The Billionaire And The Waitress (gxg)

38 - a concern

"YOU two fucked on the beach, didn't you."

     Adrien had sent everyone back to their hotel rooms, tipped the manager Luca Topaltsis, and borrowed a cigarette from Ezra. She hadn't planned to spend the day of her wedding smoking on the beach at four a.m. But she wasn't ready to enter her suite with Muse.

    "Yeah."

     "I'm not going to say I told you so," Ezra started. 

     "You might as well have just said it."

     "Okay. I told you so." He dragged in a long inhale of the cigarette. He'd kicked his shoes off into the sand, his dress shirt unbuttoned halfway down his chest. The sun would rise soon. The ocean breeze was warmer already. 

     Adrien watched the cloud of smoke she exhaled rise into the air before her, twisting like silvery silk. A few of the waiters still lingered by the tent, talking rapidly in Greek―likely about whatever drama they'd witnessed among the guests. She'd seen a few of their expressions when Grey had smashed that cake into Sherry's face. The absolute horror.

     Adrien hadn't seen Sherry since she'd disappeared into the bathroom with Agnes and Phoebe. Grey had hugged Adrien goodnight―slapping her too heavily on the back, like she was a man―and thanked her in a booming voice for the wedding. He'd nearly left without Grey Junior, who'd been in Ezra's arms. Ezra had to stop him before he ducked under the entrance of the tent to hand him his own baby.

     "My bad," he'd said, chortling. "So easy to lose track of things."

     Things―like Grey Junior wasn't his own infant son.

     Adrien was still seething over that charade. Not only about how Grey had humiliated Sherry, but how he'd seen it fit to use his bare hands to grab a fistful of her wedding cake. If her father were here, she wondered what he would've thought. If he would have taken her side, or if he'd have laughed it off, and clapped Grey's shoulder in good humour.

     Probably the latter.

    She took another drag of the cigarette. Her throat burned. 

    She wished she could hold time still here forever. A moment suspended in time. She knew when she returned to her room, everything was going to change. Everything had already changed. But right now, with the black sky and the smear of twinkling stars, brushed across the horizon as if with a careless painter's hand―it was quiet. The sea murmured against the sand, and Ezra breathed out slowly beside her.

     She missed Muse. 

     "Can I ask you something?"

     "You're going to ask regardless, Ezra. Go ahead."

     He stubbed his cigarette in the sand and turned to her. His dark brown eyes glimmered with the light of the quenching torches behind them. "Did you really think she'd never find out you lied?"

     Adrien kicked her foot against the sand. "It happened so fast. It was only the day before yesterday the PI told me he'd found something in Julien's files. And then I confronted him about it in his office. It was surreal to me, having that kind of power over my father for the first time. I don't know." She inhaled deep, breathing in the last of the cigarette, and stamped it into the sand beneath her shoe. The glowing ember of the stub extinguished into ash. "I guess I knew she'd find out eventually. I don't really know I was thinking. Just that I loved her, and I wasn't ready to call it quits."

     "It would have been a better way to end it than this," Ezra said gently.

     "I love her, Ezra. I'm not entirely sane."