by T Gephart
The fists clenched by Jason’s sides were white and ready to take a swing. Troy’s face absolutely ready to take it to that level if that’s where it needed to go.
“Troy.” My voice wavered as I stepped in between the two heavyweights. Getting in the middle of a fistfight wasn’t smart, but I wasn’t going to sit by and watch them duke it out either.
“Angie, you need to know.” A ripple of calmness cracked through as Troy flicked his eyes down on me. “There is a lot of shit that you don’t know about. Jason’s past, before you knew him. Things that will fucking mess a man up.”
“He told me.” I nodded, hoping the situation had been defused. Not that his reasoning made complete sense to me, and not that it made it hurt any less. In fact it made it hurt more, that I was paying for the sins of someone else. “His girlfriend cheated on him. I get it. He has trust issues.”
“That’s what you told her?” Troy’s head whipped around to Jason.
“That’s what happened.” Jason’s words barely audible through his tight jaw.
“Look, it doesn’t matter. He had a girlfriend who betrayed him and—”
“Em was his fucking wife.” The words echoed off the walls.
Silence.
No one spoke.
Wife.
I heard it over and over again. It hadn’t been a girlfriend. It had been his wife.
“What? You were married?” My mouth dropped open in total disbelief. “You told me she was your girlfriend.” I scaled my memory to make sure I hadn’t heard incorrectly. Nope. Wife was something I would have remembered. The Oh, hey I was married never having been mentioned.
“No, I told you I was with a girl and she cheated. You assumed she was my girlfriend. I didn’t correct you.” Jase’s eyes focused on me, his tone unapologetic.
“Are you fucking with me?” My voice almost choked in disbelief. No seriously, was he fucking kidding?
“I’ve been divorced for longer than I was married. It is not important.”
The man I had known was a complete and utter lie.
“You.” Troy pointed to Jase, his gaze enough to level a ten-story building without the use of dynamite. “If you were going to tell her anything, you should have told her the whole fucking story. And you,” his attention turned back to me, “you shouldn’t just automatically jump to conclusions that it was just a girl fucking around that has made him so detached. No one is that much of a fucking pussy.”
I was stunned. Troy had never yelled at me like that. In fact, I’d never seen him lose his cool. The words I had planned to say lost their way from my brain to my mouth as I stared, wide-eyed and mute.
With both Jase and I subtly silenced, either from shock or the I-have-no-idea-what to say, Troy took a seat. Jase encouraged by his friend’s ass-in-chair position decided to replicate it and also sat down.
“So you know about his past.”
I nodded as sorrow and possibly regret flicked through Jase’s beautiful brown eyes. If I hadn’t been so mad and hurt I may have wanted to hold him.
“Problem was, while he left his delinquent buddies behind, his evil bitch of a girlfriend tracked him down,” Troy continued. The mention of the evil bitch enough to make Jase flinch. “Military life didn’t suit her by all accounts.”
“Why did you marry her if she was a bitch? And why so young? If you were trying to make a change, why keep her?”
“Originally because it was habit. I thought I cared about her and when I tried to break up with her, she got pregnant. As much as I didn’t want to be with her, I didn’t want my kid growing up without a dad.”
The news of his marriage was nothing. It just got a hundred times worse.
“Holy shit. You have a kid too?” My hands moved up to my throat as I struggled to breathe. “Did I know anything about you? Like at all?”
It felt like the walls were closing in on me, as the lies continued to unravel.
“Yes, you did.” His eyes refused to leave mine, pleading with me to believe him “You know me now. Who I am, now. I didn’t want you to know the other stuff. I’m not proud of who I was. My life was a mess; I’d made shitty choices. I put my family through hell and they never deserved any of it, they are good people.” He swallowed hard, as if fighting an internal battle as to whether or not to continue. “I was turning it around. I figured I could help her do that too, and we could raise our kid together. I take care of what’s mine.”
I continued to freak out over the current downloading of information I was receiving. Asking if it could get any worse would be surely tempting fate. Troy was the one who first broke through the current silence.
“I’m going to let you guys talk it out.” He nodded to both of us, seeking permission before leaving. “But I’m going to be outside, so if either of you get out of control expect me to be coming right back in. We clear?”
“Yes.” Both Jason and I answered simultaneously. In truth, the horror would be better without the audience.
“So where is your kid now? With your ex-wife?” I asked Jason as Troy closed the door behind him.
“I assume so,” he answered, very non-committal.
“You assume?” I said louder than I intended. “You don’t know where your own kid lives?” The whole I-take-care-of-what’s-mine argument still ringing in my ears.
“I don’t have any rights anymore.” The words seeming to sting as he spoke them. “So no, I don’t know.”
“What do you mean you don’t have any rights? You just signed over your kid?”
“He wasn’t mine!” he shouted, the sound exploding through the room. His face a mix of pain and anger as his body seemed to struggle with remaining still. “She came clean just before his first birthday. I’d come home from working a twelve-hour day and found her passed out drunk on the floor. Thomas was crying in his crib wearing the same fucking diaper for who knows how long. I threatened to divorce her, told her that if she didn’t sober up I would leave and I’d take our son with me. She just laughed and told me he wasn’t my kid. Bragged that she didn’t know whose he was.” His eyes blinked rapidly, as his voice tightened. “I watched him be born, fucking held him for months. Was up late while he cried. I was his father.”
There was nothing I could say, the pain ripping through him enough to tear out my own heart. My own tears threatening to spill as he continued.
“I thought she was full of shit, that the booze was talking. So we got the tests done. For the first time ever, Em had told the truth. He wasn’t mine.” He shook his head, as he seemed to struggle to go on. “And even knowing all of that, I stayed. Because I loved Thomas more than I hated Em. I didn’t care he didn’t have the same blood type, that kid was mine.”
“So what happened?” My voice was barely a whisper, not wanting to contribute to more of his pain.
“We tried to make it work but we couldn’t. The drinking didn’t stop and my enlistment was almost up. Honestly, the thought of signing up again scared the fuck out of me. Knowing I could be shipped away and leaving Thomas with only his mother. So I decided to get out, and just before I separated from the Army, she left. Cleared out my bank account and took my car while I was at work one day. Didn’t say goodbye. No note explaining why, and she had taken Thomas with her.”
“Did you try and find them?”
“Of course I fucking tried to find them.” The hurt visible in his eyes. “I was granted leave and went looking for them. She kept moving and it wasn’t until she got into trouble and her mother was awarded temporary custody of Thomas that I tracked them down. She had been doing drugs and sleeping around, not far from our hometown; she didn’t even care about him. So consumed with herself, she didn’t even give a shit.” His jaw tightened with rage, seemingly reliving his hell with the telling of his past. My heart ached for him and the pain I knew he must have endured.
“I fought for him.” He shook his head and he rubbed his eyes. “I used every single cent I had left to fight for a kid that wasn’t even mine,
and I lost. I had no rights, no say. Apparently loving a kid for the first twelve months of his life doesn’t mean shit to judges.” He coughed out a laugh of disbelief.
“Can you believe she sat in that courtroom and laughed? She thought it was funny that I knew she had slept around, knew that Thomas wasn’t my son and that I was still willing to raise him anyway. She laughed her ass off; confessed Thomas was my best friend’s kid. Said she never loved me, that she just said the words. Because I was convenient.”
“I can’t believe someone could do that to another human being. Be so cruel.” I’m so sorry I finished in my head, overwhelmed by the desire to hold him. My hands, like the rest of me, didn’t try, scared that my touch wouldn’t be welcomed. The back-off his body was screaming, loud and clear.
“Needless to say, the day of the court case I bought a used car and left town. Canada seemed far enough, so I sat in a bar and got messed up. Lucky for me it was the same bar the guys were playing in. Not sure if it was fate or some higher power that they found me, but they took me in and gave me a reason not to go home. Which was a plus, or I’d probably still be doing jail time right now.
“So yeah, it wasn’t just that she cheated on me. It’s not just something I can just get over. That vile excuse for a woman almost destroyed me. I gave her that power, married her and handed over my fucking heart. She used me so many times I lost count. So, yeah. I have a bunch of issues. Commitment and trust in relationships not a good experience for me.”
“Jason, why didn’t you tell me?” I struggled not to cry, wanting desperately to make it better, say something to change it.
“Why Angie, so I could have your fucking pity?” He stared at me with emotions I couldn’t even define burning through his eyes. “You think it would have made it easier to be around me knowing how fucked up I was? You didn’t need all that extra baggage in your life. I saw the way you looked at me. Like I was a decent guy, and I wanted you to believe the lie. I didn’t want you to know any of this.”
“But you are a decent guy.” I finally stopped fighting the urge, my hand reaching out and touching his. “You fought for a kid that wasn’t even yours.”
“I should never have been with her.” He pulled his hand out of mine and got up out of his chair. “Do you know how many people warned me about her? I didn’t listen. The shit I put my family through, because of my friends, because of her. That’s not a decent person. Open your eyes, Angie; I am not a decent person. She fucking destroyed me but I’ve owned what I’ve become. And that is not someone you should be around. You are too fucking perfect, and even on my best day I wouldn’t deserve you.”
It killed me. Jason unable to see what an amazing man he was, for him to feel like his past defined him. For him to think that he was undeserving of love.
“I’m not perfect.” My head shook as the tears started to fall. It was too late, my leaky eyes deciding they had waited long enough. “You are all I ever wanted. I just wanted you.”
“Oh hell, Angie.” He kneeled down in front of me and wiped away my tears with his thumbs. “Well that’s dumb.” He gave me a sad smile. “Why would you want an asshole like me?”
“Because I love you, asshole. I tried not to, but that didn’t work out so well.” The tears continued to fall, any hope I had of stopping them long gone.
“Angie, all I seem to do is hurt you.” He pulled me in close to his chest, his thumping heartbeat pounding just as fast as mine. “What if I can’t change? What if I can’t be anything other than this? I don’t know that I can ever get married again. Kids? I just don’t know that I can do that. It killed me to lose him, for me to say goodbye to a child I thought was mine. I can’t ask someone I love to hang around on a maybe. I won’t do that to you.” His hand gently stoked my hair as my tears wet the front of his T-shirt.
“You love me?” My head jerked back in shock, the words almost knocking the wind out of me. My eyes tried desperately to focus despite the tears.
“Yeah, I love you. I always knew you were something special, Angie. Which is why I resisted sleeping with you for so long. I didn’t want you to be just another girl for me. There was something so inherently good about you; I could tell that just in the time we spent together. And I just wanted to feel that, just once. I was selfish for wanting that, but I couldn’t stop myself.”
“But I’m not perfect. I’m not as good as you think I am. And I wanted to be with you.”
“You are perfect. In every single way. That fact you can’t see that makes me want to punch a hole in a wall. Look at you, you’re beautiful. But that isn’t even the half of it. You’re so fucking talented, it’s ridiculous. And so freaking smart. And that mouth of yours … ” He gentled thumbed my lips. “I love every single word that comes out of it.”
“Then be with me. Take a chance with me.”
I’d never begged a man in my life. In fact, begging for anything wasn’t in my nature. It wasn’t who I was; the idea frowned upon in my family. It wasn’t in my make up to sit and hope something happened, I either made it happen or I moved on. And the only other time I begged for anything was for my mom not to die. For her to stay just a little longer with us. But I knew that my Pops had begged for the exact same thing so that made it okay. But, as Jason held me in his arms, I was begging. Begging that he gave us that chance. That I wouldn’t lose the only man I’d ever really loved other than my dad. That he wouldn’t walk out on me again.
“You deserve better. You deserve so much better.” He kissed the top of my head, his arms tightly wrapped around me.
“No, you do.”
It was as if my mouth had a mind of its own—which to be honest, it usually did—and it stopped talking and started kissing him. I knew the kiss wouldn’t solve anything. It wouldn’t take away his pain or mine. It wouldn’t change the wasted years, the misunderstanding. But I needed to anyway. I needed to connect with him, to be closer to him than I already was. And right now, the only way I could do that was with my kiss. And I was going to kiss him for as long as he would let me.
“Angie, sweetheart.” I pulled away from her mouth, my lips cursing me for the distance the minute I’d moved away. “You’re making it hard for me to stop.”
Sex shouldn’t have even been on my radar. Hell, walking out and making sure I never made her cry the way she just did should have been my only priority. But her kissing me like that threw whatever ideas I had out the window. My cock didn’t give a shit how inappropriate the timing was; it wanted her and only her.
“Then don’t stop.” She pulled me back against her. “Be with me and don’t stop.” She sucked against the skin at my throat as my hard-on kicked at the front of my jeans.
“Sex won’t solve anything.” By some miracle I was able to say something other than get your clothes off and let me bury myself inside of you. “I can’t use you; I can’t do it just because it feels good.” My hands not listening to my mouth as they palmed her tits.
“Don’t be with me because it solves anything; be with me because you want me.” She clawed at my shirt, the fucking thing following her every command as she ripped it off my body.
“Angie, Troy is right outside that door. And it’s not locked.” My eyes flicked to the door the big guy was no doubt still standing behind. His words crystal clear that he wasn’t going to be far in case we needed a referee.
“Then lock the door, but I don’t care what he sees or hears. I want you, and I want you to be with me, now.” Her fingers fumbled with the front of my jeans, my suggestion that we put the brakes on not even getting airtime.
“Look at me.” I tipped her chin toward me so I could get a good look into those drop-dead gorgeous eyes. “No one gets to see or hear you like that. And there is nothing I want more than to be with you right now, but I can’t do it and hurt you again.”
“You aren’t going to hurt me. I’m not asking you to give me forever, just be with me now.”
Walk away is what my mind screamed. Kiss her goodbye and leave
her the fuck alone. But I couldn’t. It wasn’t in me.
“Hell, I can’t ever say no to you. I know I should, but I just can’t.” I grabbed her T-shirt and tore it from her body. “I want you. I’ve always wanted you.” My mouth sucked against her skin, her bra getting in the way of what I wanted.
“Good, then take me because I want you, too.” She rubbed her body against the front my jeans, my cock ready to give her whatever the hell she demanded.
The unlocked door got my attention for about a minute, and then I settled myself knowing if anyone came through that door I’d tear them limb from limb. No one would get to see her the way I did, naked and exposed with nothing but that fancy ink to cover her body. That was mine, and even though I had no claim to it, I wanted it tonight.
“Take them off.” Her fingers clawed at my jeans, her effort to get them off not getting them further than my hips.
“Not here.” I stood up, grabbing her ass and hauling her up with me. “I want you on the bed, so I can lay you out and look at you properly.”
She didn’t protest, just a quiet little moan as I ground my cock in that sweet spot between her legs before lifting her higher so I could carry her to her bed.
Unlike our hotel rooms, hers was basic. Which was convenient being that I only had to take five steps from the couch where we’d been situated, to her bed, which is where I needed us to be. The sheets were still unmade, the comforter hanging half way off the bed as I tossed her down on the mattress.
“This bra is pretty but it’s blocking my view.” My fingers got busy releasing the clasp from the back, the lace getting tossed aside the minute I was able.
“I want you naked, too.” She pulled me down on the bed, scrambling up onto her knees before I had a chance to have any more play time.
“You wear the fuck out of these jeans, but I need you out of them.” She yanked at the denim, encouraging me to lift my ass as she moved them down my legs.