by A. E. Murphy
“Please don’t make me leave,” he whispers in my ear, keeping me pinned.
“Nathan.”
“Please. I can’t bear to be apart from you.”
He allows me to stand and turn into his open arms. They envelop me with so much love and warmth.
“I don’t trust you. You’ve hurt me too much.”
“I know,” he murmurs as he buries his face into my neck. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“I know.”
“I’ll give you the space you need for the time being.” He promises and kisses me gently. “Text me your work hours so I know when to come and look after the kids. I miss them.”
This breaks my heart. “They miss you too.”
“Also…” He bites hard on his lip, his eyes showing an internal struggle that I wish I could help him through. “Everything I said to you…I was angry and hurt.”
“I know.”
“I love you.”
“I love you too.”
He sighs heavily as he tucks himself into his trousers. “Things are such a mess right now.”
“You can say that again.”
“It’ll get better.”
I nod my agreement. “It definitely will. I have faith.”
“Don’t ever lose faith in me.” He kisses me once more so sweetly and tenderly it leaves me aching for more. “Promise?”
I don’t promise because I never break a promise if I can help it. Instead I usher him out of our home and quickly text him my work dates.
Work…there’s a thing I’d like to avoid. I’m humiliated by the way Nathan reacted. I should have called Kerim the second he left. I shouldn’t have allowed Nathan to get away with such behaviour so easily.
I’m nothing but a massive screw up.
Nothing about the way I’ve handled this makes any sense, even to me. My love for him blinds me to the reality of all that is going on.
Sneaking into work with my head hanging low, I busy myself with tasks as far away from Kerim as possible. I’ve never been so mortified. He must think me such a burden.
Patience - Miss Hot and Cold as I call her - is being especially nice today and is keeping me occupied, as well as the rest of my co-workers. Kerim hasn’t acknowledged me which I’m grateful for and also not so much because I don’t know what he’s thinking.
Will he terminate our arrangement if he thinks my baggage might interfere with my work?
I’ll just have to show him that I love my job.
So I stay late, exhausting myself as we work together in amicable silence. Then I stay late the next night and the next. Nathan doesn’t question it and Kerim remains the same as always.
Maybe things will change for once.
I sure hope so.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“I’m coming this weekend,” my mum states. “I’ll be there on Friday.”
“Yay!” I’m so relieved but also I’m nervous about having to explain why Nathan isn’t staying here. I have yet to tell a single soul but it’s nobody’s business so I don’t plan on it. Now I guess that I’ll have to.
“I miss you all.”
“Me too. I’m sorry we haven’t been in touch; it has been so hectic.”
“Same here.” She yawns to confirm this. “How are things?”
Deep breaths. “Unfortunately, not great.”
“Oh dear, still rocky?”
“One could say rocky. I prefer the term… separated.”
“Separated?” Her voice squeaks and I’d laugh if I weren’t so tense. “What does that mean?”
“I wish I could tell you. He’s gone from the house but not from our lives.”
She’s silent for the longest moment before finally asking, “Was he cheating?”
“No, I wish.” I snort, shaking my head. “I can’t really talk about it. Just know that I feel as though it’s right.”
“I’m here; you know that?”
“I do. As am I.”
“Thank you.” She sighs heavily. “I’m so sorry, babe. I know you love him.”
My eyes burn. “I just wish he loved me the same.”
“I’m sure he does.”
I don’t respond because she wouldn’t understand without knowing the full story. My words are true though; if he loved me the way I love him, he wouldn’t hide things from me.
There’s a gentle knock at the door. “Mum, I’ll call you back.”
“Okay, no rush.”
As I’m walking to the front door, I hang up the phone and peer through the peep hole.
“What is she doing here?” I hiss as my hands begin to tremble. The adrenaline is rushing through my body already and I’ve not even come face to face with her yet.
She knocks again, just as gently as before, knowing I’m home no doubt because my car is across the way.
“Get some balls,” I tell myself and then yank the door open. “I’m not interested.”
“Gwen,” his mother says softly. Her familiar brown eyes make my heart ache for a man that no longer lives on this earth.
Caleb, how I miss you. Regardless of what you did, I’ll always love you.
“I made a lot of mistakes in my life. My bitterness caused me to miss out on a lot but I’d like to be there now.” Her hand rests against the door to stop me from slamming it in her face. “I’ll do anything. Anything you ask. Parenting classes, group sessions, a lie detector.” My eyes meet hers and my heart warms a little at her words, though not enough for me to stop hating her. “Anything.”
“I’m not interested. I don’t trust you.”
“I don’t blame you. I neglected him. I was an awful mother to both of my boys. I want to rectify that. Let me be there for my son and his babies.” Tears fill her eyes. “I won’t visit without you present. I’ll do all you ask. Just please…”
My mouth drops open. “Why do you think you deserve this? Why should I let you into the life of my kids?”
“Because I finally know how to love again and I don’t want the feeling to die. I love my grandbabies. I love them to the bottom of my heart. Please.” Fuck. Is she talking me around? How bad could things be if visits are supervised? If I’m present, then maybe she does deserve a chance? “Please, Gwen.”
“I need time to think.”
“No,” she blurts, pushing on the door with a wrinkled, delicate hand. “If I let you think about it alone you’ll never change your mind. I can be relentless.” Her mouth twitches with a weak smile. “I don’t want to hound you but I can’t lose this. I can’t lose him and those kids again.” Her eyes bore into my own, full of desperation and hope. “Please, Gwen.”
“Fine,” I relent. “Supervised visits only.”
Her smile is blinding and it reminds me so much of Caleb, my heart aches. “Thank you. Thank you!”
“Don’t thank me yet. You only get one chance. Just one.”
“Understood.”
“I’m not kidding. Don’t think that I’m giving you permission to suddenly start giving me tips on how to parent.”
Her smile is blinding. “I think it’s I who needs the tips.” Isn’t that the truth? “When can I come to see them? With your planning and permission of course.”
“I’ll let you know. But let me set one thing straight before we proceed.”
She nods.
“Under no circumstances will you be seeing these kids without me present and without my knowledge. If I find out you have been conspiring with Nathan again, not only will you lose all rights to my children, but so will he.” My gaze levels and I hope I’m nailing her with a look that could kill. “I will do everything in my power to protect them, as is my right.”
“I understand.” She releases her hold of the door and steps back. “I’m very sorry for all of the pain I’ve caused you and for the things I said.”
“Let’s just not discuss any of that because it’ll only piss me off.” I check my watch. “I have to go.”
“Shall I call you or…”
“No. I�
��ll text you later with a date and time.”
She nods, smiling, and fluffs up the back of her short white blonde hair with both hands. “You have my number?” That’s a good point. When she sees me hesitate, she pulls her phone from the leather bag dangling from the crook of her elbow and unlocks it then places it back into her bag after texting the number I tell her with a simple, ‘Hi’. “I’ll not take any more of your time. I look forward to getting to know you all properly this time.”
I disagree internally and finally get my chance to close the door.
“God!” I whisper shout and punch the air. I loathe that woman. Loathe.
Why did I agree to any of this?
This year has been my most stressful yet, which is saying something considering I almost died in a fire.
Nathan comes to look after the kids while I work. We don’t talk much or even look at each other much. He touches my back as I walk past him, but other than that there’s a stillness between us that wrecks my heart and no doubt wrecks his.
The longing look he pins me with as I leave forces me to hold back tears. He’s giving me the space I asked for but he’s letting me know that it’s hurting him and I loathe that he’s hurting, possibly even more than I loathe his mother.
I just can’t get past this until he understands what he’s done or at least gives me a good enough reason for why he’s done it.
If his reasons for this deception speak to my soul and enable me to forgive him and trust him again, he can come home. For some reason, I don’t think that’s ever going to happen and that depresses me more than anything else. Our entire relationship is resting on whether Nathan can finally open to me in a way he never has.
After checking the rota at work, I send Patricia a text letting her know that she’s welcome to join us in the morning after breakfast. She immediately responds to let me know that she’ll be there and my skin crawls with the thought of her stepping foot into my house. I just feel like I need to give her this chance for the kids and for Nathan. I don’t want to look as though I’ve been unfair at all.
“You’re with me,” Kerim tells me the second I stepped out of the staff area and into the kitchen.
“I am?”
“Yep.” He throws a ladle at me which I somehow catch between my hands and chest. “Gel.”
Gel in Turkish means for me to come there. I’ve picked up quite a few new words since starting here. More swearwords than anything else, as is usual when people want to learn a new language.
“What are we doing?”
“We are going to make more of that soup,” he says as we move to the smaller gas stove top. A large pot rests on the top. “We are going to give a free sample out to all customers today in return for an honest review.”
“Good plan,” I smile and help him chop and dice the vegetables. We follow his recipe that is on a sheet of paper behind the metal work top, only tweaking it with salt because Kerim never weighs salt. He says it’s a waste of time.
“If they love it, I’d like it if you could stay late and help me to make it in bulk.”
I nod. “That’s fine.” I don’t tell him I’m relieved for the excuse to not go home. If I have to see Nathan again before nightfall I’m not sure I can handle it.
“Excellent. We’ll start at around ten and finish for midnight-ish.”
“Do you need us too, Chef?” Harold asks, not too far away, overseeing the fish as it’s filleted into perfect portion sizes.
“No, we can manage. You already know what to do; Gwen has yet to learn.”
Harold nods, winks at me and moves around my co-workers. I turn to Kerim. “Do you ever go home?”
“I can’t remember,” he chuckles and tosses a batch of shredded cabbage into the pot. The water bubbles gently so he turns down the heat and I stir the cabbage around it.
“You love your job. I think if I didn’t have the kids, I’d always be here too. Especially to experiment with all of your fabulous utensils and extremely high quality goods.”
“You can, you know? Any time you like. This is your kitchen too.”
“Thank you. I might do just that. I miss working in a bakery; my oven at home just doesn’t make cake the way theirs did and don’t get me started on the bread!”
Kerim flexes his fingers and pushes the carrot that he was dicing to the side. “Then it’s settled. When you get a free day, you will impress us with your baking skills.”
“I would be honoured.”
“I shall look forward to it.” He brushes past me, placing his hand on my arm to hold me steady. “You continue; I’ll re-join you soon.”
“Sure.” I’m used to following his recipes so this doesn’t worry me. It’s just that the batch is quite large and requires a lot of cutting. I might not get it done in time for it to cook ready for the customers to try. Soup is no easy thing to prepare.
Patience, as expected, sours towards me for the rest of the day but I just can’t be dealing with her crap. She needs to calm the hell down before she pushes me over the edge I’m already teetering on.
Patricia arrives at ten in the morning as promised. She doesn’t make herself at home at first, not until she sees how tired I am and keeps the children busy in the living room while I prepare for dinner later. I always prepare the food early because if I don’t, Nathan will and it’s not that he’s a bad cook, it’s just that the kids are used to eating my food. They won’t even eat fast food so we can’t just stick a kid’s meal in front of them. Little food snobs. They make me so proud.
“You look dead on your feet,” she says to me. She’s right. I have huge bags under my eyes and I didn’t get nearly enough sleep after Nathan left last night. He didn’t even say anything, just kissed my cheek and left. It’s wrong that I want him to chase me, to fight for what we have. How is it that after all we’ve been through, we aren’t made for each other?
“Would you like a tea or a coffee?” I call from the kitchen, hoping she hears me so I don’t have to go and speak to her. The kids are running riot in the living room and they sound as though they’re having a great time. I loathe her for that too.
“I would love a tea. Thank you.” She calls back and I make quick work of preparing two mugs. “No sugar and only a splash of milk.” Her raspy aged voice adds.
I already put a sugar in so I dump it and start again, yawning powerfully as the kettle boils.
When I take both cups into the room and hand hers to her, she thanks me and takes a sip as I curl my legs under me in the corner of the couch.
My body is tense, unable to relax in her presence. This all seems so surreal.
“He looks so much like Caleb,” she murmurs quietly as Dillan runs a toy train over her thighs while making noises.
“Yeah,” I agree sadly. “He’d have loved him so much.”
“He would.” She smiles in a way that seems so genuine it makes every other smile I’ve seen look fake. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about him.”
“Sorry?”
“About his illness. There’s nothing I regret more than how I treated you all.”
What do I say to that?
She sips her drink and we enter a silence that’s not quite awkward but certainly lacks comfort.
After an hour she leaves and I release all of the air in my chest before rubbing my eyes so hard they hurt. Then I wrestle the kids into their napping spots and pray they sleep so I can too. Dillan doesn’t acquiesce and instead spends the fifteen minutes Emily remains sleeping lying on my back and stroking my hair. He loves stroking hair.
Being a mum is hard but I love it so much.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I don’t get it,” Nathan snaps suddenly. He was all happy a moment ago, playing with the kids in the room, ignoring me like he has the past few weeks.
“Huh?”
His gorgeous brown eyes twinkle dangerously. “My mother…”
“Oh.” My lips linger in the shape of an O. “I figured she’d tell you.”
“She’d tell me?” He looks insulted and I can understand why. “Suddenly we’re separated and on different planets? I’ve been here almost every day.”
“I don’t know how to approach you at the moment.”
“You don’t know how to approach me?” Now he looks hurt so I snort and spew, “Yeah, how does that feel?” His mouth instantly clamps shut.
I continue. “I just haven’t been able to approach the subject. She’s visited a few times. We’ve come to a mutual understanding.”
“Yet I’m still not allowed home?”
For crying out loud. I huff with annoyance. “This is why you’re not allowed home, because you just don’t get it!”
“Don’t get mad.” He holds his hands up. “Let’s talk about this.”
“I have said this so many times, Nathan. I’m tired of spelling it out for you. If you don’t know what you’ve done and you don’t agree that it’s wrong, then you’re just going to do it again.” I calm myself and lower my voice. “It’s not about you seeing your mum. It’s that you didn’t tell me. You openly lied to me numerous times and made me feel as though I was losing my mind!”
“I couldn’t…”
“Talk to me.” I stare at him, absorbing every single inch of him. Burning him to memory. “I know. You’ve said and that’s what hurts the worst.”
“I feel so lost.” He turns away from me and realigns the kettle with the sugar, tea and coffee pots. “I thought I was just giving you space. I didn’t realise you needed me to grovel.”
My mouth falls open. “Grovel? You broke my trust!”
“With good reason.”
“Tell me the reason so I can judge!”
“DADDY!” Emily screams from the hallway. It’s a happy scream, not a sad or scared scream, so neither of us panic and I allow Nathan to step out of the room to deal with her. When he comes back in with Emily in his arms, he diverts his eyes and the conversation.
“You’ve been staying later at work a lot lately.”