Chapter 69

* Elena *

He’s up to something or hiding something from me more to the point. It’s amazing how easily I’d slipped back into the relationship norms. It wasn’t exactly like before, but there are some things that cannot be changed when you know a person almost as well as you know yourself.

The changes I see in Ryder are amazing, no doubt, but there’s no mistaking what I feel. Because he’s been trying so hard, I’m trying my best not to go off the rails and start suspecting him right off the bat, but something is most definitely off.

Our weekend came to an end almost too soon, and before I knew it, he was heading back to L.A., and I was due on set in a few hours. Our time together had been way too short, and though we’d spent most of it shut away in our room, we did get the chance to spend some time with our hosts and their amazing triplets.

I’m still in amazement that two very young people were so well put together. When Ryder and I were their age, we were still acting like morons, still fighting and breaking up every other day over dumb shit. And here was Gabriel and Gianna Russo, already married with kids and so respectful and loving with each other that I couldn’t help but compare.

Watching those two together made me wish for things and also showcased how much time Ryder and I had lost and wasted. But watching those adorable little tykes with their parents unleashed a longing in me that I didn’t know was still there.

I watched Ryder’s eyes each time one of the kids came into the room, the way he looked at them, the way he melted, especially when little Gabriella followed him around, talking a mile a minute.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen him so patient with anyone. Each time I remembered that I could never give him this, though, I felt a bit sad, and the fear and guilt that followed that thought had me second-guessing myself and the strength of our union.

He always seemed as if he knew every time the thought crossed my mind because it was then that he would turn to me with a smile, take my hand if he wasn’t already holding it, and bring it to his lips.

He’d mouth the words “I love you” each time, and that would settle me down some until the next time it happened. And now he was gone, and I was back to feeling like I was missing a limb.

Ever since the call from Sydney, the one that Ryder had done his best to distract me from, I’ve been tempted to break my own rule about social media, and within an hour of him leaving me, I gave in and went diving into the muck and mire.

There was too much information to process all at once, and it was hard to know where to begin. There was a lot of talk about Janie, but surprisingly I was more interested in Rachel and what she had done while pretending to be my friend.

I wasn’t exactly running from the Janie thing, but there are way too many triggers involved when it comes to her and our history, and I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to deal with that right now. But I was dying to know the extent of what my friend had done to me.

There wasn’t much about her, just a few snippets here and there, and by the time it was time to head to the set, I was more frustrated than anything. I still wasn’t sure how I felt or, really, how to feel about what she was purported to have done.

I do believe Ryder; there’s no reason for him to make up such a thing about her, knowing that it could be easily disproven, but I’m not the kind of person who can just so easily discard years of friendship without a second thought.

I want answers; I want reasons and explanations. There must be a reason behind her actions, certainly. Maybe I have done something along the way to offend her. Maybe there was a need I overlooked. All of these things ran through my head now that I was without my anchor.

Ryder had gone out of his way all weekend to make sure I didn’t dwell too much on the situation, and the fact that I picked up on his preoccupation kind of took my focus off of Rachel’s betrayal. But now I had nothing to do but think and dwell.

I’m a born professional, so I threw myself into my work, pushing everything else from my mind. But as soon as the cameras were off, I was back to overthinking again. It was safer for my peace of mind to dwell on Rachel than it was to ponder what Ryder could be hiding from me.

I’d unblocked her number, but there was no answer on her end, and it seemed as if her phone was turned off. There was no one else I could reach out to since I didn’t want to give away her doings to our other friends, not yet anyway.

By the time I got back to my apartment in the city, I was a mess. It was times like this that I wished I could be the perfect, unbothered person my fans and the rest of the world expect me to be, but the truth is that I’m not far from it. The more I thought about everything Rachel and I had shared and the trust I’d had in her, the more I felt stupid and enraged.

Stupid, because I never saw it in her and had trusted her to look after my social media accounts and other aspects of my life that had been too hard for me to handle for the past five years, and enraged because of the way in which she’d betrayed that trust.

The most hurtful thing of all that she’d done was the lies she’d told Ryder about me. The lies that had sent him running into someone else’s arms. I don’t hold him guiltless, of course, but I can understand why he would’ve believed her. He knew her to be my friend, someone I trusted more than most.

He’d known the ins and outs of our relationship, mine and hers, when he and I were together before, so there was no reason for him not to believe her. When I think of how he must’ve felt hearing those words and the words that I had gotten rid of his child, a child that we would’ve both wanted, it breaks my heart all over again.

No one else knew that Ryder and I had been planning to take a break to focus on starting a family. I never told anyone for fear of jinxing it. Not only that, but I knew it was a big step and not everyone would agree with it; that is why I had held off on sharing that little tidbit with even my mother.

So how did she know to use that lie? How did she know the damage it would’ve done to him and our relationship to hear such a thing? I know why she’d lied about the affair. Ryder has always been jealous of Evan for some inane reason, and we’d had a fight or two over the years about it.

So, the fact that she’d used these two things to hurt me spoke volumes about her anger and hatred toward me. For that reason, my mind kept going round and round in circles, but there were no answers.

That was until my phone rang as soon as I stepped out of the shower half an hour later. “Hello, Elena.” The voice didn’t sound familiar, and too late, I realized that I hadn’t checked the caller ID.

“Who is this?”

“Your boyfriend calls me his niece.” It took me a second to catch on since Ryder didn’t have any nieces, but then I recalled him calling MengeLiNi the nieces. My heart started racing though I had no idea why, but somehow I knew that I was talking to someone who could give me answers.

From the way Ryder spoke about her, I knew that she was highly intelligent, and he seemed just a little bit afraid of her though he hadn’t come right out and said it. But the person on the other line sounded young, cheerful, and nothing at all like the scary being he’d described.

“Yes, I’ve heard about you.” There was so much I wanted to say, so much to ask, but for some reason, I couldn’t think of a darn one of them.

“I’m calling to give you a heads-up. Someone will be knocking on your door any minute now with a package. You’ll find all the answers about Rachel and what she’s done inside.”

“How did you….?”

“It’s common sense that you’d want to know.” That’s all she said before hanging up the phone again. True to her word, there was a knock on the door which was strange in itself since I hadn’t rung anyone into the building, and when I opened the door, I got another surprise.

“Wait, aren’t you….?”

“Yes, Elena, I’m one of the men who took you to the Russo mansion on Friday night.”

“Jared, right?”

“Yes, ma’am. Here, this is for you. She said you should read it all tonight and put it out of your mind, whatever that means.”

I thanked him and accepted the package, then watched him walk away as I wondered why a grown man who looked like he could bench press half a city block was running errands for a little girl that sounded like she wasn’t long out of the nursery.

I was tempted to believe that some of Ryder’s recollections about the nieces, and this one in particular, were a bit exaggerated, but now I’m not so sure. It tickled my fancy, though, where my imagination was going. I love the idea of some little boss bitch running things from her ivory tower.

I snickered as I headed back to the comfort of my bed and tore open the envelope. A memory stick fell out into my hands, and there was a sheaf of papers inside as well. Now that I knew what I held in my hands, I was a little bit hesitant to open it and look.

The friendship was over, no doubt about that, but in my hands, I held the explanation of why and how someone I had trusted with my life had betrayed me. It was a heavier load than I’d expected.

***

It took hours. Hours of tears, anger, and sorrow. I mourned the loss almost as hard as I had the loss of Ryder all those years ago. My heart hurt, and I felt sorry for myself for a time as I questioned why the people I loved found it so easy to hurt me this way.

Reading about what she had done was hard, but hearing the bile she spewed against me with her own mouth was harder. You’d think the fact that she’d clasped hands with my known enemy to tear me down was the worst she could’ve done, but she’d outdone herself by drugging me and making me believe that I was losing my mind.

I wanted to throw up. I wanted to bury myself beneath the covers and not come out for a very long time, if ever. I thought of all the things I’d shared with her. My innermost thoughts, my secrets, things that I now know she’d used against me.

Hearing that it had been Mary and the Hudsons who had put her up to it only made it worst, and I cried bitter tears of regret for all the trust that I had given her. She hates me for the very things that I had tried to do for her. Each of my milestones had been like darts to her heart.

The thing is, had she shared this with me, had she ever told me how she felt, I would’ve gotten her the help she needed. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for my friends. I would’ve kept some of my accomplishments hidden from her and not rubbed them in her face as she believed I was doing. It never even entered my mind to do such a thing.

As my friend, I always thought she was celebrating with me, but now I know she was hovering around me, looking for ways to destroy me while smiling in my face. The thought that she could’ve ended me at any time is a scary one to contemplate, but listening to her talk, that was the one regret she now had, the fact that she hadn’t killed me when she had the chance.

Mary Hudson, that vile beast. What had I ever done to her for her to go after me like this? Scott and Matt, I understand. I always knew they were nothing more than money-hungry charlatans who hated the fact that I tried to keep Ryder from getting too close to them.

In this business, that’s more than understandable. But I can’t believe that Mary had done all of this just to keep Ryder from telling me about their tryst all those years ago. So what was really going on here? And did it have anything to do with what Ryder was keeping hidden from me?