directed at Cullen.

“Well yeah, but still,” he says.

I can’t really say too much about Max’s text message because I used a similar trick in my text to her. It didn’t seem so bad when I did it, but it looked pretty bad from the outside looking in. I’ll have to try and remember not to do that again. But it’s not every day you find out your boyfriend is already married, so there’s that. Maybe that can be my thing. I only send over dramatic emergency texts when I find out my boyfriend is married. I shake away these stupid thoughts, thoughts that are obviously just me trying to think about anything but the situation at hand. I decide to start with a question that I don’t think hearing the answer will break me.

“Why did you assume Liam and I had a fight? Did you speak to him?” I ask.

“No,” Cullen says. “But I can see you’ve been crying and while I’m sure there is more to your life than Liam, I’m not sure what else there might be that would involve me needing to be here.”

I nod, letting him know that I believe him. His logic is sound.

“So, what’s this all about then?” Cullen says.

He sits down now in an armchair opposite where Max and I sit on the couch, the armchair at a right angle to us.

“I’m going to ask you something Cullen and I need you to be honest with me, ok? Even if you promised someone else you wouldn’t tell me,” Max says. Cullen looks confused, but he nods for her to go on. “Did you let my best friend start dating your brother while knowing he is already married?”

Cullen bursts into laughter.

“What the fuck?” I ask.

“Ok, I know I should be mad because I’m meant to be at work, but I see the funny side,” Cullen says. He shakes his head, still laughing. “I have to admit you had me there. I really believed something serious was going on.”

“Cullen, this isn’t a joke,” Max says. “Do I look like I’m joking? Does Harriet look like she’s finding this funny to you? You said yourself you can see she’s been crying.”

“But I thought it was part of the joke,” Cullen says, looking between Max and me again as though waiting for one of us to crack and start to laugh. He’s going to have a long wait before I find any of this even remotely funny. “God, you are actually being serious here, aren’t you? In answer to the question then, no, of course, I didn’t let that happen. It would be impossible for it to happen because Liam isn’t married.”

I study Cullen’s facial expression, the tone of his voice, and his body language as he speaks, and I can see he is genuine. Cullen had no idea that Liam is married. What the fuck is going on here?

“He is,” I say. “I saw his marriage certificate.”

“But… but that doesn’t make any sense,” Cullen says. “Why wouldn’t I know about my brother being married?”

I shrug my shoulders. I have no idea why Cullen doesn’t know about this. I mean I’m dating the guy, and I didn’t even know.

“And if he was married, why would he need a fake girlfriend to bring to family events to keep our Aunt Dorothy and the likes at bay?” Cullen says. “There’s no way he would hide a wife from them. It just doesn’t make sense.”

Again, I shrug my shoulders. Cullen’s right. It doesn’t make any sense. But it doesn’t change anything and saying it over and over again wasn’t going to magically make it all click into place and make sense all of a sudden.

“Come on Harriet. Think about it rationally. Why would Liam be married and need a fake girlfriend? Even if you believe he would cheat like that, that part doesn’t make sense,” Cullen says gently.

“I agree,” I say. “It doesn’t make sense. But I know what I saw.”

“I don’t know what to say,” Cullen says. “It’s so crazy yet I can see you really believe that it’s true.”

I nod.

“Ok, when did the wedding take place? What was the girl’s name he married? Who were the witnesses?” Cullen says.

“I don’t know,” I say. “I saw the thing. I saw Liam’s name and realized what it was and that was enough for me. Like I said to Max earlier I should have taken a photo of it, but I didn’t think of that at the time. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.”

Cullen is still looking at me like he’s waiting for me to magic up the answers to his questions, but I think he’s actually waiting for me to say that he’s right, and I didn’t see what I think I saw. But I did. I fucking did. I want to be able to tell myself I didn’t see it much more than he wants to hear it, but it still isn’t going to happen.

“Look I know how this sounds ok? But why would I make this up?” I ask.

“I don’t think you’re making it up, I just think you saw something different to what you think you saw,” Cullen says.

I shake my head.

“For the last time, I know what I saw,” I repeat. “For the record, I didn’t come here to confirm if it’s true, I came to talk to my best friend because I was upset.”

“I get that, but I don’t want to see you throw something special away because of something that just isn’t true,” Cullen says. He holds up his hands before I can protest. “Look at least let me call Liam and see what he says this thing is. If he’s really married, he’s going to know he’s caught and admit it.”

I’m not so sure about that but I can’t exactly tell Cullen he’s not allowed to call his own brother and I do want to hear Liam’s explanation for it, for how he thought he would get away with it, for why the hell he pushed me and pushed me for more than just being friends with benefits while he was already married. He couldn’t have gotten a better ideal set up, someone on the side who doesn’t ask questions and doesn’t have any right to be angry even if they find out the truth. But once that relationship becomes an actual relationship, all that goes away, and people get hurt.

Most of all though, even more than I want the explanation for what the fuck Liam has been thinking these last few months, I want him to come here with the marriage certificate I saw and show it to me and prove it’s not what I think it is. I know that’s not going to happen, but it’s a nice little thread of hope for me to cling to. And right now, other than a broken heart, that’s all I have left of the first relationship I believed might actually go somewhere.