“He’s a good man, Vanessa. A great one. He’ll open up to you in time. I’m sure of it,” Leslie added. “He used to say he would never marry, but I knew all it was going to take was him finding the right girl to convince him otherwise. Even mountains change over time.”
And that had me feeling like a schmuck. Like a giant, fake schmuck.
It messed with my head.
I wasn’t his real wife. He didn’t love me. This was all a charade.
The knot from the night before swelled in my throat again, leaving me unable to speak for a moment while I tried to collect my thoughts. “I know he’s a good man,” I finally managed to get out with a tremulous smile that felt way too transparent. “And, hopefully, we have a long time ahead of us,” I added even more weakly.
The way Leslie’s featured lit up made my stomach roll.
I was a fluke. A con woman. Imaginary.
I was what I made myself to be.
“Is he almost done?” I forced myself to ask as I snuck my hands under the table and clenched them.
“Almost. He should be—oh, here he is. Were you eavesdropping on us?” Leslie joked.
I pushed my chair back, trying to school my emotions, my face, and my body all to behave and get through these next couple of minutes until I could disappear in my room. Before I could even make it to the island, the big guy was in the kitchen, heading to the sink.
“No.” Those brown and caramel irises were on me.
Rinsing off my bowl, I set it in the sink as I faintly listened to Leslie and Aiden discuss his workout. I ignored the way his shirt clung to his sweaty chest, ignored the way he kept glancing at me. Regardless of what Leslie had said, I wasn’t in the mood to deal with him even if he’d loved the hell out of his grandparents.
Somehow, I managed to paste something similar to a grin on my face as I walked right by Aiden, purposely letting my shoulder brush his arm because I was positive Leslie was watching. “I have a lot of work to do. I’ll be upstairs if you need me,” I said more to the older man than to the one I was married to.
Only Leslie responded.
Which was fine. It was totally fine, I assured myself as I climbed the stairs. Aiden could be pissed at me all he wanted. I was mad at him.
I had just gotten to the top when my phone started ringing. Closing the door behind me—because anyone who would be calling me right then was not going to be on my list of people I’d want to talk to—I picked up my cell from where I’d left it on the nightstand. MOM flashed across the smooth screen.
To give myself credit, I didn’t flip the phone off, curse, or even think about not taking the call. I was going to take the damn call because I wasn’t petty. Because I had nothing to feel bad about.
I just didn’t want to talk to her. Now or anytime soon. That was all.
“Hello.”
“Hi, baby.”
Okay. That had me rolling my eyes. “Hi.”
“I’ve been so worried about you,” she started off.
Was that why she’d waited almost two days to call? Because she was so worried? Damn it, I was being a bitch. “I’m fine,” I let her know in a dull tone.
“You didn’t have to leave like that.”
There was only so much a person could handle, and I was at my tipping point. I’d been at my tipping point, and it was all my fault. If I hadn’t ignored my instincts and gone to El Paso, this could have been prevented. I’d been the idiot. Then I’d given everyone else the ability to piss me off. “You—”
“I love you both.”
“I know you do.” Once upon a time, when I was a lot younger and lot more immature, it had killed me that she loved us equally. I wasn’t a borderline psychopath like Susie. I hadn’t been able to understand how she didn’t take my side each time there was an issue. But now that I was older, I realized there was no way I could ever ask that of her. It was just one of those things. On a bitchy day, I thought broken things couldn’t help but love other broken things.
I might not be flawless, and I might have hairline fractures all over the place, but I’d sworn to myself a long, lone time ago that I wouldn’t be like either of them.
It was a terrible, shitty thought. Mostly because I held my mom and Susie as the prime examples of who and what I didn’t want to ever be.
But there was only so much I could take. “I’m not asking you to not have a relationship with her, but I don’t want one with her. Nothing is ever going to change between us. I might get along okay with Erika and Rose sometimes, but that’s it.”
“Vanessa—”
“Mom. Did you hear what she said? She said she wished she’d hit me harder with her car. She tried to spit on me. Then Ricky grabbed my arm. I have bruises. My knee hurts every single day from what she did.” Damn it, my voice cracked at the same time my heart seemed to do the same. Why couldn’t she understand? Why? “I’m not trying to argue with you, but there’s no way I could have stayed after that.”
“You could have walked away,” said the woman who had walked away a hundred times in the past. This was the person who couldn’t deal with her problems if there wasn’t some sort of bottle around.
Damn it. I was so angry with her in that moment, I couldn’t find a single word that wouldn’t be brutal, that wouldn’t hurt her feelings. She said some things that I didn’t listen to because I was too focused on myself. I shoved my sleeves up my forearms in frustration. Squeezing my free fist closed, I didn’t even bother trying to count to ten. I wanted to break something, but I wouldn’t. I fucking wouldn’t. I was better than this. “You know what? You’re right. I really have to go. I have a lot of work to catch up on. I’ll call you later.”