by Shelly Ellis
“I told you, I wouldn’t do that to you.”
She stared at him for a long time and then finally nodded. “Thank you, Ev.”
He watched as his sister rose from the sofa. He followed suit and walked with her to his office door.
“Oh,” she said, halting abruptly just before he reached for his doorknob, “please apologize to Lee for me. I felt bad for walking out of your baby shower. I hadn’t intended to do that. I didn’t want to ruin her day.”
“I’m sure Lee would understand if she knew the circumstances.”
“But please . . . tell her anyway.”
Evan laughed sadly. “I would, but . . .”
“But what?”
“She and I aren’t really talking. She’s angry at me.”
Paulette’s serene expression changed. Her brows drew together and she frowned. “What did you do?”
“I’d rather not get into it. Let’s just say, I overstepped—greatly.”
Paulette slowly shook her head. “You’re one of the smartest guys I know, Ev, but sometimes you can be so dumb! When will you ever learn?” she asked, making him frown again.
“Learn what?”
“That the people in your life aren’t little pieces on a chessboard for you to shift around and strategize their lives anyway you want. It annoys the hell out of all of us! It makes us feel like you don’t really respect us.”
At that, he winced. He never knew his family thought of him that way—let alone Leila. But she had said it. She had used those very words.
“I’m not going to be married to or live with yet another man I can’t trust . . . who doesn’t respect me!”
“Look, we know that you love us,” she said, reaching out, rubbing his arm, trying to soften the emotional blow she was giving, “but sometimes you just find it hard to . . . to let go. You think you know everything, and to hell with what all the fools say. But we’re not all fools, Ev! That’s no way to treat people, even if you have the best of intentions, even if you love them.”
He stared at her, dumbfounded. He was only shaken out of his trance when Paulette stood on the balls of her feet and kissed him on the cheek.
“But I know you guys will work through it,” she whispered. “If Tony and I can, I know you and Lee certainly can. Just . . . just remember what I said.”
He nodded vaguely and watched as his sister opened the door and walked out of his office.
Chapter 25
Leila
Leila knocked on the bedroom door before pushing it open. She found her daughter, Isabel, sitting on her bed underneath the gauzy canopy, flipping the pages of one of her Harry Potter books while humming along to the music playing in her headphones. Leila shook her head and laughed. Isabel had to have read the entire series at least twice.
“Izzy,” Leila said with a smile as she walked across the room toward her daughter. “Izzy, it’s bedtime, honey. Did you hear me?” She leaned forward and removed one of the headphones from Isabel’s ears, startling the eight-year-old. “I said it’s bedtime!” she shouted over the sound of a blaring teenybop tune. “It’s getting late. I came in to say good night.”
Isabel nodded and removed her headphones before setting them and her iPod on her night table. She yawned and closed her book, placing it on the night table, too.
“I want you to have sweet dreams and a good sleep so you can get up bright and early and have a good day at school tomorrow,” Leila said before kissing her on the cheek. “Because you are going to have a good day, right?”
Isabel rolled her eyes. “Yes, Mommy!”
Since Isabel’s week-long suspension, Leila hadn’t heard about any more drama at Queen Anne Academy. Leila hoped that the school bullies had backed off of Isabel. She hoped that her daughter could finally peacefully settle into her new school.
Though, when I leave Evan, she’ll probably have to change schools again, Leila thought forlornly.
“But still wake me up early if Angelica is about to come,” Isabel piped as she climbed underneath her comforter, adjusting one of the silk-sheathed pillows behind her.
Angelica . . . Leila and Evan had chosen the name of their baby girl together, deciding to do a spinoff of Angela, his late mother’s name. He had wanted to honor her, and Leila had thought it was a sweet gesture and had been more than happy to appease him.
Leila now nodded at her daughter. “I’ll wake you up right away. Don’t worry.”
“She was supposed to be here already,” Isabel said as she sat up in bed. “I marked it on my wall calendar and everything.”
“Believe me, honey. I know!” Leila rubbed her belly. “If anyone knows how long she’s been in here, it’s me.”
Leila was now two days past her due date and feeling overly ripe and ready to burst. Her OB/GYN was talking about inducing if Angelica didn’t come by the end of the week.
“Some babies are eager to get out,” the doctor had said with a laugh at Leila’s last appointment. “Some aren’t.”
And some know when you’re ready for them and when you’re not.
Perhaps Little Angelica sensed what upheaval lay outside of her mother’s womb.
Leila still didn’t know whether she should stay at the Murdoch Mansion for a year or so, until Angelica was older and Leila could work full-time while her mother watched her. Or should she leave the mansion sooner and get her own place? And how would Isabel respond to moving to yet another home, starting yet another school, and losing yet another father figure?
Just thinking about all those things made Leila exhausted—and carrying an eight-pound baby around all day made her tired as it was. She wasn’t prepared to make weighty decisions like this. She had a hard enough time figuring out where to put her rocking chair in the nursery, let alone what was the next course she should take with her life.
“Time to get out, Angelica!” Isabel shouted, leaning toward her mother’s stomach, making Leila laugh again. “We’re ready to meet you already!”
Leila kissed her daughter again before rising to her feet with a grunt. “Hopefully, she heard you and will obey your command. Good night, honey.”
“Night, Mommy,” Isabel replied before sinking beneath the sheets and comforter. “Hey, Mommy?” she called out just as Leila reached her door.
Leila turned. “Yes, honey?”
“Are you . . . are you mad at Evan?”
Leila paused. That question caught her off guard. “Why do you think that?”
“Well . . .” Isabel gnawed her bottom lip. “You don’t really talk to each other anymore. You don’t eat dinner together. You sleep in another room now, and Evan seems really . . . sad.”
Leila pursed her lips, contemplating whether she should lie to Isabel about what was going on between her and Evan, but if Leila left Evan, Isabel would find out soon enough. And she had witnessed what had gone on between her father and mother two years ago. The precocious eight-year-old was young, but she wasn’t naïve.
“Evan and I are going through some . . . some things right now,” Leila explained as best she knew how. “We just need some . . . some space from each other.”
Permanently, she thought, but didn’t add that part.
“Kind of like when Ron left Harry and Hermione when he got mad?” Isabel piped, making Leila frown.
“Huh? What are you talking about, baby?”
“In Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows!” Isabel threw up her hands and sighed loudly, like it was obvious what she was talking about. “Ron fought with Harry and left him and Hermione all alone. He was really, really mad but it was only because he had the . . . umm, Horcrux locket, though, I guess. Ron always had kind of a temper and he didn’t like that Harry and Hermione were getting so close, and the locket made it all worse. Well, anyway,” she said, her eyes widening with zeal, “he left them because he didn’t want to be around Harry anymore. But after he left, he figured out how much he liked Harry. He figured out that they were really, really good friends. Maybe that’s what y
ou and Evan need to do!”
“Get rid of the Horcrux locket?”
“No!” Isabel exclaimed, throwing back her head. “Figure out why you liked each other in the first place so you can come back together!”
Leila gazed sorrowfully at her daughter. If only her life was as simple as Harry Potter’s. “Maybe, honey,” she whispered. “Sweet dreams,” she said before turning off the lights and shutting the door behind her.
Three hours later, Leila lay awake tossing and turning in her bed, commencing another sleepless night. She had tried everything to help her sleep—reading a book, taking a warm bath, and watching the infomercials on television that usually had her nodding off within minutes—but nothing had worked. She told herself that it was her sore lower back and hips that were keeping her awake, or maybe her wide body that made it almost impossible to get into a comfortable position anymore. But she knew it wasn’t true. It wasn’t how or where she was sleeping that was keeping her awake, it was who wasn’t sleeping next to her. She turned and gazed at the empty pillow next to her head. She had gotten used to sleeping with Evan at her side, hearing his soft breath in the dark, feeling his hand resting on her hip.
But climbing in bed beside him wasn’t an option.
Leila slowly pushed herself upright and gazed bleakly at her darkened bedroom.
“Well, if I can’t sleep, I might as well eat,” she murmured before rocking back and forth and rising to her feet.
She walked down the silent corridor of the east wing and down the staircase before heading to the kitchen. She rarely went there since Evan had a hired cook, but every now and then she would raid the refrigerator to make herself a late-night snack.
As she approached the kitchen entrance, she saw through a crack beneath the door that a light inside was on, making her frown. She pushed the door open to find Evan sitting at the steel kitchen island on a metal stool, wearing his robe and pajama bottoms, eating a club sandwich and drinking a soda. He paused mid-chew when he saw her standing in the doorway. His eyes widened and he lowered the sandwich from his mouth.
A flood of yearning surged through her when their eyes met, but she reminded herself that he had lied to her, that he had kissed Charisse, that he had threatened to take her baby away from her. The yearning was quickly snuffed out and replaced with a cool detachment.
“Couldn’t sleep either, huh?” she deadpanned, shoving her hands into her robe pockets and casually walking toward one of the industrial-size refrigerators.
She watched as he set down his sandwich, gathered his paper napkins and his can of soda. He rose to his feet. “You can have the kitchen. I was just about to—”
“Finish your sandwich, Ev,” she said, waving him back onto his stool. She then opened one of the refrigerator doors and pulled out a carton of cherry vanilla ice cream. “We’ll have to sit in the same room together eventually.”
He hesitated before gradually lowering himself back onto his stool. She grabbed a spoon out of one of the drawers and took one of the stools facing him on the opposite side of the kitchen island. The two ate in mutual silence.
After a few minutes, Evan loudly cleared his throat, making her look up from her ice cream. “I . . . I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I wanted to ask you what’s the plan for—”
“I haven’t decided yet,” she said, cutting him off. “I haven’t decided if I want to stay here, and if I stay, for how long. I’d leave tomorrow if I could, but I don’t have just me to consider anymore. I have the baby and . . . and Isabel. She’s started a new school and is settling in. I don’t want to bring any upheaval to her life again. Not right now. And I don’t know if I’m up for searching for a new place and taking care of a week-old infant at the same time.”
“That wasn’t what I was going to ask you,” he said, pushing his half-eaten sandwich aside. “I was going to ask what’s the birthing plan?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what’s going to happen when you go into labor? It’s going to happen any day now. We had a plan, but . . . I don’t know if you still wanted to do it that way.”
“What would change?”
“I don’t know . . . like . . . do you still want me in the delivery room?”
She lowered her spoon from her mouth. “Of course I do. You’re the father.”
He dropped his gaze to the tabletop. “But if it’s going to stress you out. If it’s going to make things worse for you while you’re in labor . . . while you’re in the delivery room, I can wait outside. Diane can be the one to—”
“I want you there, Evan,” she said firmly, and he raised his eyes. He nodded.
“Okay, if you want me there, I’ll be there.”
Silence fell between them again. She resumed eating her ice cream and he pretended to finish his sandwich.
“I fucked up,” he said out of nowhere a few minutes later.
“Yes, you did,” she replied, feeling a burning ache spread across her chest and knowing that it wasn’t heartburn.
“I thought I had it all figured out. I thought I could fix everything and you didn’t have to know.” He shook his head ruefully. “But the joke was on me, right? I was wrong . . . so wrong.”
“Yeah, well, you were wrong about a lot of things, Ev, but you were right about one thing: I love you. I still do. I wanted to be with you, but I’ve never been ‘all in,’ so to speak. I’ve always kept a piece of my heart locked up so you wouldn’t hurt me like Brad did. I’ve always prepared myself for the possibility of disappointment, of having to pick up the pieces, but it didn’t keep me from being hurt when the disappointment happened. It didn’t give me any cushion.” She pursed her lips. “You still broke my heart.”
“I’m sorry, Lee.”
She sighed and closed the lid on her ice cream, no longer having much of an appetite. “I know you are . . . but that’s not good enough anymore.”
He took a drink from his soda can before crushing it in his hand and lowering it to the countertop. “With everything that’s happened, I’ve been thinking a lot about Dad lately. I wondered how he would handle this situation.”
She curled her lip. “He’d probably follow through with the threat to take my baby away if I decided to leave, use it to scare me into staying.”
“You’re right. He would have . . . because he was a manipulative asshole . . . a sociopath, or so I thought. I used to think Dad didn’t care about us, that he didn’t care about anybody. I thought he was all ambition and ego. He thought it was all about him and what he wanted, and who gives a shit about anybody else.” He took a deep breath. “But now that he’s gone and each year that I get older, I think I’ve finally started to figure out the truth about Dad. He did care, Lee. He did love us. He even loved my mom, in his own fucked-up way. But he didn’t love us enough to pull back and let go. He always had to be the one in control. He always had to know what was best for us. He never trusted us to live our own lives. He thought it would draw us closer to him, but it only pushed us away.
“And the worst part is, even though I know all of this about Dad, even though I realize the truth, I . . . I can still feel myself turning into him. That need for control, to assure myself that I really know what’s best . . . it’s all him. And that anger,” he said, clenching his fists on the countertop. “That rage. I felt it when I said those things to you that day, when I said I’d come after you with everything I had. I saw you as the enemy and it . . . it scared the shit out me, Lee! It made me sick to my stomach, but . . . but I couldn’t stop it.” He closed his eyes and lowered his head. “I couldn’t stop it! I can’t . . .”
His words faded as he gritted in teeth, like he was in physical pain. She watched as he turned his back to her, so she wouldn’t have to see his face, so she wouldn’t have to see him crying—something she had never witnessed before in the twenty-plus years she had known him. Watching him become this battered and broken, tears pricked her own eyes.
He hurt me, she reminded herself. He hurt
me so bad. But she couldn’t take it anymore, seeing him like this.
This was Evan: her best friend, the first person she had ever given that title. That was why his betrayal had hurt so much, even more than what Brad had done to her, and she had been married to that bastard for ten years! Her relationship with Evan went deeper than passion or romantic love, and she realized that it always would be—no matter what they went through.
Who am I foolin’?
She could never walk away from him, and it had nothing to do with recovering after the baby or finding a new place to live or Isabel’s education, though those were all good reasons to stay. She couldn’t leave Evan for the most important reason: They completed each other. He was her imperfect other half.
Leila rose from her stool and walked around the kitchen island. She wrapped her arms around Evan. He turned to her and did the same, burying his head against her shoulder.
“You’re not your father, Ev,” she whispered into his ear, kissing his cheek and brow, blinking through her tears. “You’re not him. Trust me.”
He clung to her and she clung to him for what seemed like forever. Finally, she pulled back, loosening her embrace.
“I think we should both go to bed, don’t you?” she said. “It’s late.”
He nodded.
They cleaned up the remaining food and turned off the lights in the kitchen before heading to the stairs leading to the east and west wing. They took the stairs slowly, dragging out the moment.
When they reached the top of the staircase, Evan looked over his shoulder, prepared to head their separate ways. He leaned down and kissed her cheek.
“Night, Lee,” he said before turning to head in the opposite direction, toward the west wing, but he stopped when she grabbed his hand. He frowned down at her.
“I’m going with you,” she whispered.
He squinted at her, as if asking, Are you sure?
She nodded and squeezed his hand. She had taken Isabel’s advice: She figured out why she and Evan were together in the first place.
They walked down the corridor to their bedroom and walked inside, quietly shutting the door behind them. He removed his robe and so did she. He stood at the bedside, watching her as she threw back the comforter, then the sheets, and climbed underneath them both. He followed suit, climbing into bed beside her. When he did, she rose to her knees and reached for him, tugging his T-shirt over his head and tossing it to the floor. She lowered her mouth to his. He kissed her back eagerly, burying his fingers in her hair, languidly letting his tongue explore her mouth. His hand cradled her breast and he rubbed his thumb over the nipple. His other hand cupped her bottom and she moaned.