Chapter 9 - On Her Knees
Her knees hit the hardwood floor with a dull, sickening thud.
Lauren was down. On her hands and knees, in the middle of the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel, her emerald silk dress pooling around her like spilled poison.
"Ethan, I'm begging you," she wailed, burying her face against the floorboards before lifting her tear-drenched, snot-streaked face up toward me. "Look at me! Please look at what I've become!"
The room was so quiet you could hear the ice melting in the crystal buckets.
"I was a fool!" she wept, clawing at the hem of my trousers, though she didn't dare touch my shoes. "I called you a starter life! I told my mother you were boring! I threw you away for a monster who destroyed me! I am so sorry, Ethan! I am so, so sorry!"
She began hyperventilating, her forehead touching the floor again in a posture of complete, humiliating submission.
"Chase took everything! The bank is taking my mother's home! We have nothing! We have no food, no money, no hope! But I don't care about the money, Ethan! I swear to God! Just take me back! I’ll clean your house! I’ll live in the basement! I’ll do whatever you want! Just don't marry her! You loved me for six years! You can't just throw six years away!"
Guests were murmuring in disgust. Arthur Hastings took a half-step forward, his jaw tight with fury, but I raised a subtle hand, signaling him to hold.
Clara stood beside me, perfectly still. She didn't shout. She didn't mock. She looked down at the sobbing woman at our feet with the quiet, devastating pity one might reserve for a wounded stray dog that had turned rabid.
I looked down at Lauren.
For six years, I had loved this woman. I had given her my youth, my patience, my loyalty, and my quiet, uncomplaining labor. When she had walked out with her navy suitcase, she had sneered at my life, calling it small, mocking the very foundation that had kept a roof over her head.
Now, she was on her knees, groveling before the very man she had deemed unworthy of her ambition.
I felt no rage. I felt no triumphant malice.
I only felt an immense, liberating emptiness.
"Lauren," I said.
My voice was quiet, but in the dead silence of the ballroom, it resonated off every chandelier and gold-leaf arch.
Lauren looked up, her bloodshot eyes widening with a desperate, pathetic glimmer of hope. "Ethan? You... you hear me?"
"Stand up," I said coldly.
"Ethan, please—"
"Stand up, Lauren," I repeated, my tone cutting through her hysteria like a razor. "Have whatever dignity you have left and get off the floor."
Trembling, her mascara smeared across her cheeks, she used the edge of a banquet table to drag herself to her feet. She swayed, her breath shallow and broken.
"Two years ago," I said, holding her gaze with steady, unwavering eyes, "you stood in our apartment and told me that wanting a decent man meant wanting a small life. You told me I wasn't enough."
"I was wrong!" she cried. "I was stupid!"
"No, Lauren," I said softly. "You weren't stupid. You were honest. You showed me exactly who you were. You wanted the finish line without running the race. You wanted the palace without laying a single brick."
I took Clara’s hand, lacing my fingers through hers. Clara squeezed back, her grip warm and unyielding.
"This is Clara Hastings," I said, gesturing to the woman beside me. "She loved me when I was still working eighty-hour weeks out of a concrete basement. She never asked what I was worth. She built her own life, and then she chose to build a future with me."
I stepped forward, looking down into Lauren’s devastated, ruined face.
"You called me your starter life, Lauren," I whispered, loud enough for her to hear every syllable clearly. "The truth is, you were just a bad draft. And I have finished the masterpiece."
Jonathan Ross nodded to the two armed security guards, who stepped forward, firmly grasping Lauren by both elbows.
"Get your hands off her," Jonathan commanded quietly. "Escort her off the premises. Hand her directly to the NYPD officers waiting in the lobby for violating the restraining order."
"Ethan! No! Ethan!" Lauren screamed, her heels dragging against the parquet floor as the guards pulled her backward toward the double doors. "Ethan, don't do this to me! You loved me! ETHAN!"
The heavy oak doors of the ballroom swung shut, cutting off her screams mid-sob.
The silence hung for exactly three seconds.
Then, Arthur Hastings cleared his throat, raised his champagne flute high into the air, and addressed the three hundred silent guests.
"To Ethan and Clara," Arthur announced with booming, resonant authority. "To genuine love, unyielding loyalty, and a future built on truth!"
The room erupted into applause. Glasses clinked. The string quartet struck up a lively, triumphant waltz.
Clara turned to me, her hazel eyes soft with immense pride. "Are you alright?"
I looked at the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with, took a deep breath of the orchid-scented air, and smiled.
May you like
"I have never been better," I said.
***
