To The Woman He Loves 2

by Theresa Hodge

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why did you want to meet here?”

  “I thought I wanted to meet you where our love first began, right in this building. Also, I guess a part of me was hoping I’d catch you with her and I’d be able to give you both a piece of my mind.”

  “You don’t have to ever worry about her again,” Ronan said.

  “I wrote her a letter, you know? Posted it while the kids and I were at Panama City Beach. Pouring my heart out to your mistress on paper satisfied me at the time, but today, having decided to talk things through with you, I guess I wanted to do more than confront her on paper. Where is she?”

  “I let her go, fired her a few days ago. The day I called Jeremy to be exact. I don’t want to see her ever again. Whatever happened, or is going to happen, between you and me, is the only important thing to me.”

  “Out of sight doesn’t always mean out of mind,” I said, leaning back in his chair.

  As I stared into his handsome face, I thought about the special ways Ronan made me feel right here in this office. The smiles he’d put on my face when I worked here as an intern. It was hard for me to stomach that another woman had been flaunting around this place receiving the same treatment.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” Ronan asked, pulling my attention back to the present.

  “I…I don’t have a—” I paused. “Keeping my cancer diagnosis away from you wasn’t the right thing to do, so there really is no logical reason why I didn’t tell you. One part of me felt that I could trust you wholeheartedly, but the other part of me…the part that goes all the way back to when I was a young girl…had me scared to death to even speak the word cancer aloud,” I admitted.

  “Shauntay told me about your father leaving your mother,” Ronan began. “I am not your father, Ruby. I thought you would’ve known that after spending ten years of your life with me.”

  “I should have trusted you with that information, but, looking at our situation now, it doesn’t appear that our ten years together mattered on either of our behalves,” I said.

  “Ruby, I never would have even thought of another woman, if I didn’t feel rejected by you. It triggered something inside that destabilized me. I didn’t know what you were going through, baby—”

  “My father was the first man I ever loved, truly and deeply,” I said cutting Ronan off. Tears were sure to come with thoughts of my father, Mr. Jamal Holloway. “Even after all that he has done, I still love him from the top of his gray head to the bottom of his running feet. He is my father and he let me down…left all of us behind when he found out my mother had cancer. It was so hard, even petrifying, for me to trust that you wouldn’t do the same thing.”

  “Ruby…my love…my heart,” Ronan said as he stood from his seat, unable to stay seated any longer. He hurried around to stand beside me. He reached his hand out to me and I took it. “Ruby, you can trust me with anything… anything, do you understand me?” Ronan asked as he pulled me up to my feet and into his embrace.

  “Ronan, I want to believe you. Lord knows, I want to believe in us,” I said on a gasp. Not only did I want to believe him, I wanted a second chance. A clean slate. One that was not built on lies and deception.

  “I made the biggest mess by sleeping with Misty. I betrayed our love and your trust. I will never be unfaithful to you again. If I knew that not only were you being faithful to me, but you were in for the fight of your life, I would have been by your side the entire time. I am not the type of man that does things like cheat. At my core, that’s not who I am, and I feel terrible for not recognizing your changes for what they really were. There is no way I would have left your side, for one second, if I knew the truth. I feel awful, just plain awful.”

  “Ronan, I’m sorry for not telling you,” I said, fighting back the urge to shed tears.

  I pulled away from his embrace and walked over to place my hand on the corner of his desk for balance. I looked out of the large window as I took in our moment of reconciliation. We had been through so much together over our marriage, yet when it counted I chose to fight alone, all because I did not want our love tainted by a killer disease.

  “I watched day by day as my mother went through treatment for her breast cancer. She beat it initially, but it went away for years and came back, and she needed more treatment. I watched her fade to a shadow of her former self, a dried-up husk of a woman. My father left her and started having an affair and she couldn’t take the misery of it all. I’m not saying that’s what killed her, but when she figured out the reason he left her on her dying bed was for another woman she seemed to just give up.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Ronan said. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Given our current situation, I wouldn’t expect you to,” I said with a faraway look on my face as I stared off into nothingness. I recalled the years of my youth as the tragic moments played in my head like a movie. “When mom died, my father moved back into our family home to take care of us. He would bring various ‘new moms’ home. None of them lasted, and he eventually became a drinker and a gambler. It changed him.”

  “Maybe it was guilt, but either way it’s a shame that he mistreated the woman that birthed such a lovely jewel as you, Ruby,” Ronan said as he ran the palm of his hand up and down my arms. Once again feeling the warmth that I was used to with Ronan, I visibly trembled beneath his touch.

  You have no room to judge anyone, I thought as I moved away from Ronan once again.

  “That’s one way of putting it,” I said before continuing my thought. “One day he got bored of the state telling him how to live his life, telling him how to raise his kids, so he put us into foster care. That’s where I really met Shauntay, not the story we’ve been telling you. She was in foster care too, and we became best friends to this day. We know each other’s weaknesses, so I felt I could rely on her.”

  Ronan’s hands dropped flaccid to his sides. He walked over to the window and placed both hands on the windowsill with his back to me. “You’re supposed to rely on me, Ruby. No one else…just me. I’m your husband, for Christ sakes! Not Shauntay and not definitely Mark. Hell, even Mark knows more about what’s going on with my wife than I do. Do you have any idea what that does to me? You robbed me of my position as the head of our family,” he said on a defeated sigh.

  “I suppose Mark does know. It’s only natural that Shauntay would have confided in Mark.”

  “Yes, it is natural for a wife to tell her husband things like this. I can’t help but feel offended by the thought that everyone knows what’s going on, but me,” Ronan shouted as he turned in my direction and stalked back over to stand in front of me. “A husband and wife should confide in one another. Your past, the cancer, I would have understood all of it. I would have been there for you the way a real husband is supposed to be. What you did was reduce me to a loser searching for attention in bars, all because you didn’t want to be honest.”

  Ronan was making me go to a place I wasn’t ready to go. I could feel my cheeks flush hot with anger as I let loose and spewed bitter words from my mouth. I pushed him out of my face with all the energy in my body and slapped his jaw. “I will not take responsibility for your affair! I didn’t reduce you to anything. You did that shit on your own. I didn’t tell you to pull your dick out and fuck that slut. That was something you obviously have been wanting to do, regardless of my condition.”

  My anger. My anguish. My pain. Spilled forth like hot lava.

  “You didn’t give me a chance to get it right or wrong! You just made up in your mind how I would react. Before this, have I ever proven to be less of a man than you deserved, Ruby? Have I ever given you a reason not to trust me?”

  “You have now.”

  “By the way, Misty isn’t a slut,” he added in afterthought.

  “Oh, you had some nerve to defend the slut you whored around with, and to my face?” I asked, feeling dejected by his words.

  “I’m talking about before this whole a
ffair fiasco, Ruby. Let’s stay on the subject,” he said.

  “I am on the subject! What you did with her defiled our marriage in a way that may be beyond repair.”

  “Ruby, you didn’t trust me, which led to more distrust from me. But I should have never done what I did. That much is true. I wish I could take it back and start over with the day I came home and found you in bed looking exhausted.”

  I took in a deep, trembling breath before I spoke. “I didn’t know what else to do,” I said as those tears finally burst through my ducts. My hurt was intensified by his earlier defense of Misty.

  Ronan slumped down onto his knees in front of me and put his hands on my hips. “Baby please don’t cry. I didn’t mean to make you cry. It’s not your fault. None of it. I am sorry—”

  “Except it is my fault,” I cried my hurt and tears onto his strong shoulders, finally allowing him to hold me up.

  He wrapped his arms around my waist and squeezed me so tight that I momentarily got lost in the feel of my husband’s big, soothing hands.

  “Ruby, I missed you so much,” he said as he stood up from his knees and took me into his arms. He brushed his nose up against my neck and I inhaled his poignant scent of spiced mahogany.

  “Baby, I just got you back after you’ve been gone a week. I don’t want to lose you again. I’m sorry for ever hurting you,” Ronan said, pulling me deeper into his arms. “We are so much better than this. I’m disappointed that you didn’t confide your illness in me, but I feel less than a man to not have known what you were going through. I should have been there for you when you needed me. I knew you were going through something, I just didn’t know what,” Ronan said.

  His soothing words and hot breath against my neck warmed me all over. His roaming hands eased down my back and landed just above my hips.

  “Ronan, don’t touch me the way that you touched her,” I said, leaning back to look into his eyes. I wanted to let go of the past, but it most definitely had me in its grip.

  “Ruby, I could never touch another woman the way I touch you. When I touch you, and I mean really touch you, I touch you in such a deep place that no one could ever receive the same. Do you know how much I love you?” he asked as his mouth swooped down and captured my lips.

  I reluctantly pulled away from Ronan.

  “Do you do the same things to her that you do to me? Do you go down on her and make love to her like you do me? Have you ever had sex with her without using a condom?” I had so many questions.

  “No Ruby. Why are you asking me these things?” Ronan asked without even a blink of his eyes. “I would never go up into another woman without using protection. I love you too much for that,” he vowed.

  “How about tasting her intimately, Ronan? Did you put your mouth on her and lick her insides? It might seem odd that I’m asking you these things. I just have to know the extent of your relationship with her.”

  “Never. It wasn’t that deep. It was just a few times when I needed comfort and that’s it,” he said in a convincing tone of voice.

  “I just wanted to know the truth. Thank you for being honest and for not doing those things with her.”

  I stared into his eyes for a short while before breathing a sigh of relief. It would’ve been the end of our marriage for sure, if I found he put his lips on Misty with such intimacy or if he went up into her without using any protection.

  “I have messed things up badly, but I need you to give me another chance to make it right, Ruby. Now that I know what you’ve been through in your childhood and in recent months, I just need a chance to fix us.”

  I wiped my eyes and looked up into Ronan’s silver gaze. I took the handkerchief from his waistcoat and wiped my eyes and face again. I blew my nose on it and roughly stuffed it back into his waistcoat. I tried not to laugh as I did so, but we both found it funny.

  “I don’t know if I can trust you again.”

  “We can get therapy, go on those trips you wanted to go on and take some time to get to know each other again. We will be happy again, because we are made for one another,” Ronan said with promise. “I’m willing to do anything you want. I just need a chance.”

  “What if I get sick again?”

  “I’ll never leave you the way your father treated your mother. Come hell or high water, I will be there for you, Ruby. Give me a chance to be the one you lean on. I really meant it when I said until death do us part. All I need for you to do is let me in. I have to know what’s going on,” he said, “and, if you get sick and don’t want to have sex, I’ll just have to use my left hand to take care of myself.”

  “Charming,” I replied.

  “Ruby, sex isn’t the only thing that made me stray. It was intimacy. I felt a sudden loss when you started ignoring and rejecting me and, for the life of me, I could not understand why it was happening. It was as if you had just got up and walked out the door on me. Your body was there, but you were gone. I tried to talk to you, but you wouldn’t talk. It reminded me of Stephanie and Mitchell.”

  “I am not Stephanie, and you know that!” I said, feeling my cheeks heat up again.

  “I know. I don’t know why those feelings came rushing back. I thought I was over that point in my life. But, I promise you that I didn’t go looking to have an affair. Misty was at the bar, giving me the affection that I was used to getting. She made me feel needed at a time when I felt that you were getting your needs taken care of elsewhere,” Ronan said with an anguished look on his otherwise handsome face.

  “So, you took the easy road out and cheated, for the sake of petty and misplaced revenge over something that was all in your head?” I asked, shaking my head. “I would never lie down with another man. You were my first and I’d always thought you would be my last.”

  I could see tension building in Ronan. “I will be your one and only, Ruby. I should have known you wouldn’t give away what is mine to another man. I’m sorry,” Ronan apologized for the hundredth time.

  “I still can’t believe you thought I was having an affair,” I said as I searched his eyes. The silver gaze I admired was returning and I relished the sight as a smile slowly spread across my face. The beautiful soul that charmed me until I swooned ten years ago was peeking through.

  “Ruby, I just want you to come back home,” he said, leaning down and stealing a kiss from my lips. “You don’t need to hide anything from me any longer; we will talk through anything. We must face our issues as a unit. And I’ll be more sensitive to your needs, I promise,” Ronan said as he placed soft pecks against my lips.

  A deep moan boomed from his throat sending a shockwave through my body, as his tongue thrust into my mouth in search of my own. Heat coursed through me until it landed in my nether region causing me to instantly swell with passion. The way my body responded told me that Ronan’s apology was moments away from being accepted.

  Do you really want to let him back in? I asked myself as I pulled away from him. No. The thought of him being with Misty wouldn’t allow me to go there.

  “You better not be lying to me about putting your lips on that woman’s pussy or about going up in her raw. If you did, you will have a whole new set of problems in dealing with me. You got that, Ronan?” I said, shaking myself from the mounting desire to become one with my husband.

  “I got it, baby, I’m telling you the truth. I wouldn’t go up in anyone but you in that way.” His silver eyes left mine momentarily before returning and pleading for me to accept his words as devout truth. I stood on my tip toes and pressed my lips against his.

  “I can taste the rum on you,” I said.

  “No more of that,” he said smiling down at me.

  “There is something else,” I said with trepidation. “I’m cancer free.”

  Ronan picked me up off my feet and swung me around.

  “That’s great news!” he said planting a deep and sensuous kiss on my lips. When our kiss broke, he said just above a whisper, “I love you so much. I will never spend another
moment without you near.”

  “I’ve taken all of the treatments to ensure that it doesn’t return and, as of right now, there is no trace of cancer in my body,” I said with a smile. I had been happy to get the news from my doctor about being cancer free, as well.

  “Babe, we have to celebrate when we get home,” Ronan said, flashing his sweet, handsome smile at me. “I’ll stop and pick up a bottle of your favorite wine, and what would you like for dinner?”

  I bit down on my lip, contemplating whether I was returning home or going back to a hotel. Ronan picked up on my ambivalence and walked over and picked me up off my feet.

  “You’re not leaving me again, Ruby. You’re coming home to celebrate being cancer free. You are my wife. You are supposed to be with me. In my life. In our home. In our bed at night,” he said as he placed me down on his desk.

  His lips consumed mine as he nudged my legs apart. His hand slipped into my blouse and massaged my warm back. Chill bumps covered my skin as he stroked me so lovingly.

  “I want to make love to you Ruby. Can I have you?” his hot breath whispered against my ear. “I need my wife, now,” he said, when I didn’t answer.

  I stopped his hand as he was slipping my shirt over my head. “Ronan, please. Let’s take this one step at a time,” I said, unsure of my ability to please him the way I had in the past.

  Doubts about whether I’d be able to perform after my surgery, or whether he preferred Misty more than me, threatened to ruin any possibility of me ever enjoying my husband in an intimate way.

  He let out a deep sigh and hit his fist against the desk beside me. “Fair enough,” he said, helping me put my shirt back on.

  As soon as it was over my head, he kissed me and held me close to him for what seemed like forever.

  Chapter 5

  Ronan