Chapter 22
Man Enough Now
Bryant
“Who’s that?” Mac’s accusing question hung in the air like a thick fog, its tips spiraling towards me. She leaned to the side, trying to get a look at Amberly.
“Nobody.”
Mac huffed in annoyance, deliberately scooting herself to the side so she could get closer to the passenger side of my truck. “I wonder what she would think of the fact you think she’s a nobody.” A smirk found a way to her lips. She was testing me.
“I meant, she’s nobody you need to worry about.” I shoved Delia’s jacket into her chest, not hard enough. I opened the door and jostled Delia awake. Helping her down out of the vehicle, her sleepy eyes opened.
“Mom, did you meet dad’s new friend? That’s Amberly, Haylie’s mom.”
Something flashed across Mac’s eyes before it was replaced with a scornful look. “The ink isn’t even dry on our decree and you’re introducing our daughter to your fuck buddy?”
I cringed even though Delia had disappeared into her mom’s house. I couldn’t even look at Amberly’s reaction before I shut the door and faced back to Mac. “She’s not a fuck buddy and even though we were just recently divorced, we haven’t been together for a long time. She’s my girlfriend. And, again, nobody you need to worry about.” I waved my arm up and down as if to display her living conditions. Living conditions, she was obviously unaware of. “You’re living with someone and you’re in contempt but I’m not saying anything about it. Speaking of, you’re raising child support?”
Hostility. Anger. Resentment. Mac was full of them all. She would never be happy. If I had figured that out earlier, I would have saved the both of us a waste of the years we spent together. “I did.” She jutted her hip out and puckered her lips, satisfied with herself.
“Nice. As if what I have given you isn’t enough.”
I shouldn’t have said it. I’d never been the one to start an argument, and I tried to defuse them before they could explode into something unmanageable. It was like with a fire, you extinguish it with water. I extinguished arguments with backing off if I felt the conversation was headed in that direction. I lowered my voice and agreed with what was said. That was how I had figured I needed to handle any confrontation with Mac. Still, the subject of Amberly never needed to be brought up. I was defensive where she was concerned. It was the first time I felt I could move on from a failed relationship.
“You’re nothing but a pussy. Letting some stranger around my daughter and now you’re worried about your money. It’s always been this way. I shouldn’t have expected anything less.”
I lowered my head and closed my eyes, composing myself before I said something I might regret. Funny, because I always regretted not saying more to Mac, not putting her in her place. “Amberly isn’t a stranger. You’ve met her plenty of times when I had the softball team. As far as the money goes, take it. I don’t care anymore.”
There’s a saying that money can’t buy happiness. But, everyone failed to mention it buys the food to feed your family. It buys the electric you need to make sure thirty-degree weather isn’t an issue. It also buys clothes and shoes for your child. In a way money buys happiness. It buys an easier life which means you can enjoy it rather than wondering where you’re going to end up.
“Whatever. You better make sure this doesn’t happen again. I’ll be damned if you have some woman, trying to take my place, around my child.”
“You’re forgetting she’s my child too. Amberly isn’t trying to take your place, and I’m not trying to fill your place. You emptied it so now there’s a new place, a place that only someone like Amberly could fill. Besides, she fills a lot more than you ever could.” The words sputtered out like a runaway tire, rolling down the hill with no obstacle to stop it.
Mac’s eyes narrowed, using them to build invisible daggers to pierce into me. “Michael told me you slept with his sister while we were together. Maybe I can tell Amberly about that. Maybe then she’d run far away because you know she will the second she finds out about you, the true you. Not the you that pretends that you love someone before trashing them.”
Confusion flooded me. “What in the hell are you talking about?”
She stomped her foot like a two-year-old child. Stomped. Her. Foot. A typical thing for her to do. “Michael’s sister. You don’t remember? Yeah, he gave me exact details. Like how you two disappeared to her car and you fucked her. It was the night you told me you wanted to hang out with the guys. You needed a moment, when really you needed an excuse to be around her.”
She was a millisecond away from screaming. “You’re delusional. I never slept with her. I’ve never even looked at Samantha in that way.”
In truth, I wanted to tell her I had slept with the entire town while we were married. We’d been split for two years and it was what she wanted, why did she suddenly care who I slept with and who I hadn’t. Did it even matter?
She flicked her hair away from her ear, if her hair had been longer this movement might have made sense. With short hair, it looked beyond ridiculous. I let her walk, not wasting any more time and got behind the wheel.
Amberly’s hand touched my shoulder and I flinched, surprised by it. “Are you okay?”
I felt her eyes searching for mine as I back out of the driveway. “I’m fine.” I mumbled. I was aware I was supposed to take Amberly home, but that’s not the direction I headed in. We pulled into my driveway, conveniently a couple minutes from Mac’s house.
I wanted to slam my hands against the steering wheel and if Amberly wasn’t with me, I would have. Every moment spent in Mac’s presence was a moment that tested my sanity.
“Don’t worry about her. I probably would have told her I had slept with the entire town if I were you.”
My head snapped up and my eyes fell across her face as I studied her to see how much truth was in her statement. That was exactly what I wanted to say to Mac. I didn’t. I wimped out. Extinguished the fire. It was what I was good at. I didn’t know how to not do it. I didn’t know how to walk away and ignore the things she said or did to me. I had to say what she wanted to hear, even if it wasn’t the truth. She didn’t want to fathom me cheating on her. It would no doubt, crush her ego. I should have crushed her ego. Should have even told her that I slept with her sister.
“I’m worried more about what she said about you.”
Amberly’s laugh filled the silence in my truck. “That I’m a fuck buddy? I’ve been called worse. Besides, we haven’t even slept together.”
I wanted to change that, so damned bad. I wanted to feel her skin against mine. I wanted to turn my aggression into something more positive.
“You should stay the night.” It sounded more like a demand than a question when it traveled to her ears.
“I need clothes.”
I started the truck back up, lifted the console up, and yanked her closer so she could be by my side. Hiding a relationship from your daughter was much harder than hiding it from your parents. It was almost as exhilarating too. I took her to her house so she could get some clothes and then we made our way back to my house, thankful she hadn’t objected.
“Why do you let her do that?”
The conversation steered to the one subject I no longer wanted to address. “Do what?” I played dumb. It was obvious what my answer should have been, what the truth was. Admitting it was harder though. I felt cornered. I had to play nice if I wanted my daughter around. She’d threatened it once, she’d do it again if I didn’t let her defeat me at her sick game.
Amberly hoisted herself onto the counter top in the kitchen. She was tiny, her frame not taking even a quarter of the counter up. “You know what.” She lowered her head and peered at me through her eyelashes.
I poured a glass of milk for her and then myself, dragging down the container of Oreo’s from the highest cabinet in the kitchen. It seemed natural, doing this with her. Drinking milk and eating cookies.
I dunked an Oreo into the milk, letting it saturate it to near sogginess before engulfing it. “Because, this state is a mother state. I don’t stand a chance if she takes me back to court.”
“What do you think is going to happen?” She asked before taking a bite of one of the cookies.
I tapped my hand against the counter, stalling the answer. Saying it aloud had brought me to tears before. Lucas had asked the same question. He had listened as I named off the outcomes of other court hearings. Divorces were common at my previous job and most every guy who had been in the force for a while had horror stories of how the judge had taken everything from them. The most devastating? Time with their children. Even if they had started off with full custody, the time was snatched from them before they had a chance to figure out why.
“She calls all the shots where Delia is concerned. I got lucky getting the visitation I did. She can take that away at a moment’s notice.”
Amberly lifted her head a bit and wiped a stray piece of cookie from her lips. To be honest, her looking at me the way she was made me want to take back the words I said. The way she looked at me, made me want to storm back to Mac’s house and tell her everything I have been too afraid to say this entire time.
She was calculating. What, I didn’t know. Several moments of silence passed between us, a comfortable silence where she was picking what she wanted to say next.
“How long are you going to live your life afraid of what she might do and what a judge might say? You have to live your life how you want to, not based on what bullshit she might accomplish if you piss her off. How do you ever expect to maintain a relationship with another woman when your main concern is whether or not you piss off your ex-wife?”
Every word came across harsher than I assumed she intended. It punched me in the gut and then laughed at me as I figuratively plummeted to the ground. But, she was right. It was more truth than I had heard in a while. Instead of answering her, I moved my body so I was between her legs. Her hands landed on my shoulders and she was looking down at me, the questions lingering in the air unanswered.
My heartbeat was erratic, it pounded against my ribcage and begged for some sort of release. I could feel my body becoming weak the second I snaked my arms around her. I plucked her from the counter and sat her down in front of me. Her eyes never faltered from my own. She was expecting my answer minutes ago.
I couldn’t give it to her. I wouldn’t be able to move on to the future if I couldn’t release my past. How much hold would I allow Mac to have on me? Was Amberly giving me a warning that things with her wouldn’t work if I kept doing what I was doing?
I lowered my head down, pressing my lips and body against hers. She tasted like Oreo’s, no surprise. There was something urgent in the kiss we shared. She wasn’t done talking or she was telling me more with this kiss. Entranced by her response to me, I deepened the kiss. I needed her. I needed whatever she was offering.
I pulled away and her eyes drifted open. She smiled. It came and stayed as if it were drawn with a sharpie. Her arms wrapped around my neck and mine rested on her hips. Her eyes kept flashing back and forth, and I could see the gleam in them. She felt what I did.
“There’s something you want to say.” I prodded her, hoping she got my answer to her earlier question through my actions.
She shook her head, her blond hair shaking with it. She bit her bottom lip with her eyes still glued to mine. She wanted to say it. She bit her lip to lower the chances of it slipping out.
“Yes, there is.” I felt it, clenching me with its force. If she wouldn’t say it, I would. I had to. I couldn’t waste another moment, afraid of what might happen.
They say when you fall in love, it happens in a matter of seconds. You fall, knowing that you’re falling and then one moment in time you realized that you were done falling and you just…. were. It was a chemical in the brain that nudged you to recognize the feeling. So, knowing I wasn’t crazy and that people fall just as fast, I said it.
“If it starts with an I and ends in a u, I do too.”
She didn’t respond, but I could feel her breathing stop for a split second.
“I love you, Amberly.” I said it more clearly.
The smile she was wearing extended, and she pulled me closer until I was molded against her.
“I love you too.” Her voice cracked when the words flowed from her.