Bona Fide (Illusive Duet Book 2) Read online

  Copyright 2020 © Hazel Grace All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to real events, real people, and real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the Author’s imagination and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, organizations or places is entirely coincidental.

  All rights are reserved. This book is intended for the reader of this ebook ONLY. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the express written permission of the Author. All songs, song titles and lyrics contained in this book are the property of the respective songwriters and copyright holders.

  Cover design: Black Widow Designs

  Proofreading: Dom’s Proofreading

  Betrayal is the only truth that sticks. – Arthur Miller

  ♫ Welcome Home — Coheed and Cambria ♫

  A promise is the most expensive thing in the world.

  But he never promised trust or the truth. He never spilled his soul to me, nor did I ask. I gave him the respect I thought he deserved by not stalking his past and letting him tell me in his own time.

  I just never expected this.

  The entity or word of wife never was a fleeting thought in my mind when it came to Wade Lockwood. His broodish, standoff nature caused me to make the mistake of assuming that no other woman stayed around for long. That he was so invested in his career that his social life took a backseat.

  He has a history—one that he made sure stayed off his Wikipedia page and that no one around him blurted out in my presence.

  Especially Emmy.

  His loyal assistant, who openly expressed how much of a pain in the ass he was. She declared all his bad habits, and I can’t help but be pissed that she didn’t mention the simple—yet complicated to me—fact that Wade has a wife. One I’ve never seen before, a woman that has never graced herself at any of his events.

  And as much as I want to know why—I don’t. Nor do I stick around to get my answers because I’m done.

  The contract, the events he has coming up, taking Emmy’s annoying text messages—everything.

  Every fucking thing.

  It’s the karma I deserve. It hits me in the chest, a thick cloud that slows my movements as I stride through the hall filled with Wade’s guests for his surprise birthday party. I can’t get to the door fast enough.

  At this moment, I feel more connected to Jed, feeling every twist and wrench forming in my gut. What I did to him was far worse compared to what just happened to me, but it hurts nonetheless.

  Wade and I aren’t shit—plain and simple.

  He was my boss. I was a quick fuck and a way to spend what little downtime he gets.

  It’s fine.

  It’s more than okay actually because I don’t have to explain this to anyone, let alone a spouse. The governor can have fun with that shit, and I hope he chokes on every single one of his excuses.

  Me, on the other hand, I can go home, go to bed, and move on. He just gave me the reality check I needed to confirm that myself and politicians—we don’t go together. I just got burned twice, and I’ve learned my lesson for good. My stubborn ass likes to put myself out on a ledge and play with danger. It makes my adrenaline pump addictively through my veins, and I love the rush.

  Wade Lockwood was just that.

  Even more so now because I have this outcome in the palm of my little hands, and I could fuck up his world and career faster than a whore on nickel night.

  My body is suddenly spun around, and I’m met with a familiar black suit and tie. An acquainted chest that, about two hours ago, my fingers were trailing down. The well-known scent of his cologne, which is smooth with a light woodsy smell.

  “Reagan,” he premises. “I promise you...it’s not what it looks like.”

  Slowly, I bring my gaze to his neck, then to the stubble of his chin before hitting his ocean-blue eyes that glimmer in resentment and concern.

  It doesn’t reach me.

  Not where it should.

  Right now, all I can comprehend is that I want to get into my car, blare the radio until my ears ring, and go home. I want that blunt that’s in the glove box of my car that I’ve been saving for a rainy day.

  Not to hear the octave of Wade’s voice or the declaration that I just heard from his wife that he wants to try and justify to make me understand.

  “We’re not together anymore,” he quickly continues. “She’s—” I’m on my heels again, making it to the short distance to the foyer of the hall.

  The two sets of doors pledge a night full of darkness that I just want to disappear into for a while. It’s the only way I know how to cope with things that throw me off-kilter, and when I need to readjust things in my life.

  Same hand and same shoulder, I’m whirled around again. But this time, my reaction isn’t just to stand there and stare at the man who broke the fortress I built around me to keep men and people like him out. Not to listen to the shit he thought I should listen to because he needed me to.

  No, right now, I need to leave.

  I need the night to hide in because my vulnerability is showing, and I don’t like how it pricks at my skin. How my heart is reacting to the way it’s coursing through my veins. Where it’s causing my breathing to be shallow and strained.

  Wade Lockwood—he doesn’t exist to me anymore. He can’t. And in order to free myself from his clutches, I need to teach him who I really am in all my glorious, ghetto splendor.

  My fist flies into his cheekbone, snapping his head to the side before I step back and pivot on my feet. I don’t wait for more words to fly or the reaction I’m going to be met with when he meets my gaze again.

  Instead, I get my wish—I leave Wade Lockwood behind in the light.

  ♫ I Found — Amber Run ♫

  My sins caught up to me.

  I knew they would eventually.

  Demi Juliet Andino was the biggest cardinal sin I’ve ever made in my life. I broke every single rule with her and made her a saint while I worshipped the ground she walked on in her Jimmy Choo heels. I let her reign over my world while I sat back and ignored the fact that everything she presented was wrong and immoral. That what she stood for was deplorable, but that wasn’t even scratching the surface of who she was.

  Demi is my wife.

  A beautiful devil who trudged around the world for her next victim. To suck another soul out of yet another man because that’s what she was created to do. And I fell hard, hitting every step on the way down in the tower I built for us.

  Every dream I had assembled for us, she sucked up and devoured. Only to spit it out in my face with the lies and cons she sold to me.

  And I couldn’t get rid of her.

  The pain that permeates my left temple and gums still doesn’t compare to the discomfort in my chest. I watch the ironic blue dress—a different shade and style but blue all the same—as Reagan shoves into the double doors and disappears into the parking lot.

  This was everything I’ve warned myself not to do.

  I understood every cautionary that was involved when I hired Reagan. Identified the dangers of hurting her with the things I knew that loomed in the background of my life. Every cautionary my brain screamed at me, every itch I continued forth with just to have one more second with the woman that drove me to learn more, feel more, and to just be with, all ended after a minute of Demi being back in the picture.

  I’ve betrayed and lied to Reagan—just like my fucking wife did to me.

  “I’m disappointed that you th
ought she’d be able to take my place, Wade. You used to have such good taste.” I’ll never forget that voice, no matter who or what came through the throngs of my life. It’s etched into my memory bank, forever stained there to torture and taunt me.

  “Obviously not,” I reply, still looking at the door that Reagan left through moments ago. “I married you, didn’t I?”

  I should run after her. I don’t give a fuck if she hits me again, I deserve it. Driving home upset isn’t what she should be doing right now, and if something happens to her…

  A light chuckle sounds behind me, settling me back into the problem at hand.

  She’s loving this. It’s what she does best, taking something I want and decimating it. To see how far she can get me to crack before I lose my entire shit on something or someone to the point of not knowing who I am anymore.

  I’ve lived in the dark with the monster hiding in the shadows. Who beckons you to come out and play because they’d never hurt you. Who slowly creeps under your skin, gains your trust, then strangles you with their bare hands. And if you’re lucky, which I wasn’t, they won’t sink their teeth into your throat and suck you dry.

  “You did,” Demi retorts. “Then sent me away.”

  “It was that or kill you,” I deadpan. And I’ve thought about it—more times than deems sane.

  “You don’t have the stomach for it,” she snarks. “Except for that one time.” That particular memory that I tucked away comes full force through my brain like a hurricane, and I’m still there.

  The screams.

  All the blood.

  There was so much that my knuckles slipped and slid while I kept plummeting my fists into his face. I remember the howls and pleads to stop, but I didn’t—I couldn’t because Demi told me he tried to rape her.

  Only he didn’t.

  He was just some random guy at a bar that she chose out of a crowd. A place she shouldn’t have been in the first place, but I ignored that fact and still followed her because he allegedly touched what was mine.

  I almost killed him.

  I would’ve if men didn’t come out of the bar and pull me off of him while my girlfriend watched me beat him to a pulp. Four broken ribs, cheekbone, nose, a ruptured spleen, and internal bleeding. My father took care of the hospital bills and the payoff for my innocent victim to keep his mouth shut.

  I was young, blindly in love, and a raging, fucking dumbass when it came to Demi.

  Because I loved her.

  And when they say love is blind—it is. It’s also deaf, dumb, and stupid.

  After Demi admitted she just wanted to see “how much I loved her,” we broke up. I couldn’t look her in the face, guilt-stricken that I went that far without any evidence or even asking him what happened. I never gave him the chance to speak, defend his case—I just went off.

  She did what normal girls do, whined to my sister, Phoebe. Proclaimed how sorry she was and that she’d never do a thing like that again to get my attention.

  Fuck that, she almost got me to murder a man. My pussy-whipped ass still took her back with my sister’s urging. A second chance, my father told me, everyone deserves one. She was young and in love, so I had nothing to lose.

  And I lost.

  I forfeited so much with Demi after we got married that it was too much to bear. I almost gave up my career because I couldn’t function outside of my own head. I couldn’t eat because everything else filled me with such anguish and devastation that there was no room for anything else.

  I was a shell of a man wanting to disappear into nothing. She took and took, and I had nothing left.

  “Mention it again to me,” I warn, flexing my fingers at my side. “And you’ll wish you never would’ve shown up tonight.”

  “Is that any way to treat me after so many years?” She’s closer to me now, dangerously so, because I’m two seconds from wringing her fucking neck in the middle of my own party. “Your world is beautiful.”

  “It’s a shame you came all this way for me not to give a flying shit.”

  “Start giving one,” she states matter-of-factly. That familiar tone turning harder.

  Her patience lacks as much as mine does. Her sweet facade fades because she knows that I’m not going to budge. Neither of us is going to back down from this, so she might as well come out with why she’s here and what the hell she wants.

  “You’re running for president.”

  I roll my eyes.

  If this dumb bitch doesn’t get on with it, I swear I’m going to act on those impulses I spoke about earlier.

  “No shit.”

  “And you’ll need your wife.”

  I chuckle, eyeing a man who’s talking on his cell phone and pacing back and forth along the wall of the hall. “I don’t need you, Demi. I believe I’ve shown that with getting to where I currently am.”

  “If you win the democratic delegate, Wade, they’ll start digging up everything on you. Everything.”

  “And?”

  “And that includes me.”

  “You’re old news, darling. And washed up.” This time she laughs while her body brushes against my bicep. It takes everything in me not to flinch away, but that alludes she has an effect on me. And that’s the last fucking thing I want her to think she has.

  “Not if I show back up in the public eye, Husband,” she cautions. “I’ve already been noticed by a few people here.”

  “Did you blow through your monthly allowance already or what?”

  “You know what I’ve always wanted, Wade,” she coos and before I used to love it. Now, I want to strangle it. “We used to talk about it all the time.”

  “That was before.” I can feel the tremors form from within my body. The history that starts to blossom back up in my mind. Demi and I haven’t been in the same room in years. We haven’t been in the same country within those years. I banished her, and she freely skipped off to fuck the next clown who’d fall victim to her beauty and charm.

  Shit, I did. It was easy. It was like jumping out of a moving plane and gliding downward, praying to God that the dude that packed your parachute did his job right. I did nothing good for myself when I forgave Demi for everything. I wanted a life and relationship that my parents lacked. I thought that she’d changed—people say that others do that, right? That we could move forward and be a stronger couple.

  Talk about denial 101.

  The moment I showed weakness, AKA forgiveness, she took it and throttled it into the floor. Demi assassinated any hope of a future for us, beat down every dream I had, and almost sucked the life right from me.

  “Go back home, Demi,” I advise slowly. “I’m not the same man you were married to.”

  “I’m still married to you,” she retorts. “And always will be. I’ll be the next Jackie-O, adored and idolized by the people. You built exactly what we wanted for us.”

  “For you,” I snap. “But you’re not in the equation anymore.” For the first time, I look over at her and really look at her.

  That time that has come between us, it does nothing that I wanted it to do to her. She’s still as stunningly beautiful as the day I sent her away. Appealing blue eyes and striking bone structure, vibrant pink lips that spilled lies and promises that I relied on. Her glimmering gold dress hugs her curves, ones I still know by heart, but now—they do shit for me.

  God fucking forbid the woman develops a wrinkle or bad skin. Maybe a droopy eye or some shit, I don’t know. But those blue eyes that mock what I’m saying right now, they only remind me of purple ones.

  It hurls me back to Reagan, the moment we had a few hours ago in that dingy coat closet. How everything with her just took away the stress, my reality. There wasn’t anywhere else I wanted to be then but with her.

  And now it’s gone—just like that.

  With a snap of Demi’s fingers, she just took away another thing from me. Something that made me happy and calm through the frazzled chaos that always visits me on a daily basis.

&nb
sp; “It’s good to be back,” Demi announces with a quirk of her lips. “I look forward to working with you again.” Her eyes fall down the length of my body. “And to reconnect.”

  My feet move forward an inch, it’s all I need because that’s how close she is. My fingertips beg to wrap around her neck and squeeze. To just end this evil bitch before she causes more bullshit for me to go through and have to fix.

  “You want to be back,” I recite, peering down at her. “Welcome back, baby. Remember when you always wanted me to fuck you in the ass...I’m about to.”

  ♫ Piece of Your Heart — Mayday Parade ♫

  “I haven’t heard back from Reagan,” Emmy frets to my back as I head to the kitchen for my third cup of coffee. “Was Demi that mean to her? Did she mention anything about what happened?”

  I clench my jaw, wanting to round on my loyal assistant and tell her to shut the fuck up. That I've thought about the woman who has been plaguing my thoughts for the last four days enough—constantly. The only way I know she’s still alive is through Chase, another fucking guy—one that indeed was real, just not me.

  “No,” I deadpan, rounding the corner and into the break room where it’s fully furnished with two fridges, a stove, marble countertops, and a microwave.

  “She won’t respond to any of my text messages.”

  For the love of hell...

  “Then go over there, Em,” I retort with a roll of my tense shoulders. “Go to your HR buddy and ask for her address. I don’t know what you want me to do.”

  “You need to have a talk with Demi. She’s your wife.” My hand freezes from grabbing the coffeepot before I slowly—very slowly—turn to face my assistant.

  Emmy stands frozen in place with both of her hands covering her mouth. She knows she slipped up, the widened brown eyes portray that emotion quite clearly. It’s a little shocking to me because she’s fully aware of my relationship with Demi—it doesn’t exist.

  We don’t talk about it.

  Not anymore, anyway.