A Wrong Surrogate for the CEO-Chapter 121: Lisa got a chance

Lisa had not expected Lara to ask her to come in. She hadn’t even expected her to open the door.

So when Lara stood back, holding the door open for her, Lisa was surprised.

But she quickly masked her features, not wanting to give away how stunned she was.

"Thank you," Lisa said as she walked in. Lara closed the door behind her, and very silently, both women made their way to sit on opposite couches.

Lara didn’t even make an attempt to offer Lisa any sort of refreshment, and the older woman didn’t mind.

"Why are you here, Lisa?" Lara asked, a few minutes after silence had stretched awkwardly and uncomfortably between them.

Lisa crossed her legs, then she decided to uncross them. She was nervous, even though she was trying not to make it obvious.

Lara, on the other hand, was calm and composed. Her nerves were normal, and she patiently waited for her ’supposed’ mother in law to speak.

Eventually, Lisa took a deep breath, and she started to speak.

"I wanted my son to be happy. I still do. His happiness means the world to me, and I would do anything to see him happy. The record proves that I had done things... terrible things. Things I shouldn’t have done just because I was obsessed with his happiness. "

She paused for a bit before she went on.

"When Vivian broke Curtis’s heart, when she left him at the altar and walked away, my son was devastated. My heart broke for him, at how sad he was. And I was angry too. Angry that I hadn’t been able to find a good, loyal wife for him. Due to that incident, my main goal became finding a wife for Curtis. Someone who wouldn’t leave him. A woman that would love him for who he is and not break his heart."

There was a sad, mocking smile on Lisa’s face now. But the mockery was not directed towards Lara. It was directed towards Lisa herself.

"He is a grown man, perfectly reasonable and capable of making his decisions by himself. But I let myself forget that fact. So when he brought you home, when he refused my act of trying to matchmake him with that actress, I felt as though I had failed. I had been too late, I thought. And that made me angry. I tried to make him leave you, I tried to make you leave, but none of my plans worked. Every single thing I did blew back in my face, and Curtis started to see me as a monster. A wide chasm rapidly grew between us."

She paused again. Lara was listening intently, but her face was devoid of any emotion.

"I should have stopped when I saw the signs. I should have stopped when he asked me to. But I didn’t. When I saw the way he looked at you, when I saw how different, how happy Curtis was... I should have stopped."

Lara swallowed past a lump in her throat.

"Why didn’t you?" she asked, her voice coming out as a whisper.

Curtis’s mother held Lara’s gaze as she responded.

"Because you weren’t in love with him. Not at first."

Lara could not help the bolt of surprise that slammed into her.

"What?!" she gasped, her voice coming out quieter than expected.

Lisa nodded and went on. "It’s the truth. My son was head over heels in love with you, and everyone saw it. But you just...you saw him as a friend. There was no love in your eyes whenever you looked at him, and that made me angrier. Seeing him pine after you like a high school kid, it broke me in ways I didn’t know I could be broken."

Lara’s heart was pounding violently against her chest. A part of her wondered if she should listen to, or even believe Lisa. For all she knew, the woman might be lying to her.

But the other part of her believed the woman. Desperately. She didn’t have all of her memories yet, but for some weird reason, Lara knew that Lisa was saying the truth.

"I intensified my efforts. I tried harder to separate you guys. Since you weren’t in love with him, it gave me a good reason to fall back on. I didn’t care that you were pregnant. I figured that the pregnancy probably wasn’t his, and that you were lying to him."

Lisa paused again, and this time, the silence between them was almost alive. Like a living thing.

"I was so wrong. Oh, Lara. Right before my eyes, I watched you slowly fall back in love with my son. I saw the way your eyes lit up whenever you looked at him. I saw it in the way you stood by him, refusing to leave the marriage despite the fact that I was tormenting you to leave. And when he got into that accident, the haunted look in your eyes as you waited outside the operating room? I will never ever forget it."

Lara felt as though someone had reached into her chest, grabbed her heart and was ripping it into pieces.

A lump had grown in her throat, and she had to blink back tears in an attempt not to lose her composure.

Lisa was silent for a long while, and the silence dragged between the two women, stretching until it wrapped around them, binding them together.

Then Lara stood up and walked to the kitchen island. She opened the refrigerator and grabbed a bottle of water.

And the silence shattered between them.

Lisa stood up too, but made no attempt to move closer to Lara. She only held Lara’s gaze as she spoke.

"Curtis would never ever lie to you. And that contract that you saw? It stopped mattering a long time ago. You and my son are a married couple, Lara. Curtis is your husband, and you are his wife."

Then without waiting for another word, Lisa turned around and left.

Lara didn’t move from where she was for a long time. How could she, when she didn’t know what to believe anymore?