Rock Chick Reborn (Rock Chick #9)(32)

“Is that enough to end a marriage, break apart a family?” he asked.

“I don’t know, darlin’,” I answered.

“I didn’t either. What I knew was, after I lost my shit when I found out my wife fucked another man, I got myself together. About that. But those phone calls jacked with my head. I could deal with a one-time thing. A wakeup call for us both. We were on the wrong path and that wasn’t the way to yank us back to the right one, but shit happens. But those fuckin’ calls, Shirleen, all I could think was not about those calls or even about her needing attention. Once I knew he was still phoning, anytime I thought about a call, all I could think about was him inside my wife. Blinded by it. Pissed as hell at it. Couldn’t get it out of my head. And the question became, should I sacrifice my peace of mind for my children, and worse, teach them if, God forbid, they find themselves in the same situation, that they should swallow betrayal and live on the edge with distrust clouding every moment, and in the end give up any chance of true happiness?”

“I can’t answer that for you, Moses.”

“Well I could, after she nearly bankrupted me taking me to court repeatedly to teach me a lesson about how she feels when she doesn’t get what she wants, using our daughters as tools to do that. I couldn’t imagine the woman I married had that in her. But she did. So I got my answer. And so did our daughters, watching their mother put their father through that. Don’t think it was the man she met that made her stop. I think it was the fact her daughters were drifting away, angry at her for making shit ugly. That’s what made her stop.”

“I’m glad something did,” I told him.

“Me too.”

When he said no more, I asked carefully, “How are thing now? I mean, you said at the grocery store that you two had it together, but—”

“I can barely stand to look at her.”

Oh boy.

“That,” he went on, “I do for my daughters when school functions mean I have to be in her space. And don’t take that anger at her as me still having feelings for her. I don’t. That anger is not about what she did to me, to us, but what she did to my girls. No one fucks with my girls, and for four years I had no choice but to put up with my wife fucking with our girls.”

Yep.

A selfish bitch.

“Other than school functions,” he continued, “we do not have one of those arrangements where we share Christmas Eve dinner or I come to her family’s big Fourth of July parties. There’s my house, our family, and there’s their mother’s house and the family they got with her.”

To that, I had no choice but to utter an understatement.

“That’s very sad.”

“Do I deserve that for bein’ a man and bein’ clueless and makin’ babies with my wife and not pitchin’ in?”

I shook my head. “I . . . I don’t think so. I mean, she should have said something.”

“Yeah. She should have. We didn’t start our family young. We were both in our thirties. Our friends had kids. Both our families are in town. We’re both tight with them. We weren’t immature and finding our way on our own. And we’d been together a long time. She knew how to communicate with me.”

I nodded that I heard him.

“I still fucked up. That was on me. Sayin’ what I just said, it was me who was old enough to know better than to make babies with my wife and not take care of all of them. And I didn’t.”

“I don’t want to, you know, butt in here and defend you when all you’ve shared is all I know about the situation. I wasn’t around and I’ve never met the woman. But even though that really was not good, Moses, with what happened I think it’s safe to say something would have happened anyway.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “Though easy for me to think that because it makes me the good guy in the end no matter how you look at it.”

I just gave him big eyes because that was true.

Still, the woman stepped out on him rather than telling him to step up then she took out her anger at him using their daughters.

She had it in her to fuck their shit up.

And that was going to happen, one way or another.

I’d pretty much said this already, therefore I didn’t repeat it.

“So there it is,” he stated.

“Yes,” I agreed. “There it, um . . . is.”

“Your turn.”

My throat closed and I felt my joints seize.

Moses didn’t miss anything and I knew he didn’t miss any of that.

He still didn’t let up.

“What’d he do to you?”

I didn’t see this coming. Tit for tat. He laid it out, made himself vulnerable, showing me the way, making it safe to follow.

I still didn’t want to take that way.

“I think—” I began.

“Baby, you look good and you dress good and you kiss good and you listen good and you open up good.” He lifted a hand and gestured between us. “I want this. I want more. I want to know more about you and eventually I’ll want to be inside you.”

Oh God.

“This is too fast,” I told him. “Too fast and too soon.”

“Five minutes ago this wasn’t going to work. Now I can go slow. But I cannot have you preparing to bolt every time something tweaks you. Preparing to bolt and ready to end us. I need you to talk to me.”