Vows Beneath The Moon Clown Chapter 01
My husband said he had suffered from severe PTSD since childhood and was terrified of intimate contact.
On the first night after our wedding, I merely touched his hand. He screamed, curled into the corner, and trembled all over.
For five years, we slept in separate rooms. I never dared cross a single boundary. Even a hug had to be asked for in advance.
My father and stepmother called me useless. My sisters laughed at me for living like a widow for a Mafia heir. I endured all of it.
That day, I was working a part-time shift as a moon-clown mascot at Luna Park in Coney Island, New York. A three-year-old girl splashed hot chocolate all over me.
I bent down to wipe the mascot suit clean, but the child’s bodyguard shoved me to the ground.
“Keep your filthy clown costume away from my daughter!”
Through the mesh eyes of the moon-clown head, I saw my husband, Adrian Blackwood, holding a woman’s arm and tenderly kissing the ends of her hair.
The woman wrapped her arms around him from behind. He did not tremble or scream. Instead, he smiled and kissed her back.
PTSD? Fear of intimacy?
What he feared had never been intimacy. He only feared being intimate with me.
The temp worker beside me hurried over and pulled me away.
“I know that woman. She’s Veronica De Luca, the De Luca family’s chief lawyer. Last month she buried a ten-million-dollar reputation blackmail case. If you make a sound, she can ruin you.”
Through the moon-clown mask, I saw the smile on Adrian’s face freeze little by little.
He recognized me.
Even though I was trapped inside the heavy moon-clown suit, my face hidden behind black mesh, he still recognized me.
Because for five years, whenever I looked at him, I always wore the same expression.
Careful. Humble. Eager to please.
And now, humiliated as if I had been stripped bare in public.
The woman beside him lowered her head and wiped the hot chocolate stain from the girl’s collar. Then she lifted her eyes to me, the corner of her mouth curved in amusement.
“Ava Moretti?”
My heart sank.
She knew me.
Not only did she know me, she knew I was the wife Adrian had deceived for five years.
The little girl hid behind the woman’s leg and cried, pointing at me.
“Mommy, the moon clown stinks! She scared me!”
Mommy.
I stared at the child’s face.
Her eyes looked like Adrian’s. Her nose looked like the woman standing before me.
I suddenly remembered three years ago, when Adrian told me his condition had worsened and he needed to spend half a year recovering in Sicily.
For those six months, I held my phone every night and waited for his messages.
He said he couldn’t be disturbed during treatment, so I hardly dared call.
When he came back, he was thinner, with dark shadows under his eyes, as if he had spent a long rainy season inside some Sicilian villa.
I asked if it was a side effect of treatment.
He frowned and said, “Don’t ask. It will make me remember bad things.”
So I never asked again.
Only now did I realize that half year had not been recovery at all.
He had been in Sicily taking care of the woman who was giving birth to his child.
Adrian finally spoke.
“Ava, go home first.”
His voice was low, but it still carried that familiar tone of command.
Every time he wanted me to back down, he sounded like this.
Go home first.
Don’t push me.
Can’t you be a little more understanding?
For five years, those words had trapped me.
My temporary coworker rushed over and grabbed my arm.
“Don’t be stupid. Apologize now. That’s Veronica, the most feared family lawyer in West New York. Anyone who crosses her pays for it.”
Veronica picked up the child and looked at me with calm deliberation.
“Miss Moretti, my daughter is crying because of you. Don’t you think you should say something?”
I took off the mascot head.
Hot air rushed into my lungs, yet I felt cold enough to shake.
“Your daughter?”
Veronica smiled and turned to Adrian.
“Adrian, am I wrong?”
Adrian’s face went white, but he did not deny it.
That silence hurt more than watching him kiss Veronica.
He admitted it.
He admitted the child was theirs.
He admitted that I, his legal wife, was nothing but a joke.
A silver saint medal swung from the girl’s neck.
My pupils tightened.
That was the medal my late mother had left me.
When Adrian and I registered our marriage at city hall, I gave it to him.
He had accepted it through a handkerchief, saying he wasn’t used to physical contact but would treasure it.
Back then, I felt sorry for him.
I thought a man who became nervous even receiving a gift must have suffered terribly.
Now that medal hung around the neck of his daughter with another woman.
I held out my hand.
“Give it back.”
Veronica stepped back half a pace, a trace of provocation in her eyes.
“Adrian gave it to my daughter. What right do you have to ask for it?”
My voice went hoarse.
“It was my mother’s keepsake.”
Adrian frowned without thinking.
“Ava, it’s just a silver medal. Don’t scare the child.”
Just a silver medal.
I laughed suddenly.
Before my mother died, she held my hand and said that when I found someone I wanted to spend my life with, I should give that medal to them, so it could keep them safe.
I gave Adrian the most precious thing I owned.
He used it to comfort another woman’s child.
And in the end, he thought I was petty for caring.
Veronica raised her right hand to fix the child’s collar.
The ring on her finger stabbed at my eyes.
I had designed that ring myself.
Inside it was engraved the date Adrian and I registered our marriage.
In the first year of our marriage, he said the ring against his skin made him feel as if he couldn’t breathe, so he asked me to put it away.
After that, I never asked him to wear it again.
So it turned out he could wear a ring.
Just not the one I gave him.
I stared at Veronica.
“The ring too. Give it back.”
Veronica deliberately lifted her hand higher.
“Adrian gave this to me as well. Miss Moretti, when a gift ends up on someone else’s hand, it only proves who deserved it more.”
Something roared in my head.
Five years of endurance burned through in that one sentence.
I lunged for her hand.
Before I could touch the ring, Adrian stepped in front of her and shoved me hard.
Wearing the heavy mascot suit, I fell heavily to the ground.
He did not help me first.
He turned back to shield Veronica and the child.
“Ava, are you insane?”
Tourists gathered around.
Someone lifted a phone to record.
The child cried even louder. Veronica held her tightly, looking every inch the victim.
Adrian stood before them and looked down at me coldly.
“Apologize to Veronica and the child.”
I looked up at him.
“Apologize to whom?”
He clenched his teeth.
“You scared the child and attacked Veronica.”
“Then what about me?”
I pointed at myself, my voice trembling.
“Adrian, what am I to you?”
His gaze flickered away.
Veronica smiled and answered for him.
“You’re obviously the soon-to-be ex-wife who doesn’t know her place.”
The crowd erupted.
“So she’s the ex-wife?”
“No wonder she’s so worked up.”
“A family of three comes out to have fun and she shows up in a mascot suit to make a scene. Embarrassing.”
Every sentence felt like a slap across my face.
Adrian did not explain.
He even seemed relieved.
As long as everyone mistook me for an ex-wife, he could keep standing beside Veronica with dignity.
Two park security guards rushed over and pinned me to the ground.
My face pressed against the hot asphalt. Hot chocolate seeped through the mascot suit, sticky and sickening.
Adrian stood before me, the crease of his suit pants spotless.
“Ava, don’t make this more difficult for me.”
I closed my eyes.
Difficult.
He had a child with another woman, wore my ring, gave away my mother’s keepsake, and still said I was making things difficult for him.
Veronica crouched and patted my face.
“Apologize, Miss Moretti. Adults should learn where they stand.”
I stared at her.
Adrian’s voice turned colder.
“Apologize.”
In that moment, I suddenly stopped wanting to struggle.
I heard myself say, “I’m sorry.”
The three words fell, and the crowd went quiet for a second.
Veronica leaned closer and lowered her voice.
“He was afraid of your touch, but he begged me to hold him. Ava, were these five years worth it?”
I jerked my head up.
She had already risen and taken Adrian’s hand.
Adrian did not pull away.
They left with the child in their arms.
A family of three, their backs painfully intimate.
And I lay on the ground like an abandoned mascot.