Derailed II by Nelle L'Amour Page A

to my conversation with his Ice Queen sister. She had mentioned that Ari had been in years of therapy as a result of his bitter divorce. Loosened up by the champagne, I was ready to venture into dangerous territory.
    “Why do you need to see a therapist?” I asked, feigning innocence.
    He took a sip of champagne. “My ex fucked me up. I’ve got issues.”
    This was a start. I was dying to know if he talked to his shrink about me but instead asked, “How long were you married?”
    “Three years. The first year was a fairy tale. The last two a nightmare from hell.”
    I was making progress, getting him to open up. “How did you meet?”
    His eyes grew distant as if they were going back in time. “We met in St. Tropez. I was vacationing there with my family. My dad was gravely sick, and I had just graduated Harvard Business School. We knew it was going to be our last family vacation with my dad. She was there on a shoot—she was, at the time, one of the world’s top supermodels at the peak of her career.”
    Inwardly, I cringed. I knew he was the supermodel type. I was a far cry from any cover girl and wondered again what he was doing with me. A wave of insecurity swept over me.
    He continued. “My parents and my sister didn’t care for her—they all thought she was an opportunist. But for me, it was love at first sight. I proposed to her three months later. Sadly, my father didn’t live long enough to see us get married.” His voice grew watery, and he took another sip of champagne. “In retrospect, maybe that was for the best.”
    Although I was dying to find out her name, I did not dare ask. He wasn’t offering; I wasn’t asking. Instead, I asked another brave question. “What happened to your marriage?”
    He drained his champagne and poured himself another glass. “Her modeling career began to wane—there’s always a fresh new face—and then she got pregnant with Ben. She gained a lot of weight and could never get her body back to what it was. Her career was over. The loss of her looks put her over the edge. She became manic depressive.”
    I was familiar with that term. Lauren had once been diagnosed with that condition. She could either be hyper with glee or dark with gloom. When extreme depression set in, she could be dangerous to herself. Suicidal.
    “Did your wife try to hurt herself?” I asked nervously.
    Ari’s eyes flared. “No, she hurt Ben.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “She physically assaulted him.”
    I gasped, unable to mask my shock.
    Ari’s lips hardened into a grim line before continuing. “She blamed him for her problems; we grew apart, and she turned to alcohol and drugs. One night when Ben was three, he was afraid to go to sleep, and he cried out for her. Drunk out of her mind, she couldn’t put up with his wailing and shoved him to the floor. He hit his head and had to be rushed to the hospital. He was in a life-or-death coma for a week. I never left his side.”
    Ari’s eyes grew haunted as I gasped again. It wasn’t hard for me to imagine him sitting in a hospital room anxiously waiting for his beloved son to wake up. The image broke my heart. I had been there myself with my mother. I wanted to clasp his hands but refrained.
    “I filed for divorce immediately after that incident.”
    My eyes gazed at him, begging for—and then what?
    “When she got the divorce paper, she went crazy. We had a terrible fight… she stabbed me with a kitchen knife. Ben watched the whole thing.”
    “Oh my God. The scar on your back?” My jaw stayed wide open in shock, partly because of what she had done to him and partly because I could not believe his darling little boy had to witness this brutality.
    “So, you’ve noticed it.” It was more of a statement than a question.
    “It’s hard to miss,” I said, finding my voice. “How serious was it?”
    “Serious enough to require thirty stitches and hospitalization.”
    I gasped yet again. “Oh my God. Did you call the