Chapter Twelve
Graham
By the time Ella and Patricia were packed up to leave, I was damn near crawling the walls, more than ready to get out of there.
I’d stayed in my bedroom while the girls did all the endless junk that accompanied even the most minor outing, until I heard a shout—no doubt from the top of the stairs—from Ella that they were ready to go.
Her voice was enough to make my emotions go into free fall again. It also brought front and center my next two concerns courtesy of Leland. How to get out of the room without seeing him was a problem, but even bigger was how to get into the car without explaining anything to Patricia.
Crud, I’d never expected those two issues to dominate my morning, but they had from the moment I sent Ella to pack. Christ, twenty-four hours ago I’d had my dick shoved in Lee’s tunnel, staring at my man while I rode him like a stallion, and thought life couldn’t get better than this.
Well, I’d been right, but for the wrong reasons. It didn’t get better; it got rapidly worse.
Fuck, how was I going to bug out without running into Leland? The sight of him would be too much for my sanity holding on by a thread.
Jesus Christ, I was a grown fucking man, I reminded myself, and it was time I started acting like it.
I grabbed my bag then sprinted up the stairs. It was a short walk to the foyer where the girls probably waited and I just had to keep my gaze locked on harmless objects before I reached the front door.
Don’t turn your head. Don’t look, was the mantra I repeatedly told myself, and then, fuck, I did it.
My gaze shot to the kitchen then through the wall of glass on the lawn, and the forward motion of my body stopped as if I’d hit a brick wall. In some ways I did, and it certainly felt that way.
There on the back patio, seated at a table, Leland and the toxic shock that ruined my life. What the fuck? They were sharing breakfast together as if what she meant to me was nothing.
But it wasn’t seeing them together that caused my heart to stop; it was rather what I could see in sunlight.
Jesus H. Christ. She wasn’t just pregnant. She was very pregnant from the looks of it, and another bomb—and delusional fantasy—exploded in me.
This hadn’t been a new change in the status of our monogamy. A Leland slip because of the length of his last mission. His ex looked near to pop. And that meant this had been going on and he’d kept it from me longer than I suspected.
How could he do that? Be with her, come home to me, lie to me, then be with her? It was like I’d never known him, or maybe just not seen the kind of man he was clearly. He was vain, selfish, and overly sexual, the perfect storm that warned this disaster would come my way in life.
Men were like dogs. They were what they were. I was a fucking man. I should have got that and not been surprised we were ending over infidelity. But I was surprised and half out of my mind, and it hit me like it did when you chanced upon a horrific car accident.
Total shock and unable to look away.
I stood gaping at them for so long I started to feel like an interloper. The smart thing to do would be to hotfoot it to the cars, but my traitorous heart wanted to hold me there so he wouldn’t be alone with her.
Leaving my house violated all of what made me tick. This was my family and I was clearing the deck for a twenty-four-karat pussy to take it from me. And from how she smiled at Leland across the table, I was confident that was what she intended to do.
My internal composition balked at the notion of retreat in the face of battle, but fuck, I didn’t know how to fight this. She could give Lee things I couldn’t—clearly, he wanted them, by the size of her belly—and not only did she have the initiative, but she had weapons she knew how to use.
She was a beautiful woman, and while she did nothing for my cock, it wasn’t lost on me that if a man’s dick swung that way how she looked was a power card she could play.
Patricia’s somber voice pulled me from my thoughts. “Are we leaving or not, Graham?” How she asked that told me she somehow knew part of what had happened between Leland and me.
I ordered my heart to settle the fuck down and plastered a smile on my face. “Leaving. I’ll grab the bags by the door. You and Ella get to the car.”
That she didn’t argue confirmed that I was right. She knew shit.
I gestured her ahead of me with an arm, reminded the dumb organ in my chest that retreat was different than surrender, grabbed the suitcases, and followed her out the door.
But once we were rolling out the driveway, my heart felt very heavy, and for reasons I couldn’t decipher leaving Lee seemed like the wrong thing.
During the long bumper-to-bumper drive to Newport Beach, I was grateful both girls weren’t chatterboxes in the car. Usually their vivacious talk and laughter made focusing on the road a nightmare.
Today, silence.
Ella was slumped in the back seat, staring out the window as if she didn’t know what to do. And Mom didn’t look much different. Both my favorite girls tugged at my heartstrings, but I left it alone. Trying to discuss the disastrous condition of our family in the car was not a wise move.
We rolled into Newport Beach shortly after six, proving that no good ever came from getting on the freeways too late in the morning. Seven fucking hours it’d taken us to get from the 101 to the 405 then off to Newport Beach. But it was Sunday traffic and pretty much any fool who braved it going south got what they deserved.
I parked in our driveway, spotted our neighbors, Sean and Skyler Hart, lounging on their front porch, and had another I’ve lived this moment before thanks to Leland gut wringing. Wordless, I sprang from the driver’s seat and immediately went to unload the trunk.
As I lugged our things to the front door, I avoided the curious stare from casa Hart, and by the grace of God made it into the sanctity of my house without having to deal with them. Thank fuck, I’d never given in to Lee, sold the Newport Beach house, and moved Mom to our home. Though I never expected to be back here again, I was fucking grateful this time I was.
Setting down the bags, I summoned a smile and met the waiting stare of the girls. “You know where your room is, Ella. Put your stuff away. Then maybe we can all see about some dinner.”
“I’m sure I’ve got something to cook,” Patricia said, perking up a bit from the option of being useful. “Anything particular you want?”
“Anything you make, Mom, will be fine by me.” I dropped a kiss on her head and moved at a fast clip to my bedroom.
After shutting the door, I dropped my bag and collapsed on the bed. I took my phone from my pocket and turned it on, staring at the screen until it lit up.
Not one call or text from Leland.
It was better that way, but why didn’t it feel like it?
I turned it off, stared at the ceiling, and wondered how the fuck I was going to survive the next six days before I shipped out with my team, knowing he was there with her and I was here with Patricia.
***
Six days passed, the minutes slow as molasses. No contact from Leland. Ella was still here, since she’d refused to go back home and I didn’t make her. And of our odd trio, Mom was the only one who was her happy self again.
It would have annoyed me—since, yes, she’d wormed scant details from me about what’d happened—if I hadn’t been damn grateful for her sunny disposition. It kept Ella from growing sadder than she was and me from thinking about him.
It was my final morning home, and all I had to do was make it to 0700 the next day without anything new hitting me and I’d be out of harm’s way. Harm, i.e. my worthless, lying, cheating husband.
Speaking of whom, he would be here in less than four hours to grab Ella, and I still hadn’t decided if I should stay for her sake or leave without seeing him. I was only just making it through the minutes—I knew that—and the smallest things could make it all come back full-force in me.
At night alone, my brain never failed to shoot fantasy attacks of the smell of his body and sound of his voice. In sleep, he invaded my subconscious. How his mouth ran my cock and how much I loved to fuck his face. And at other times those crazy, nightmarish images of him with her jolted me out of sleep, covered in sweat. The continued communication silence between us was a reminder I couldn’t escape that everything had changed.
Hopefully, wherever the government sent me on this black op, I’d be there a long time. Long enough to work through my emotions so I could get to work doing what I had to do.
Six days living with Mom and I hadn’t made a move in any direction, unless one counted refusing to send home Ella until I was darn ready to. But I couldn’t maintain this present miserable holding pattern, and what would happen next was a one-way street.
Staying married to Leland: not an option.
Tolerating Layla in our world: not an option.
Starting over: an option I dreaded.
Fucked over in marriage in every way.
I’d never believed in love before Leland, and I wished that hadn’t changed because it was then worse to have it taken away.
As I reclined on the beach with a book in hand I hadn’t managed to turn a page on all afternoon, I stared at Ella talking with a young surfer dude, her foot absently kicking the surf. I knew I should probably break it up, but I didn’t.
Little girls should believe in love and fairy tales as long as they could before life taught them not to. But it was a fucking mistake for men to indulge that idiocy. And it was a fucking mistake to have ever loved—and to continue to love—Leland.