Show Me the Way (Fight for Me 1)

Wife.

Nausea crawled through my senses, a sickening poison injected straight into my veins.

Rex fumbled to get his hands back on my face, eyes so intense, his presence powering straight through my body. It only ruined me all the more. “No, Rynna. No. Fuck. Of course, we have a chance. You and me? We’re supposed to be.” His tone was despairing.

I blinked at him, trying to make sense of the situation. To sift through every horrible emotion. My anger. My hurt. The love that shined far too bright. Trying to look inside myself and find what was right.

But the betrayal glared, blinding. Both Janel’s and Rex’s. How could I make sense of the two? “You lied to me.”

“No, Rynna. I was going to tell you. I promise, I was going to tell you.”

“You had plenty of time to tell me last night. You’re married, Rex. Married, because you chose to be. Because you were waiting for her to come back to you. Oh God.” A whimper burst from between my lips.

“I swear, Rynna, swear to you.”

Frantically, my head shook. “You need to figure out what you want from your life, Rex, because I can’t be with you. Not when you’re with her.”

“No,” Rex grated, shaking his head. “There’s no chance of me bein’ with her, Rynna. Not when it’s you I want.”

“I can’t—” He cut me off with a kiss. A kiss so desperate I nearly got lost in it. I wanted to let go. Let him take me and love me and capture me. Pretend it was real. Pretend this man wasn’t married and his wife wasn’t waiting for him back at his house.

Hands still on my face, he pulled back. “Please.”

I gripped him around both wrists, staring at him through bleary eyes. Hot tears streaked down my face and into the webs of his fingers.

This beautiful, intricate man who wasn’t mine.

Misery.

Agony.

So much hurt.

It whirled around us. A tornado that screamed.

“I can’t keep you when you never really belonged to me.”

A moan pulled from his throat, and he gripped me. His voice was a rasp. “Don’t do this, Rynna. You promised me you wouldn’t run. That you wouldn’t leave. You promised.”

Janel’s face taunted me. The idea of her touching him. Of him touching her.

“I can’t,” I whispered my heartbreak against the top of his head.

He made a choking sound, as if I were causing him physical pain, before he turned and walked away. He pulled open the door, paused to look back at me, grief scored across every line in his face. “You promised you’d stay.”

My head shook. “And I trusted you not to lie to me.”

His throat bobbed as if he were swallowing the reality down.

He was married, and he’d never thought it important enough to tell me.

What did that make us?

Then he turned and was gone.

34

Rex

I had to pry myself from her, force myself to walk out her diner door when it was the last thing I wanted to do, fucking agony clamoring along behind me the whole way.

She’d promised me.

I stalked out into the blazing day, squeezing my eyes against the harsh reality, wondering if this was what it felt like to be eaten alive. If you could feel every part of yourself being devoured and destroyed, helpless to do anything but accept that you were getting ready to die a slow, painful death.

Bit by bit.

Because I was. I was fucking dying inside, all those pieces I’d offered into Rynna’s hands shriveling into nothing.

It just left more room for the bitterness.

More room for the anger and hate and questions to flood and inundate.

In a daze, I climbed into the cab of my truck, slammed the door, and turned over the ignition. The engine roared. I pulled out onto the road.

Torn.

Wanting to turn right back around and beg Rynna, when instead I headed in the direction of my house.

I still couldn’t believe my wife had shown up at my door.

Fuck.

My wife.

I scrubbed a hand over my face like it might give me some kind of clarity when nothing had ever looked hazier.

She was back and she wanted Frankie and me and I had no idea what to do with that.

Reject it was what I wanted to do. Send her fucking packing so Rynna and I could get right back to where we’d been last night. Tangled and bound. Perfectly tied.

Memories of the pledge I’d made pressed in, taunting me in the periphery of my mind, that vow I’d stood and taken.

Could I just disregard it? Shun it? The commitment I’d made? And why did I feel even an ounce of it when she’d been the one to up and disappear?

Motherfucking loyalty.

She was the one who’d broken the vows we’d made. Betrayed and abandoned and deceived. I mean, fuck, I had no clue where she’d even been for the last three years. What she’d been doing. Most sickening was realizing I really didn’t care.