Chapter 171

“Right on time? I didn’t really expect you to show up. Here I thought you didn’t care about meeting the child.” Saira commented as she watched Adam walk in. Her eyes scanned the man with his lips pierced and dressed in casual clothes and felt herself stiffen. For what it was worth, he seemed to have become a lot more handsome. Her hance clenched. Soon, he was going to be in her hands.
Adam shot her a look, but did not answer her. She watched as he moved silently into the plane and ignored her words, instead moving to a seat furthest away from hers..
She frowned. He didn’t care to engage with her, did he? She’d like to see how long he would do that.
She let out a small chuckle, and her eyes glinted with smug satisfaction as she observed his stony demeanor. “Oh, really? So chatty. Don’t worry, I’m not expecting you to say much anyway. You never really do, do you?” Her gaze lingered on him, as if daring him to react, but Adam continued to remain a wall of indifference.
She knew he was trying to avoid giving in to her, trying to assert his power and keep control. But she was no fool. She knew exactly what buttons to press. She enjoyed the control she held over him, even if it was only in this small, fleeting moment. The power of being able to summon him whenever she wasnted was heady.
Finally, Adam broke the stillness with a simple question “Where are we going?”
Saira glanced at him and her eyes narrowed in amusement, then shifted her gaze to the phone he was holding loosely in his hand. A smile crept onto her lips, an almost predatory satisfaction. She knew what he was doing so she let him and answered casually,”Maniwa.”
Adam paused at the name of the placd but his expression betrayed nothing, though something flickered in his gaze as he turned away. He said nothing for a moment longer and then his fingers tapped across the screen of his phone quickly.
Seeing him message so deligently, Saira, unable to resist herself, taunted,” What? The free spirit Adam Collins, who never reported his whereabouts is actually required to report to his wife? She must keep you on a short leash. Tsk tsk. I didn’t expect you to tie yourself to someone like this.”
Adam glanced up at her then with his expression a mixture of indifference and amusement as he replied casually “Yes. “I’m on a short leash. But the thing is… I don’t mind it.”
Saira’s hands clenched into fists, her nails digging into her palms as his words hit a nerve. She forced herself to stay calm, but there was a tension in her jaw. She hated that he could say it so easily, that he could admit to being tethered. She hadn’t expected him to be this… compliant and easy about it. Even when she had not betrayed him, he had never been like this…
“You were never like this for me.” Her mind raced back to their past, to the time they had spent together, to the feelings that had once been so raw and powerful in him. “You used to be so protective of your freedom, so protective of going out with your friends. You’d never report to me. Always making me feel insecure, making me feel like I wasn’t enough for you. Why did you do that, Adam. I was your first friend and your first love. What does she have that I did not?”
Adam sighed and turned to look at her again,” Are you really going to be this chatty all through the flight? If you must know, I was never like that with you because maybe on some basic level I knew you did not belong to me. Maybe I knew you belonged to the old man. That’s why I kept you away from me.”
Saira’s eyes widened and a hurt expression flickered across her face, but it was gone as quickly as it came. She scoffed, brushed her hair back with a sharp motion and said in a voice laced with scorn, “Oh, please, you were crazy in love with me. Don’t lie to yourself now, Adam. Only now, with everything in the past, you’re trying to make yourself believe it was nothing. Don’t you remember the night we were first together? The nights after that? You wouldn’t let me leave. You kept me close or rather I should say under you all the time?”
This time, he did not even bother to look up as he answered with a dry laugh, “I slept with countless women after that. Do you really think you are somehow special to me, Saira? You were nothing more than a tool for my teenage hormones, of course I f*cked you a lot. What else do you expect a teenage boy to do when you present yourself to him on a platter?”
Saira recoiled, the sting of his words sharper than she had anticipated. Her chest tightened, but she didn’t let him see how much it hurt. Instead, she leaned back in her seat, crossed her arms tightly over her chest, her eyes burning with both anger and something else—something far deeper and instead attacked him, “Of course,” she said with a cruel little laugh, “I forgot. You’re used to taking leftovers, aren’t you? It’s what you’ve always done. Even as a kid. You always picked up the scraps, took what others didn’t want, made it yours like it was some kind of victory. Guess marrying Spencer’s ex-wife fits right into that pattern, doesn’t it? That’s the best you could get. A woman who was already broken in by another man.”
“That’s your whole life story, isn’t it, Adam? Taking what’s been discarded. Clinging onto it like it’s a prize. You should thank me, really. At least I was whole when I gave myself to you. And do you really think that Melanie is really special? What do you know about her other than she was Lady Collins’ friend’s granddaughter and Spencer’s ex-wife? Has she ever told you anything about herself?”