“About this? Not anytime soon. And I don’t even know where I stand with him. Maybe I was naïve to jump back into his bed. What did I think? That I was going to have this wonderful future with him? That we could both work and raise our children and have this fantastic life? I was an idiot. Maybe I should’ve ran the second I saw him like my sister suggested.”
“No, this could be a good thing.”
“Good? What’s so good about it?”
“The children can have their father in their lives now.”
“But at what cost?” she wept.
“Harvey is a sensible man. He will see reason once he calms down and share custody with you. He’s not going to take away the most important person in the kids’ lives.”
“Don’t be so sure. His mother is a monster and she can convince him to do anything.”
“And Harvey is his own person. Just let him calm down and lick his wounds. I assure you that he will see reason and come up with a compromise.”
“If we could come to some kind of arrangement and be cordial to each other, then this could work. I want Harvey in the kids’ lives. I really do. And I’m sure we’ll figure something out in time. But
… I’m afraid I lost him forever. I just keep thinking that if he loves me, he’ll learn to forgive me.”
“He could in time. Just give him some space right now. That’s all you can do. He has a lot of feelings and emotions he has to sift through.”
“You’re right. I’m going to go to bed. If I can even sleep with everything weighing so heavily on my mind. But I’m beat. I’ve had a rough day. I’m sure a million times rougher than Max’s.”
“Max is a rich prick. He just wants a trophy wife. Drop him like a hot potato. Goodnight.”
Bella let out a weak chuckle as she walked inside. “Goodnight.”
After months of work at getting the twins to sleep in their own room without coming in ‘to visit’ three times a night and waking her, tonight she tucked them into her big bed on either side of her. She wasn’t going to sleep anyway, so it didn’t matter if she took a sharp kick to the ribcage or an arm flung across her throat in the night—both her babies were acrobatic sleepers, thrashing and flailing every night.
She kissed Caden’s curls as he slept and a tear rolled down her nose.
“I love you so much, baby. I’d do anything for you. You’re my sweet angel.”
She turned away before the teardrop could land on his sleeping cheek. She swiped away the tears, but they kept coming.
I can’t lose my kids.
They were her whole life. She’d been a motel maid, and now she was a successful executive, and it was because she wanted a better life for her children, because she knew what it was to grow up without everything she needed—she’d worn too-small shoes and shivered because she’d outgrown her coat from Shop with a Cop two years before. She’d eaten ramen twice a day, taken cracker packets from the table at a diner when she went in to use their bathroom. Her kids weren’t going to scrape and freeze, dammit. And there were not, with God as her witness, going to grow up without her. If he wanted to take them away, he was going to have a fight on his hands like nothing he’d ever seen. She’d hire the best lawyer around. But she hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
Deep down, she knew he’d be partly in the right—she’d kept his children from him, and he deserved to be part of their lives, just as they deserved to be in his. Any hope that he’d understand the fears of powerless and disenfranchised twenty-two-year-old housekeeper was pretty slim. He’d never been the underdog, never lacked resources, so he didn’t have much ability to comprehend the feeling of being trapped and disadvantaged. Maybe she could convince him to—to move in or something. To try raising the kids together even though he’d resent her with a white-hot hatred for depriving him of their babyhood, their first steps, and their first words. She lay there and wept, for herself and for him and for her babies whose lives were about to be turned upside down.
Her cell rang, and it was Harvey. She bit her lip hard and wasn’t sure if she should answer it.
No. She couldn’t ignore him.
“Hi, Harvey,” she said.
“Bella…”
“I know we have unfinished business, but I am so tired and emotionally drained.”
“And you think I’m not? I’m past emotionally drained. I’m spent. I let you leave without a fight because I think we both need time to cool down. Telling you off isn’t going to get me back all those years I missed. Yelling and shouting will only make things worse. What is done is done. I don’t want to say things to each other we’ll regret.”
“Thank you.”
“But this is far from over.”
“I know you’re feeling hurt, disappointed, and angry.”