Rock Chick Reborn (Rock Chick #9)(31)

In other words, dinner was not light. It was heavy and it was the sweetest conversation I’d had, because he trusted me with these things about his girls, about his feelings about his girls, and that was an honor the likes I’d never had bestowed on me.

Tarzan, as fantastic as it was, was a letdown after that. But we needed light after all that heavy and it was good to cuddle through a movie with a man. Hear his beautiful chuckle. Feel his arms around me. Smell his scent. Be in his space.

And kissing after the movie was over was a revelation. I couldn’t say it started out easy, I was stiff. The ease came later as Moses led me to it, and he made it good before it got good.

Now I was there.

Across the room facing off with a decent, kind, deep-feeling man who could cook brisket and pick wine while the dust of the one from before drifted up in my bones, blinding me and making my mouth feel dry.

“Talk to me,” he urged.

“I . . . this . . . I . . . this,” I stuttered then shook my head. “This isn’t gonna work.”

“She cheated on me.”

I blinked at him when these words came at me.

“Sorry?” I asked.

“At her high school reunion. With her high school boyfriend. She got drunk off her ass and cheated on me.”

He was talking about his wife.

Had to be.

And was she insane?

I’d only had his kisses.

And they were fabulous.

But I’d also had a good amount of what else made him.

So she had to be insane.

“I—”

He cut me off.

“Kept talkin’ to him on the phone after. Believe her when she says it didn’t go further than the reunion physically. But she kept contact. Even after I found out and we got into counseling. She ended it with him only while we were in counseling. But I heard her talking to him, tellin’ him to quit calling, and when I confronted her with it, she admitted she kept that up for a while. Needed it somehow. But it was over. He just wouldn’t quit calling.”

“I’m sorry, Moses.”

He nodded his head sharply, only once.

“I am too. I loved her. And I gotta take responsibility for my fuckup, because I perpetrated one. I was a man and acted like a dumb-shit man. We had babies and I helped her make them and then I did my thing. Went to work. Went to the gym. Might go to the grocery store but other than that, pretty much expected her to do everything. Feed ’em. Bathe ’em. Get ’em to bed. Take care of the house. I spent time with my babies, of course, they were my babies. I’d do the odd thing here or there to pitch in. But mostly I took the good times. Not the waking-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night times. The tough stuff, I was gone. Mostly at work. Could say I needed the overtime, I worked hard, and everyone can use more money. But truth was, I loved my job, so it wasn’t that. I was just doin’ whatever I wanted to do. She had a job too. Two of them, one bein’ a momma, one in an office. She was worn out. She was also fed up with it.”

“I, yes . . . I mean, I don’t know, but I think that wouldn’t be much fun,” I murmured.

“The thing was, she didn’t say dick about it. Not until counseling. So I saw the error of my ways after the fact. And I was good to hold up my hand and cop to it. Even could see, just a little, not totally, but enough to maybe forgive her for having a weak moment, getting hammered and thinking, what if? What if it had worked out with that guy back in high school? What would her life be like if she wasn’t raisin’ two girls mostly on her own with her husband MIA at work? I could also see wanting to go back in time when it was simpler. When there wasn’t the house, the husband, the kids, the job. When it was just dressin’ up, goin’ out, booze and fucking and good times.”

I nodded.

I mean, I wasn’t sure I agreed with him. That was a leap to take and said a lot about him that he’d try to find a way to forgive a disloyalty of that magnitude. That he’d try to understand what lay beneath it.

But it wasn’t my experience, my marriage, my spouse, so it wasn’t my call to make.

For my part, Leon cheated on me all the time.

And when he did, I just found it a relief.

Moses kept speaking.

“Talkin’ to him, though, that I didn’t get. She betrayed our love, me, our vows, and I agreed to try to work that shit out, and every phone conversation from the first after she got back from that reunion, to the last when I caught her tellin’ him to stop phonin’ was another betrayal. Why didn’t she tell me he was calling? Why didn’t she just hang up? And every time her phone rang from then on, was I gonna think it was him or some other guy she was asking ‘what if?’”

“I can see that,” I said quietly.

“She told me in counseling that maybe she needed the attention. To feel attractive. To feel wanted. By that time, it was flowers for no reason and me breakin’ my back to prove I was doin’ my part for our family and regular date nights to keep the us in our marriage. So I did not get why she needed another man’s attention when outside of what I was giving my girls, she had all of mine.”

Seemed to me she was a selfish bitch.

I did not share this.

“So I called bullshit,” he declared.

“I can see that too,” I replied.

And I really could.