"I can think of something," he replied, and she felt his arms sliding around her waist, his mouth pressed to her neck. She had wanted them both for so long and had spent so long denying herself the truth of what she craved, that she found herself giving in to him. Giving in to the desire that pulsed deep down inside of her, the desire she had denied for longer than she ever should have.
She turned around and wrapped her arms tight around him, pulling him in close in the way she had longed to do since the last time they had been together. His mouth found hers almost at once, his tongue was prying open her lips so he could taste her, so he could feast on her sweetness. She gasped, shocked at how good it felt, as he pushed her back against the counter roughly, pinning her there, letting her know that there was far, far more where that came from if she wanted there to be.
In truth, she was thinking about the very first time they had ever gotten together. The very first time she had let this happen between them. It had been in that very kitchen, and she could still remember how it felt – the guilt, the fear, the panic. The worry that they were going to get caught, and the disturbing notion that, if they did, all of it would be over in an instant. Little had she known, of course, that Angela had been in on it the whole time, silently pulling the strings in a way that she had never known about. She could have just enjoyed it, then, but she was caught up in the possibility of what might have been, of what she didn’t even know was the case...
She pulled away from Zev. She couldn’t do this, not now, not in the midst of everything else that was going on in their lives. He stared at her, almost glaring, his eyes rich and full with want for her, his gaze passionate and needy.
"What’s wrong?" He asked, and she shook her head. She had already told them what the problem was before, and she didn’t want to have to spend another few minutes hashing it out with him. He knew the answer to that question. He just didn’t want to have to think about it.
She headed to the door, forgetting the food that she had been making for herself. If it was possible, she had even less of an appetite now than when she had walked into the room. She wanted to...oh, she wanted to turn and run into his arms and let him hold her there, hold her where she belonged, remind her that this was what she was always waiting for when it came to them. She wanted their affection, their attention, even when they could only steal it in moments like this when everyone else was out of the house and nobody was around to catch them in the act...
But she deserved better than that. She might have been able to survive that sort of treatment, but that didn’t mean that she should have put up with it. If being around them meant being a second, if it meant always being less-than, then she wouldn’t put up with it any longer. And nothing they had done had convinced her of anything contrary to that.
"I need to go," she told him. And with that, she headed for the stairs, turning her back to him before he could see the tears coursing down her cheeks.
Chapter 26
One last chance
She closed the door behind her and sank to the ground, tears pouring down her cheeks. How could any of this be happening? It wasn’t fair, none of it was fair. She had been sure...she had been certain that this was going to figure itself out. She had kept holding out for a change, for something to prove to herself and to anyone else around them that this was real.
But she had been holding out on a lie.
It was amazing, the things that love could make you believe. Because Bianca had bought into things that she could see now were just not true. She had let herself believe that they would change for her – she had let herself believe that there was still something to be done for them. She had let herself believe that they wanted her for more than just the thrill of having a third in their relationship. She had let herself believe that they loved her the same way that she loved them.
She could hear movement downstairs, but she didn’t let it distract her from her task. She knew what she had to do and she wasn’t going to waste another moment waiting. That was all that this last month had been, of course, it had just been wasting time, praying, and begging to herself every night that something would happen to make things better. That they would come through in the way she needed them to and make it all right.
But they couldn’t do that. Not now. She had waited long enough, playing the games, letting them treat her as their dirty little secret and nothing more. She had done what she was supposed to, and, in return, they had given her nothing that she truly wanted.
She felt a lot of guilt even considering walking out of that place, but she didn’t see what choice she had, not any longer. She had given them all the time they could have needed to get their shit together, and they had clearly decided that the life they were currently living, the one where their relationship with her was under wraps, was a life they wanted to continue living. It stung, knowing how they truly saw her, but that was fine. The pain would recede. She just needed to get out of there and put as much space between herself and this family as she possibly could...
The kids. Who would explain what had happened to the kids? They had been kept out of all of this, thank goodness, from the start, but her sudden vanishing would surely upset them. She already felt guilty at the thought of just walking out of their lives with no explanation. She felt like she had formed a real bond with them, and leaving them behind...
No. No. This was exactly the kind of talk that would get her sticking it out around for even longer, and she knew she couldn’t risk that, not now, not after she had made her choice. She needed to get the fuck out of there before she found some excuse to stay. She needed to start her life over somewhere else. Would they give her a good reference for the next people she worked for? She snorted with amusement at the thought – she doubted many people were going to be searching for the specific skills she had shown Zev and Angela while they searched for a nanny.
She packed her bags as quickly as she could. It was strange, trying to cram her life into these boxes and bags, trying to figure out what she would want to take with her and what she would want to leave behind. The room, the place, it had been hers for such a long time – hers to slip into with Zev when there was a party downstairs, hers to sleep beside Angela within. Hers. And soon, it was just going to belong to the next girl who took her job, whoever she was. Would they have the same relationship with her? Would they find someone who was happy to just slot into the role that she had left empty? Was she that replaceable to them? She tried not to linger on the questions, but they shoved themselves forward in her mind, tormenting her with possibility.
She looked at herself in the small mirror next to the door. She could still remember the very first time she had walked into this room, and how it had felt – how it had made her feel to have that job for the first time, everything that she was expecting to come from it. She knew she was a different person, now, a different person to the one who had walked in here the first time around. She would walk out of here new, fresh, removed from the woman she had been before. She supposed it was a good thing, really, that she was so different. She had learned so much about herself, about what she wanted and what she liked – about what she would put up with from the people that she was involved with. She wiped away the tears dripping from her eyes with the pad of her thumb and tried to console herself. They always said that you learned something from the end of every relationship, right? That you became better-equipped to deal with whatever came next. She had to just keep telling herself that it was the case. That she could handle it. That she could take it all on.
She was about to head to the door when something stopped her in her tracks. She couldn’t tell quite what it was, but a force seemed to slow her roll, if just for a moment. She closed her eyes and tried to listen to what was going on inside her head. She felt stupid, stupid for not knowing how her own thoughts worked, for not understanding how the pieces fit together. She was sure that all of this would enlighten something within her, but instead, she felt as though it had just dulled
something else, something that rendered her stupid and naïve in the face of the obvious.
A knock at the door. She jumped, almost dropping the bag that she was carrying. Zev? She could hear voices downstairs, and she knew that getting out of there was going to prove tough without arousing suspicion. She decided to open the door, and hopefully, whoever was on the other side, she could just brush past them and get on with what she had been planning to do anyway.
She pulled the door open and drew herself up to her full height, hoping that she looked somewhat imposing – she had a feeling she resembled more a chicken puffing up its chest than anything else, but she had to try, right?
"Bianca," Zev spoke her name, and her resolve to get out of there almost crumbled on the spot. How was it that he could just speak to her, and have it be enough to set her heart on fire? She wanted to throw herself into his arms. She didn’t know how much time had passed since they had kissed, but she knew that if she just sank herself against him, the two of them could pick up where they had left off...
"I have to go," She told him, as firmly as she could given the thoughts that were flooding through her head. She tried to brush past him, but he caught her arm.
"Please, Bianca," he pleaded with her. "Just give us a minute, okay?”
"What do you want?" She asked, exhausted by the interaction already. Her resolve was already wavering, and every second she spent in his presence, it went a little further, dropped a little more.
"We want you to come downstairs," he replied. She stared at him for a moment. What the hell was going on? Did she even really want to know? She glanced back at her room, at all the bags packed so that she could have just gotten out of there in a moment if she had wanted to. Maybe, just maybe, one last chance was only fair. Once last chance for them to prove to her that they actually gave a shit about her, about who she was, about the impact she’d had on their lives. One last chance. She could give them that
Chapter 27
Teach the world to sing
Zev took her hand and led her down the stairs as soon as she offered him a small nod to let him know that she was okay with this. Bianca had no idea what to expect. She could hear voices downstairs, but they were all an indistinct blur – who they were coming from and what they were saying was lost on her. Maybe her head was just blurring out the details in an attempt to keep her from getting too invested in whatever this was.
She watched Zev as he made his way down the stairs in front of her. There was a sureness to his face, as though he was certain that wherever he was taking her, she would like it. Her heart bounced up in her chest. Maybe this was it. Maybe she could stay...
She shoved those thoughts down at once. It was exactly that sort of attitude that would wind up with her getting hurt all over again, and goodness only knew how much she wanted to avoid dealing with that again.
She reached the bottom of the stairs, and it was at that moment that she figured out where the voices were coming from. She practically jumped out of her skin when she heard a familiar, witchy tone slicing through the air in the shape of her name.
"Bianca!" Diana screeched, her voice practically a stab to her gut. Bianca leapt out of her skin. What was she doing here? And, on that note, what was the rest of the family doing there, too?
The whole clan, Angela’s whole family, even Lydia, and her ill-fated fiancé, was crowded into the corridor and the living room, looking jetlagged as though they had just flown in. They were all staring at Bianca like she was dirt on a shoe, and Bianca could already feel herself crumbling under their distaste for her. How could one person be expected to bear the brunt of all this hate? It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. And why had Zev dragged her down into the middle of that? Was this an attempt to punish her for wanting to leave them at all? She didn’t know what twisted game was being played at her expense, but she knew she wanted nothing at all to do with it.
"What are they doing here?" Bianca demanded, figuring that she had no reason to play nice with that awful family any longer. She dropped her bags and crossed her arms protectively over her chest, glaring down at the clan in front of her.
"I think we should be asking you that question," Lydia, stepping forward, announced, buoyed by the confidence of being surrounded by her whole family. Bianca felt like she had been given the exact opposite of a surprise party – instead of people celebrating her, it was people berating her, people who loathed her and probably despised her very existence.
"What is she still doing here?” Diana demanded, waving her hand vaguely in the direction of Bianca, as though she couldn’t bear to say her name out loud lest it solidify her presence. "I thought you would have gotten rid of her by now, after what you caught her doing with your husband..."
And it was then that Bianca realized Angela was standing there amongst them. She hadn’t said a word and was just watching Bianca curiously. As though trying to figure out what her reaction was going to be to all of this.
"She didn’t do anything she shouldn’t have done with my husband," Angela replied finally – and suddenly, the whole room went quiet. Bianca held on to Zev’s hand tight. She knew that she was probably inviting more danger into her life right now, but she thought...maybe, just maybe...
Angela came up the stairs towards them, closing the gap between them with a smile on her face. She looked particularly beautiful that day, her hair loose and flowing over her shoulders. She looked like some kind of classical art illustration of womanhood – beautiful and delicate, yet powerful all at the same time.
"What are you doing, Angela?" Diana shrieked. "Get away from her! You know what this woman did to you, don’t you? You know what we caught her doing?”
"Yes, I do," Angela replied, and she took Bianca’s hand. Bianca gazed at her, her heart pounding double-time in her chest. Was it happening? Was it really, finally happening?
"Then what is she still doing here?” Lydia jumped in, her voice piercing and sharp. There were about a dozen other members of the family there as well, but all of them seemed to be frozen in a brutal inability to come out and say anything. Bianca couldn’t help but smile to herself. This family was so stiff that they were basically unable to interact under any slightly awkward circumstance.
"Yes, why haven’t you fired her?” Diana continued, and she took the first couple of stairs in one leap – surprisingly nimble for a woman of her age – and closed the gap between them. Bianca recoiled from her a little, but both Zev and Angela stood their ground, not shifting an inch.
"Because we want to keep her around," Angela replied. "Both of us."
"But she slept with your husband!” Diana exploded, and Angela looked over at Bianca – and smiled.
"Yes, she did," she agreed. "And she slept with me, too."
As soon as those words were out of her mouth, a rush of whispers passed around the room as everyone tried to make sense of what they had just heard come out of Angela’s mouth. Bianca couldn’t help but smile. All that time, all that fear, all that waiting, and it had come to this. It had come to them finally standing by her side and letting the world know that they were there for her. That they cared for her.
"What are you talking about?" Diana spat, clearly furious at the turn the conversation had taken. All this this, all that effort, and she had only managed to push them closer together. Angela lifted Bianca’s hand to her mouth and planted a kiss on it, soft and gentle, it was a promise more than anything else. Bianca smiled, feeling giddy. Honestly, it was as though her knees could have buckled out from underneath her at any moment. She couldn’t believe what was happening, not really...
"I’m telling you that we’re in a relationship with this woman," Angela told her mother firmly. "And we have been for a long time now. Both of us."
There was a sudden, shocking silence across the whole room, as though everyone was trying to wrap their head around what was going on all at once. A shockwave passed through the people, including Bianca, and she was glad that she had the two of them there for suppo
rt. Otherwise, she might have just gone ahead and fainted down the stairs in complete and utter surprise at what was happening.
"You can’t be," Diana snapped. "You...I saw the two of them together, you weren’t anywhere near them then..."
"I can go into the gory details if you want me to, mother, but I get the feeling that’s not what you’re looking for here," Angela shot back. She squeezed Bianca’s hand, then dropped it, marching down the stairs and advancing on her mother.
"And either you can accept that this is happening between us, or you can get out of our house," She continued. "It’s your choice."
After hitting her mother with one last glare, she lifted her gaze and scanned the rest of the room.
"And the same goes for all of you, as well," she warned the rest of the crowd watching the events unfold. "If you can’t handle the fact that we’re together, then you know where the door is."
Everyone stood for a moment, stock-still, frozen as though they had no clue what to do with themselves. Bianca realized that she was holding her breath. She was half-expecting, at any moment, the place to explode into commotion as everyone protested what they had just been told. Bianca bit her lip and looked around, taking in the reactions of the rest of the room. Angela was standing there, her hands planted on her hips, in front of her family, and she seemed to ooze the confidence that she had been lacking when they had been visiting for the wedding. As though she knew that this was her house and that she got to make the rules in here.
"What about the children?” Diana blustered, clearly reaching for whatever she could get her hands on to cast aspersions over what was going on in this house.
"What about the children?” Zev demanded. "They just have an extra set of hands helping out with them now, and I don’t think they’re complaining about it. Are they, Angela?”
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