To Hate Adam Connor

Adam

“You either come tonight so they can get a shot of you entering my house with a smile or the statement I make tomorrow will be a different one, Adam.”

Those were Adeline’s last words as she hung up on me.

“What’s going on?” Dan asked, trying to keep his voice down. I could hear Lucy’s murmurings to Aiden as they started on the fort Lucy had promised. I checked the time: ten o’clock, way past Aiden’s bedtime.

“She wants me to make a statement with her and basically hint that we are getting back together.”

Dan’s face hardened. “And if you don’t?”

“If I don’t, she’ll talk about Aiden.”

“Even she wouldn’t do that,” Dan countered as a frown appeared on his face. “Does she think it wouldn’t backfire on her?”

My throat tightened as I tried my best to swallow down my anger when all I wanted to do was smash my phone against the wall and just go be with my son and Lucy.

I heard Lucy release a mock growl then Aiden’s laugh filled the house. “I have to go,” I said gruffly, looking into Dan’s eyes as Lucy and Aiden’s laughter rang in my ears. “She is trapped. She isn’t thinking clearly, and I can’t risk her making a mistake like that.”

“I’ll take you to her.”

I nodded as Dan opened the door and stepped outside. “You start the car; I’ll be right there.”

I found Aiden standing in front of the TV and laughing at Lucy as she tried to save herself from the attack of the sheet over her head.

“I will get you, little human.” She growled and moved toward Aiden, and he squealed and ran to hide behind my legs.

“Aiden, why don’t you get the pillows in my bedroom, too?”

He tilted his head to look up at me. “We can take them all?”

“Of course. If we’re gonna make a fort, it better be a comfortable one, don’t you think?”

He nodded enthusiastically and ran away, and I turned to find Lucy staring at me with knowing eyes as she pulled Aiden’s train sheet over her shoulders.

“You have to go.”

I closed the distance between us and pulled her into my arms, breathing in her soft scent to calm myself down. The sheet slid down her shoulders, fluttering to the floor as she moved her hands over my chest, instinctively understanding what I needed from her.

“I have to talk to her. She is…if I don’t, she’s going to make a big mistake.”

She pulled back and looked into my eyes for a few seconds. “I understand.”

I smiled. She couldn’t understand this. She couldn’t understand how much it’d hurt Aiden if Adeline said something stupid in front of the cameras just to get the attention off herself.

“You can’t, but I promise to explain everything one day.”

The second the words left my mouth, I knew I’d said the wrong thing, even before I saw the small flinch. She pulled back completely. “You said we’ll talk, right. We’ll do that one day.”

“Lucy, no.” I touched her face and took comfort in the fact that she didn’t pull away. “This…whatever it is that’s going on in Adeline’s life changes nothing for us. You still don’t get to run away from me.”

Aiden came out with two pillows hugged to his chest, both of them larger than his small body, and I had to let go of Lucy.

Taking the pillows away from Aiden, I lifted him up in my arms and pressed a kiss on his forehead. “I have to go and check on your mom, but I’ll be back as soon as I can. Would that be okay with you?”

“Lucy gets to stay?” His eyes flitted between me and Lucy.

“Yes. Lucy gets to stay with you. You two start the movie and I’ll catch up with you, okay?”

“You’ll take care of Mom so she won’t cry anymore? I tried to give her a hug, but she didn’t want it.”

I hugged him a little tighter to myself. “I’ll take care of your mom. You don’t have to worry about a thing, buddy. Do we have a deal?”

He hugged my neck and nodded.

I mouthed a quick thank you to Lucy and lowered Aiden down so he could get back to building a fort with his friend.

Before she could turn away, I stole a quick kiss from Lucy that didn’t last long enough and got out.

***

Adeline was pacing in her living room where all the drapes had been pulled closed when her assistant let us in through the front door. I had been right: the street was littered with paparazzi that came to life as soon as they saw my car come around the corner.

“Leave us alone,” Adeline ordered her assistant and Dan.

Even though Dan already knew everything there was to know about us, I preferred to have this conversation with Adeline alone.

“We have to make a statement,” Adeline started as she lighted up a cigarette. “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped before I could make any kind of comment. “It’s just stress. I’m not starting up again.”

I stayed silent. She could smoke herself to death for all I cared.

“We have to make statement,” she repeated. “Together. I don’t know what we’ll say exactly, at least not yet, but you have to be in front of the cameras with me, holding my hand. Neil and your mom agree with me.”

“My mom? You’re still talking to her?”

She puffed out some smoke, and I found myself trying to pinpoint exactly when everything had started to go so wrong for us. Had it ever been right? “She said you’re not answering her calls. This…this thing affects them too. They don’t want the family name to be mentioned along with something like this.”

“Did they forget that you’re not family anymore?”

She pressed the cigarette into an ashtray with jerky movements and picked up another one as she tilted her head at me.

“Am I not Aiden’s mom, Adam? Does that not make me your family forever? And you might prefer not to talk to them, but I still consider them my family.”

Of course she did. She fit right in with them.

I clenched my fists and faced the windows that looked out at a small guesthouse and the backyard.

“I thought so too. Neil thinks the only reason they haven’t mentioned who I’m with in the video is because his face was cut off. From the stills they’re leaking it doesn’t look like they have a better angle and we can use that. We can release a statement or have Neil interview us about it, or someone else if you want to. He thinks the best way to go about this is to say it was shot without our knowledge and we knew nothing about it.”

Somewhere in the middle she lost me. “Excuse me? What do you mean without our knowledge?”

“We have to say it’s a video of us. The date matches. The only reason everyone is so obsessed with it is because they think I was cheating on you and that I’m the reason our marriage ended. If we tell them that it’s you, everyone will lose interest. You coming here tonight…” She gestured outside with the cigarette between her fingers. “Them getting a picture as you pulled in, that will help. After all, if I had cheated on you, you wouldn’t have come.”

“But that’s not the reason I’m here, is it?”

She took a deep drag of her cigarette and blew it toward the ceiling. “No, it isn’t. And like I told you on the phone, I don’t want to make a statement about Aiden, but if you force my hand, to save myself, my career, I will do exactly that. After the divorce, this is all I got, Adam. If you hadn’t filed for custody maybe this would’ve just blown over, but everything came back to back. I can’t let a sex tape ruin everything.”

We stared at each other in the silence that followed her words.

I forced a smile on my lips and clapped at her performance. “And when you throw us under the bus, will you add that it was your idea from the beginning?”

She smiled, the tension melting away from her features and making her look soft and sweet. “Of course I will. You didn’t want him after all. I was the one who had to talk you into it. You can’t argue with that, can you?”

“What happened, Adeline? What happened to you?” I asked, already past the shock and disgust.

Putting out her cigarette, she walked up to me. “I love him. I love him, Adam. Please don’t make me hurt him. Nothing ended up being what I wished for, but I did my best. I did my best as your wife, and I don’t deserve this. All I’m asking for is your help. Nothing more. We can act like we’re thinking of getting back together. We’ll pretend as if this brought us back together, and when the waters settle down again and I start filming regularly, I’ll let you have sole custody—”

The door to her living room slammed open, jolting both of us.

“Dan, what’s go—”

“We need to leave. We need to leave right now.”