Show Me the Way (Fight for Me 1)

It shivered around me, a haunting reminder that these walls still held their secrets. My past an echo that had hit its end and came bounding right back.

I turned toward the old counter, hands fisting around the wooden handle. At least it gave me something to hold on to.

I froze when awareness struck me from behind.

The door slowly creaked open. It was instant, the way the air thickened and the tension pulsed.

It slammed the walls. Amplifying. Lifting. Increasing. Pulling and pulling and pulling.

Gravity.

I swore I could feel his wary footsteps tremor across the floor and climb my legs. That connection streaking free. Though this time in a frenzy.

Slowly, I released the sledgehammer to the ground, turned around. The man had the power to reach right out and pluck the breath from me. My lungs heaved at the sight of him, and I whispered, “Rex.”

“Rynna.” He shifted on his feet, an agitated hand jerking at the longer pieces of his hair. He looked at the floor as if it might hold an answer, his tone low, laden with guilt. “God, Rynna . . . never in a million years would I have expected what we woke up to this morning. I’m so fucking sorry.”

Lightheadedness spun, and I gulped for air, trying to focus. To see straight. To focus on what was most important. “Where’s Frankie?”

He swallowed when he met my eye. “Took her to my mom’s. Didn’t want her in the middle of this. Not when I don’t have the first clue what the fuck I’m supposed to do.”

“What does she want?” The question broke in desperation.

What do you want?

I wanted to ask it, but I was terrified. Terrified of the answer. Terrified of how this man made me feel. How he’d consumed me entirely. Everything that was mine, his.

My body.

My heart.

My mind.

Mouth trembling, he stared at me, expression distant, the man shaken from his own axis. “Frankie. Me. Fuck, I don’t know.”

A strangled sob sprang from the depths of me, and I clutched my stomach. “And what do you want?”

In a second flat, Rex rushed me. Those big hands were on my face, forcing me to look at him. “I want you. God, Rynna, I want you.”

The relief was almost as fierce as the pain. As fierce as the stark grief that passed through his eyes. Eyes that swam with the deepest guilt. “Need to tell you something, Rynna.”

I blinked at him. Strung up. My world hinging on what he might say.

He squeezed his eyes closed, his expression pinching in regret. “I . . .”

“What?” I begged.

Shaking his head, he slightly angled it to the side and pulled me closer, as if he were pleading with me to understand. “She’s still my wife, Rynna.”

My heart froze.

Froze in horror. In disbelief.

“What?” I begged again, but this time because I didn’t want the answer he’d given. I wanted him to tell me I’d misunderstood. That he didn’t mean what I’d heard.

I struggled to break out of his hold, and he held me tighter. “I never signed the papers, Rynna. I’m so sorry. I should have told you. God, I should have told you.”

Another rush of dizziness swept through me. This time it was so intense, it nearly knocked me from my feet. “You’re . . . still . . . married to her?” The last came off as an accusation.

After everything we’d shared? After everything I’d told him and he’d told me? And he’d failed to mention this?

My mind flashed through a barrage of memories. The things Rex had eluded to. The way he’d first reacted when we’d met. The fact he’d never been with another woman after Janel left. Not until me. He’d kept warning me and warning me he didn’t have anything to give.

Horror flooded the words. “You were waiting for her. The whole time, you’ve been waiting for her to come back.”

Tears streaked free, and I struggled to break out of his hold. “We never even had a chance, did we?” It barely made it out over the sobs that clogged my throat. The grief that clenched my chest, making it hard to breathe. “You were always waiting for her.”

Now she was here.

Janel.

Oh God.

I pressed my hand over my mouth, trying to keep it all in. To keep from spewing the hatred that had blazed back to life the moment I’d seen her standing in his door. Tell him who she really was. What she’d done.

But she was Frankie’s mother. How could I do that? I couldn’t be that person. One who maligned Janel’s name because she had what I wanted. Who was I to know if she’d changed? Like I’d told Rex, it’d been more than ten years.

My spirit thrashed, rejecting that notion, convinced I knew exactly who she was. But was that because of my jealousy? Was it because she was Frankie’s mother? Because she was Rex’s wife?