Eric (Men of Honor 2)

Eric

I went back to bed, feeling like a complete failure. I held it together in front of my son, but he could have no idea what all of this was doing to me. I felt like the last ten years I’d only been fooling myself, like everything I’d tried to shield him from had already been heaped onto his precious little head without me knowing, and I’ve never been closer to taking out someone in my life.

I’ve never wanted to strangle Janine as much as I do right now. Why was she doing this shit? Why go to these lengths? Could it be that even though I’d set her straight all those years ago, she really still believed that I was hung up on her? None of this is making any damn sense. Or is she really nuts like Tyler’s been saying?

I used to think he was just saying that shit to say it the way kids exaggerate everything these days, but maybe there’s some truth to it since this is all nuts. How the fuck did I drop the ball like this? And now I’ve brought Justine and Lora into the mix, more targets for her sick ass when I didn’t even protect the one I should’ve been protecting from her all along.

I couldn’t even lie down next to my wife; I didn’t feel like I had the right, or like I was worthy of that honor after being such a monumental fuck up. She and our daughter’s lives were in danger, and I didn’t have a clue; my son had to be the one to see the truth about his mom and make moves to protect this family, something he should never have been responsible for at his age.

My mind went to Grey and what he’d said, but I was sure that this wasn’t even on his radar. I’m almost certain that he’d been referencing her bringing Sam and his wife here to start trouble because if he knew about this other thing, he would’ve told me right off the bat.

I paced the sitting room off the master suite for the better part of an hour as I tried to come up with some kind of plan to deal with Janine once and for all. Tyler was right, her husband would move heaven and earth to make sure she never saw the inside of a courtroom, and though I could use my money to overpower him, I wasn’t in the mood to deal with that shit anyway, seeing as how ninety-nine percent of the time the victim gets screwed. So Ty had a point there; this has to be handled in-house.

* * *

JUSTINE

* * *

Something’s up with those two, I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there’s something in the air hovering between the two of them. Something they’re both trying very hard to keep hidden. I was still reeling from what I’d overheard the night before and figured there had been more said between them and left it at that.

By the time everyone left for the day, and I headed to my craft room where I spend most of my days, I was thinking of ways to deal with the messiness that was my life. As far as I can tell, Janine had been pretty much out of the picture before I came along. For whatever reason, once she got wind that Eric and I were seeing each other, she went completely psycho.

I thought for sure that after the wedding and me moving in here, things would’ve calmed down, but after yesterday, I’m not so sure. I’m kind of guessing from snippets of the conversation I overheard last night before Tyler dropped his bombshell that Janine is the one responsible for bringing Sam and Kristen here.

Eric has told me from day one that I have no need to worry about her, and until last night I may have kept myself as far away from her as possible, but knowing what she’d done to her own little boy had shifted something inside me. No matter how horrible life had become, I would never have subjected Lora to something like that.

As a mother, her despicable act has touched off something in me that had long lain dormant. Tyler is, in essence, my son now, isn’t he? Though we aren’t overly close, mainly because I came into his life when he was too old to need a replacement for his mother, and I have no experience with teenage boys, he’s still my responsibility as his dad’s wife.

And though what he described had happened years ago, I know for a fact that she’s still bothering Tyler since I married his dad. I played the doormat with Kristen and Sam for so long that it has become second nature, but when I look at my little girl and imagine what she sees when she looks at me, it breaks my heart.