Vance is mute, his gaze roaming my body and face the entire time. I’m not sure if I want to scream at him or bloody throw myself across the table into his lap.
My drink is nearly empty when a cuckoo clock over the bar chimes the hour, and I’m roused from the spell of this delirious encounter.
“I have to get home.” I attempt to scoot over, trying to make Stef let me out of the booth.
I’m already past my twenty-minute cushion by double, and I’m sure there are a couple of missed text messages and calls from Louis on my mobile.
“Can I talk to you?” Vance’s deep growl shocks me.
It’s the first thing he’s said to me all night, and now is when he finds it convenient to request an audience?
My heart takes over, silencing the rational part of my brain that’s about to answer no. “Yes.”
What is wrong with me? Everyone shifts, scooting out of the booth to let he and I out. Vance motions me toward the hallway in the back, one I know leads to the toilets. I guess he’s looking for what little privacy this place offers.
I shouldn’t follow him, but my legs, body, and mind are useless.
After all this time, I’m still impervious to the power he has over me.
12
Vance
In my entire life, I never expected to be sitting around a table at a pub with Lara, Jude, and Kingston.
Conversing and extroversion aren’t my strong suits, which is why I stayed silent for almost the entire thing. Until Lara decided it was time to leave, and I knew I had to make another plea.
My leave in Brighton is halfway through, and I need to impress upon her my intentions. Aside from the possibility of us, I need her to know that I’m not going anywhere when it comes to Mason.
We stand in the hallway to the loo, each of our backs resting against the opposite walls, assessing each other.
“Never how I thought I’d meet your friends,” she starts, crossing her arms over her chest.
The motion highlights the swell of her tits under her sweater, and I can’t help the twitch of my eager cock. It’s been so long since I’ve been with a woman, though none of them ever compared to her.
Giving my head a shake to clear it, I address her. “They wanted to meet you, I apologize if it felt like an ambush.”
“So, it wasn’t your idea. Why does that not surprise me?” Her voice takes on a tone of hurt and mocking.
“What is that supposed to mean?” I push her.
Lara rolls those gorgeous aquamarine eyes. “Come on, Vance. You never wanted me to meet them back when we were together. You always shrugged off my efforts to get to know them, and not once did you jump at the chance to bring me around your friends. In fact, it felt like you actively kept me hidden away like you were ashamed of how your posh football mates would view me.”
If I wasn’t staring at her with my own two eyes, I swear I’d think she’d just blown my head clear off from the sheer preposterousness.
“What the bloody hell are you talking about? We only had precious hours together when I was able to get away and see you! I didn’t want to waste them hanging around with those two idiots. I wanted you all to myself. I didn’t care what anyone else thought. Though for the record, you’re lightyears above whatever preconceived notions you have about those two out there. You’re more intelligent, stronger, braver, more beautiful, more captivating than any woman they’ve ever tried to chat up. I only cared what you thought. I still do.”
She blinks, stunned. “Why do you do this? Freeze me out until the very last second and then attack me with these heart-crushing, spirit-lifting speeches. Damn you, Vance.”
“I can’t seem to act rationally around you. You send my frequency dial to haywire.”
Blond locks, the color of spun golden silk, shake around her face as she twists her head gently from side to side, seeming to disagree with me. Whatever she feels, I have to make the point I originally brought her back here for.
“I have one more week here, Lara. I’ve given you space, but now we need to discuss how this is going to work. Mason is my son, and I want to be a part of his life. I want to be in his life. I want to tell my family, I want the world to know. I want to—”
She cuts me off, irate. “You’ve seen him for all of an hour, Vance. You don’t know what you want, or how difficult it is to be a parent.”
I try to breathe through the fury. “You’re right, I don’t. But I want more than anything to know. And don’t throw that shite at me, you fell in love with him the first time you saw him. I don’t need to have been around for his birth to know that. It’s evident in every touch you share, in the way you look at him. I experienced that when I saw you on Main Street, before you even confirmed he was my son. It’s innate. I love him.”
“He has a father, Vance. One he calls Daddy. One who gets him out of his crib in the morning and feeds him dinner. Who rocked him to sleep when he was teething. You can’t be there every day for him. He doesn’t even know you.”
“Because you didn’t let him!” I yell, my voice a thunderclap.
Rage splinters in my cells, and there she is, twisting that fucking ring around her the fourth finger on her left hand.
“You didn’t let me know him, or him me. This replacement came along and you’re bloody pretending right through your picture-perfect life. It’s all a sham.”
“You have no idea what you’re talking about.” Unshed tears stain her voice.
I’m not sure how this conversation veered so far off the rails, but perhaps it’s because I don’t converse well. I’m loyal and steadfast, but when I state out loud that I want something a certain way, I’m stubborn. If I don’t get it, when I don’t ask for much, all hell breaks loose inside me.
In this case, I want Lara and our child with such a terrible yearning, that I’m crazed. I’m a wild beast, grunting and pounding my chest in a show of dominance. I can’t help it.
“I don’t know why you’re going along with this, Lara. You don’t love him.” My words tremble in my throat.
Watching her wear another man’s ring, plan her wedding with him, it’s more than I can bear now.
“I’ve been a daft, blind fool up until this point, and I know I don’t deserve you. But I don’t care, because that’s what love is. Love isn’t patient or kind or all the other shite they always say it is. Love is swift and lethal, it has no regard for the emotions of its victims. I can’t choose not to be in love with you. I tried to ignore it for a while, and that was shattered when I saw you on the street with our son. You don’t love that man, you love me. And I sure as bloody hell am in love with you.”
It feels like an anvil drops on my chest, and lifts off, at exactly the same moment. Like two trains collide right into me, and it’s the most freeing feeling in the world. I’ve been struggling through this, trying to wade through muddy waters, but it’s all so clear now.
“Vance, stop it, this is insanity …” She breaks off on a sob, and although she’s saying those things, Lara steps toward me, her petite body almost pressed against mine.
“You don’t think I know that? You don’t think I want to be the better man here, to walk away? I’ve lived my life to be that man, Lara. To stay loyal, to toe the party line. I walked away from you two years ago because I thought I was doing both of us a favor. I thought it would hurt less than staying. You don’t think I want to stop this pain? Of course, I do. I just can’t.”
A beat passes, with both of us staring holes into the other’s eyes.
And then, at the exact moment I reach for her, she pushes up on her toes. Our mouths meet in the middle, and the rest of the world explodes around us, leaving nothing but our two bodies intertwined.
Pushing her back until the base of her skull meets the wall, I devour her. Nothing slow or gentle about it, we’re all lips and tongues and hands searching every surface of each other … all the parts we’ve missed in the last two years.
My hands dive into her hair, the silk skimmi
ng past my fingertips, angling her head so I can push my tongue deeper into her mouth. I can barely breathe, sacrificing oxygen to taste more of Lara.
She sets my soul on fire, blazing a path straight from my brain all the way down to my toes. I smell her scent, that cinnamon and warm vanilla, and I just want to curl up around her.
I want to kiss her fast, kiss her slow, snog her until we’re both delirious and the power of speech leaves us. The power to wound each other with words will cease to exist.
Lara makes tiny mewling sounds into my mouth, giving it back as good as she’s getting. Her fingers have disappeared somewhere under the hem of my sweater, traveling the path of my happy trail up and down my abs. She’s made me rock-solid in a matter of milliseconds, and I don’t care who’s watching because I’d take her right against this wall if she’ll let it happen.
Like I told her, she makes me insane. And I can’t stop it.
Behind one of the closed doors of the toilets, a sink goes on, the faint sound of whooshing water invading the heavy snogging session happening just out of my mate’s vision. It seems to rouse Lara, and she pushes me back, shoving with all her might.
I’m a lust-crazed hunter, and I make a move to step back into my prey’s personal space. But Lara sticks her arms out, blocking me from moving any farther. Her eyes are filled with horror, and she’s rooted to the spot.
In that one glance, my heart rots … because I know she’s about to take back everything that just happened.
“You made a cheater out of me.” She gasps, speaking past the hand covering her lips.
“Lara, no, that’s not what—” I seem to trip over my words, my brain hazed over from her lips and tongue.
“Don’t.”
Just one word, and a slice of her cutting eyes, and then she’s shouldering past me.
I hear the jingle over the door as she leaves, the scene out of sight in this back hallway of the quaint pub.
As much as that may have set me back, I don’t regret it. Leaning against the wall, trying to catch my breath and my sanity, I know for a fact I would do it all over again.
Because I know, from the weight of her lips on mine and the desperation in her bones, that she still loves me.
13
Lara
The radio in my car hums an old Cyndi Lauper tune as I sit and stare at the dashboard absentmindedly.
I can’t seem to get out of the bloody vehicle, to remove my keys from the ignition and start up the stairs to my flat. A screw inside my brain, or maybe my heart, has knocked loose and I’m not the same woman I was just twenty minutes earlier.
No, this woman trapped in the prison of her own body, in her own car, is a cheater. A goddamn adulterer who just betrayed everything she’s worked to build.
Of anything I’ve ever tried to be, honest is the single biggest thing I strive for.
Growing up, my parents had a very unconventional relationship. I am an only child of divorced spouses, who were decent enough to each other that it almost seemed like I had one complete family. My mother and father were headed for a split before I even left my mother’s womb, and by the time I turned two, they were legally separated. I grew up in a small one-floor home with my mother and saw my father on weekends or for school events or dance recitals. He was around as much as he could be, and my mum is a warrior who sacrificed for me.
But the one thing they instilled in me, taught me from an early age, was how to be honest. My parents spoke to me like an adult, telling me the truth in every situation we found ourselves in. They didn’t sugarcoat that they no longer loved each other and served it to me straight. When I asked my mother about sex or drugs or falling in love, she would never gloss over the answer with kid gloves.
So, I’ve approached most of my life with honesty.
Funny, then, how Vance Morley seems to be my lie. Every. Single. Time.
I lied to everyone about our relationship. I lied by omission, to him, about getting pregnant. I lied to everyone about who Mason’s father is … or I guess I never had to because I just kept it a secret.
And now, I have to walk into the flat I share with my fiancé and completely lie to his face.
The gnawing feeling of dread, guilt, and shame boils in my gut, turning my insides to churning nausea. I want to sink into the floor, to just disappear into the earth so I don’t have to face this.
Do I tell Louis? Do I pretend it never happened?
Of course, I can’t pretend that. I’ve not been able to wipe the taste of Vance off my mouth no matter how many breath mints I popped on the way home. There is no way I will ever forget the searing brand he’s left on my soul.
How am I going to marry Louis after this?
“If you’re lost, you can look and you will find me, time after time,” Cyndi Lauper sings, and the words hit me like a bullet.
My head is a mess, confusion and chaos running amok. But if I don’t go inside soon, I’ll miss Mason’s bedtime. And no matter how much of a disaster I am, my son deserves all the attention and love I can give him.
Slowly, I make my way out of the car, up the short pavement to the outside stairs leading to our front door, and unlock it.
“Mummy!” Mason crashes into me the second I walk through the door.
Instantly, all of my worries and regrets are put on hold. The warmth of his little arms wrapping around my leg in a genuine hug are all I need to focus on something other than my epic mistake not an hour earlier.
It takes forty-five minutes to get him to sleep, what with his nighttime bath, sippy cup of milk, song, and book routine and a ton of kisses from Louis and me. Even though I won’t get to see him until morning, putting Mason to bed is one of my favorite activities of the whole day. He’s no longer a baby, but more of a little boy now, and the sundown hours are the only time he’ll let me cuddle him anymore.
“I got you an early wedding present.” Louis wraps me in his arms as we walk back to the living room from the nursery, and something inside me feels empty.
“What’s that?” I try to feign pleasant surprise, because if you act like you’re happy than it ought to come true, right?
He nuzzles into my neck. “I threw out my last supply of e-cigarettes.” As if it’s the biggest accomplishment in the world, Louis pulls away and reveals the large white patch on his arm. “I’m quitting smoking. For our big day. For you.”
And my stomach drops. Because less than two hours ago, I had another man’s lips on mine. I had Vance’s hands in my hair, half-blind with lust.
Here was Louis, giving up something so selflessly so that I’d be happy, and I cheated on him.
I feel rotten, right down to my core.
“That’s wonderful, Louis. But I want to make sure you’re doing it for you, and not me.” Because if this all goes south, would that be something I ruined for him, too?
That right there, that seed of doubt Vance planted …
No. Vance didn’t plant that. It has existed in my heart from the moment Louis had gotten down on one knee. If I was being honest, which is apparently rare for me these days, it was there when I allowed him to hold Mason in the hospital.
I knew from the start that Louis, as good a man as he is, isn’t the love of my life. He doesn’t shatter my world.
But maybe that’s overrated. I have a good thing going, it’s stable and solid. My son is happy. When I think about a life with Vance, all I see is turmoil.
“I want to do everything for you,” Louis answers, kissing my forehead.
As much as I feel that invisible scarlet A creeping out over my breastbone, I lean into it, willing myself to be happy at this moment.
* * *
The next morning, I head to my mum’s house.
She still lives in the old neighborhood, in her one-floor single-family home. It’s small and quaint, but she keeps the place clean and doesn’t need much more than that. Mum is a petite dynamo, a quiet but hard-willed woman who never complains and keeps her nose to the grindstone. Perha
ps it’s why I’ve been able to survive everything I’ve been through; because my mother taught me how to control my life in the face of terrible odds.
After removing Mason from his car seat, he wriggles out of my arms and stumbles up to Mum’s front steps, climbing on his hands and knees all the way up them. Before heading there myself, I turn and let my eyes roam over the house across the street.
The one the Morley’s used to live in.
Now, a family of five live there, their children around the primary and secondary school ages. I don’t know their names, and no one is outside at the moment. I swear, I can still picture Vance’s shiny BMW he drove, in the first year he got his license, pulling into the driveway. We’d been nothing, back then, and my heart flipped over like an engine starting as he unfolded his long limbs out of the vehicle.
“My boy!”
Mum’s greeting snaps me out of my haze, and I grab my nappy bag to join the two of them on the front steps.
“Hi, Mum.” I wave, walking up just as she plucks Mason from the stairs and settles him on her hip.
Apparently, being her child meant tough love … but being her grandchild means spoiling to the nth degree. Not that I can complain, she’s a wonderful granny. Mason adores her, and she never protests if I ask her to watch him.
Like today, when I need an afternoon to just sit and think. Louis thinks we’re visiting my mum for lunch and playing on the new tricycle she bought him. Yet again, I’ve lied.
Lying awake for all but an hour of the night before, I knew I needed to get my head straight. To think long and hard about what I am doing, where my life is going. What the hell that kiss means …
I can count on my mother to watch my son and keep my absence from the visit under wraps if Louis asks. The only thing is, I still have to ask her to do that.
“Thanks for taking him for a little while,” I say, dropping Mason’s bag full of toys, food, and a change of clothes on her kitchen counter.
The Mighty Anchor: Rogue Academy, Book Three Page 7