I scrubbed my face and stared at Tenille as she slammed cupboards and drawers in my kitchen. She was pissed off with me, but I had no fucking idea why. And she’d hardly said a word to me since I’d arrived home, so there were no clues there.

“Tee, what the fuck’s going on?” I finally asked. Charlotte had hightailed it out of the kitchen five minutes ago after an argument with her mother, so I was making it my mission to figure this out.

She slammed the container she held down and met my gaze. “You came to me! You! It wasn’t my choice for us to come back into each other’s lives.”

My temper spiked. I fucking hated the way she fought with me when I didn’t know shit about why she was angry. She’d done it when we were together, and it seemed old habits died hard. I took a deep breath. “You’re not making any sense. How about you back the fuck up and start from the beginning here. Why are you so pissed at me? I mean, I came home twenty minutes ago and we’ve hardly said a word to each other. How the fuck have I managed to get you so worked up in that time?”

Her eyes widened. “You never did understand women, Aiden, and it appears you still don’t.” She rested her hands on the counter as she glared at me. “How do you think it makes me feel when the man I loved for so long—the man who I just found out didn’t really die years ago, who just showed back up in my life, telling me he wants to be there for me now—comes home the first night I’m in his new home, having just been with another woman? You think that makes me feel good?”

Fuck.

I raked my fingers through my hair, unsure of the best way forward here. Moving around the counter, I reached for her, but she slapped my hand away, so I stopped and said. “Tee, I didn’t know you were coming here tonight. Last I heard, you were dealing with shit in Melbourne with Craig.”

She blinked a few times, and I wondered if she was about to cry. She didn’t, though. “I left him,” she blurted out.

I was surprised, but relieved. As far as I was concerned, Craig wasn’t good enough for her. He didn’t love her the way she should be loved. “What happened?”

She dropped her gaze and fussed with the food she had on the counter. She’d bought a roast chicken and had filled plates with meat and salad for dinner. “He’s been coming home drunk for months, and he’s always fighting lately. I’ve had enough.”

“Fighting?”

“Yeah. I don’t know where or with who, but he comes home beaten and bloody some nights. Others, he turns up with ripped and blood-soaked shirts.”

Sully had told me about the drinking, but I didn’t know about the fighting. “What did he say about all that?”

She stared at me silently for a long while before admitting, “He told me not to ask questions about things that didn’t concern me. About things I didn’t really want to know.” Her voice cracked. “And when I pushed him on it, he hit me and told me it was all my fault.”

I clenched my fists. I wanted to knock him the fuck out. I wanted to make him bleed myself. Putting my hand out, I demanded, “Give me your phone.”

Her forehead crinkled. “Why?”

My body tensed the longer this took. “Tenille, give me your phone. I want a word with that motherfucker.”

“No. He’s never hit me before. This was just a once off thing. You don’t need to get involved.”

I drew in a long breath and let it out slowly, willing myself to get my shit under control. I wasn’t the same man Tenille had married anymore. She wasn’t acquainted with my violent side, and I didn’t want her to get fucking acquainted with it.

Needing a moment, and a whole lot of the one thing that had a shot at calming me, I stalked to the cupboard where I kept my whisky. Grabbing it out, I poured a mouthful into a glass and downed it. Not even close to enough, I poured another mouthful and knocked it back too.

Moving to where she stood, I said, “Where’s your phone? I’m not going to ask again.”

She responded to my forceful tone and pulled her phone from her back pocket. “What are you going to say to him?”

I took the phone. “What’s your password?”

“I asked you a question.”

Another deep breath. “Your password, Tenille?”

She rattled off four digits, which I keyed into her phone. I then scrolled through her contact list to find Craig’s number, all the while, ignoring her tirade about what an asshole I could be.

Craig answered on the fourth ring. “Where the fuck are you, Tenille?”

I saw red.

“This isn’t Tenille.” If a voice could commit murder, Craig would be dead.

“What do you want?” he spat back.

I squeezed the phone. “I want you to know that I know what you did. And I want you to also know that in my world, a man doesn’t hit his wife and get away with it.”

“So, what? I should watch my back or some shit? You’re gonna come get me?”

“I don’t come get people, Craig, but I do take care of them,” I said far more quietly than I was feeling. A hurricane of violent thoughts raged inside me. In my mind, I’d already hurt him a million different ways. Some of them, the kinds of ways a person didn’t survive.

Silence for a beat. And then—“Put my wife on the fucking phone, asshole.”

“If memory serves me correctly, I never divorced Tenille. And I sure as fuck didn’t die. Which makes her still my wife.”

Silence again. “Fuck you!”

The phone went dead, and my eyes met Tenille’s. Confusion lay there. “Oh God.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “This is a fucking mess, Aiden.”

I nodded. “Yeah. But if you want to leave Craig, there’s your answer.”

“That’s not an answer! It doesn’t matter if we aren’t technically married, we were together for a long time, and we have a lot of shit to work out.”

Why did women have to make everything so damn hard? In my mind, it was a no-brainer. She wasn’t happy. She wanted to leave Craig. They were never legally married. Fuck up solved.

“So what’s the plan now?”

She stared at me with a broken expression. “I don’t know.”

“Stay here for a bit. Figure shit out.” I refrained from telling her to never go back to Craig, but God help him if she did. I’d never take my eyes off him again.

“Yeah, maybe.” She seemed anything but certain, but this was still fresh. Tomorrow things might be a little clearer.

“And Tee?” At her questioning look, I softened my voice a little and said, “I’m sorry about coming home like that.”

She nodded. “I shouldn’t have lost it with you.”

It killed me that she had to navigate this new relationship with me. That I’d brought this on us. But there was no way back, only forward.

Changing the subject, I said, “Have you and Charlie figured stuff out?”

“Yeah, we had a good talk. But if I’m gonna be staying here for a bit, you need to be prepared for lots of arguments between us.”

I could only imagine. Charlie had inherited her parents’ temper. “I’ll deal.”

“Mum!” Charlie called out.

“What?”

“Come here.”

“No, you come here if you want me.”

She went quiet for a moment before yelling, “God, why do you have to be such a pain?” She stomped out to the kitchen, glaring at her mother. “I need to know which lipstick looks better on me.” She held up two options.

Jesus, all that for lipstick.

Tenille pointed at one of the lipsticks. “That one. Why?”

“I’m Facetiming with Jamie tonight. I need to look my best.”

I scowled. “I thought that little shit was in the doghouse.”

She gave me an unimpressed look. “We moved past that.”

“What happened to leaving him out in the cold for a while like Monroe said?”

Tenille’s eyes hit mine. “Monroe?”

“She’s cool, Mum.”

Tenille’s brows arched and her body snapped straight. Something was going on here, but again, I had no fucking idea. “Who is she?”

Charlie frowned at Tenille’s sharp tone. “She was at skating last night with her friend’s daughter.”

“So she’s not your woman?” Her icy gaze penetrated mine. Fuck, she ran hot and cold.

Before I could answer, Charlie said, “They’re not together. They hardly know each other.”

Monroe wasn’t my woman, but Tenille didn’t need to know anything further about our relationship. The last fucking thing I needed right now was to revisit the fact I’d come home straight from fucking another woman. That conversation hadn’t gone so well the first time; I could guess where it would lead if mentioned again. A man didn’t need to issue any invitations to break the peace in his own home.