Sitting up straighter she glares at me until I ask,
“What are you saying, babe? You can’t fucking mean that. I don’t want her, I want you, and only you. I love you, Tilly. I’ve loved you for eleven fucking years, and I don’t intend to let that bitch come between us. Even if she is having my kid I’m not letting that change things for us.”
“I do mean it. You put us all in this situation, and honestly no matter how much I don’t want to admit it, I love you too. I can’t see there being a time when I won’t, but you did this. You did this to us, and now you have to let it play out however the chips may fall,” she replies shaking her head.
“I still don’t get what you’re trying to tell me. You can’t be saying you’re happy for me to keep this shit going. No one would want that, babe, least of all you.” Raking my hands through my hair, I look up when I hear a muffled sniffle. Up until now Tilly hasn’t cried, but at the sight of her tears I’m out of my seat faster than you can say ‘fuck me’.
Kneeling in front of her stroking my palms up and down her thighs sees me sighing.
“Shit, don’t cry, Tilly. Please, please don’t cry, baby. I’m not worth your tears, sweetness.”
Roughly pushing the tears away Tilly grabs my hands in hers.
“No, you’re right. I’m not happy about any of this, but what can I do? If I choose any of the other options I lose you, and if I put my head in the sand and pretend it didn’t happen, pretend I don’t know you’ll go back to her and ignore the fact I know you’ll be with her again, then I’ll lose me.” Shaking her head jerkily she says, “No, I can’t do any of those things. And as much as it breaks my heart, all I can do is let you live what you’ve done to us. Let you work out where you really, truly want to be.”
Standing up so quickly it almost knocks me off balance, Tilly straightens her T-shirt, and brushes an imaginary piece of lint off her jeans.
“I don’t want you to think for one minute me letting you do this that means I forgive you, because honestly, I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive you for what you’ve done. You’re the one person I thought I could trust with everything I am, and now I find out I can’t. Do you know what that does to a person? What that does to me? To know that I’ve given everything I have to you. That I’ve loved you more than I ever thought I could love anyone, and then to have that thrown back in my face. Do you have any fucking idea how it feels to be happy, so very happy you’re having another child with the man you love more than reason, only to be slapped with the knowledge that you aren’t the only one with that honor?” Shaking her head angrily she answers herself. “No, you don’t and you never will, because I would never do something like this to you. I would never make you question whether you were good enough. Whether you had done anything to make me stray. I would never do this to us.”
When she goes to walk away I grab her wrist, not hard enough to hurt, only with enough force to make her stop and get her attention.
“Don’t! Don’t ever think this is on you, because it’s not. It’s on me, all of it. I fucking love you more than all the stars in the sky, and I’m sorry, so fucking sorry I’m making you feel like this. But don’t ever think I have a choice to walk away from you because I don’t. I would never fucking leave you, not even if you tried to make me. You can’t leave the other half of your heart behind, sweetness. I can’t live without it, and I won’t live without you.”
“Well, you’re lucky I’m not trying to make you then, aren’t you?” She snaps ripping her wrist from my grip. “I love you too, Saint, but you aren’t my Tobi anymore, and I don’t know if you ever will be again.” With that she walks away from me and the life we had together, leaving us where we are now. This isn’t a place I want to be, but more than that it’s not a place I ever wanted Tilly to be.
The aroma of coffee brings me back to the here and now. I have to fight to fend off the memories that swamp my brain at every turn, because it’s not as simple as flicking a switch and they all fall away. Noticing that Tilly’s watching me with her hip propped against the counter, I paste on a smile and turn to watch my girls finish eating their breakfast. However nothing, not even the sight of my two youngest playing with their Cheerios’ will remove the ache from my chest, and the sense of dread building in the pit of my stomach. Not to mention, the mounting anxiety surrounding the conversation I’ll be having with my wife later is making me feel twitchy as fuck.
CHAPTER TWO
Tallulah
“I didn’t know I could be such a bitch until I met you.
Thanks for all your help.”
- Rotten eCard
My stomach churns and I have to fight to force the bile back down my throat at the thought of what I’m about to do. I’ve spent the better part of the morning doing laundry, and trying to keep myself busy in order to push the talk I need to have with my husband to the back of my mind. This is not a conversation I want to have, but it’s one we definitely need to have. This has gone on for too long. It’s time for me to get off the fence and decide what I’m doing, and where we go from here.
By now you all know what a two-bit, lying, cheating asshole Saint is, and I won’t disagree with you. I’m not even going to try to defend him. He is, and that’s all there is to it. Except, he’s my two-bit, lying, cheating asshole, and up until now that’s made all the difference. What’s different about now? Well, now, I can’t bring myself to let this charade continue. It’s been two and a half years since I originally confronted him about what he’d done, and I forced us all live the way we have been. And I’ve come to the realization of late that that’s been two and a half years too long. Granted it’s my fault we’re all in this situation, but that’s going to change today. Not because I want to lose him, but because something has to give.
People say that when you look back on it you’ll see the signs you’re husband has been cheating on you. There’s little clues in his actions, the way he talks to you, the things he stops doing, but I didn’t see any of that, and I still can’t. I’ve wracked my brain to try and work out what went wrong with us back then. What didn’t I give him that made him need to look elsewhere, but I can’t think of a thing that I’d done or said that would turn him into another woman’s arms.
I’m not blaming myself, far from it. I know deep down that even if I had done something to make him seek out the comfort of another woman it wouldn’t be my fault. That it would be all on him, but it doesn’t stop me from second-guessing myself though. And it certainly doesn’t stop me from questioning why I wasn’t good enough for him either. Maybe that’s my problem. Maybe I’m just not the woman he needs, and maybe I never have been.
You’re all probably wondering why I stayed if this is how I feel. Why I put up with his shit, and why for the love of God I still allow it to continue? Those aren’t easy questions for me to answer. I’ve thought about it long and hard, and I still can’t come up with an answer that makes sense to me, let alone one that would explain it to you. In the end it keeps coming back to one thing; I love him. For the life of me I don’t know why, he sure as hell doesn’t deserve the love I have for him, but that in and of itself may be the answer you and I are both looking for. He doesn’t deserve it, which makes it all the more important that he have it.
There’s only one person that seems to have some understanding of why I stay, Lexi. She’s been my rock for the last two years, and without her I don’t know if I’d get out of bed most days.
Lexi is intimately acquainted with what it’s like to love a man that doesn’t deserve it, but to still love him anyway. That alone has made her insights and support invaluable. There are some days I don’t know why she’s friends with me, it seems like a friend with the issues that I have would be the last person you would want around when you’ve got a new husband and babies to worry about. But then there are days I choose not to question it, because I’m just grateful she there for me when I need her most.
When Lexi found out she was pregnant with the
twins, Jagger and Deacon, my first thought was don’t do it, don’t stay with him, and get the hell out, now. I know, horrible of me right? I wasn’t thinking about anything but her emotional well-being, but I suppose that doesn’t make it nicer of me to have thought it to begin with. I couldn’t help it though. I didn’t want her to walk the same road I have. To wonder where her man is. If he’s coming home that night, and if he does, where and who has he been with before he climbs into bed with her. It’s a vicious never ending cycle, and one I never wanted her to experience. I know where it leads, and it’s nowhere nice.
At the time I tried to be upbeat and positive for her sake, but the words of encouragement felt like a lead balloon in my belly every time I spoke them. It wasn’t until the middle of her third trimester, I think she was thirty-three weeks or there about, that I told her my fears. In doing so I didn’t realize until it was too late that I had inadvertently told her my own.
I remember her hugging me tightly, promising me that if I needed anything she’d be there for me. And she is. Lexi has never let me down. Never reneged on a promise. And in turn she’s the one person who began to reinstate my belief that there really are good people out there who won’t judge, and won’t look at me as weak for my decisions regarding Saint.
There’s only one other person that has helped me realize I’m not as alone as I’d led myself to believe I was. Rob Sharp, Glock’s best friend and sudo-brother has been more of a friend to me than some of the people that have been in my life for years.
Rob and I met at a club hog roast nine months ago. I was harried, my hair was falling out of my sloppy ponytail, and I think I was wearing the same jeans I’d been wearing for what felt like the last month. I was rushed off my feet seeing as it was my job as Saint’s old lady to organize the party being thrown in his honor. Not to mention my kids were in the process of making that task next to impossible. The girls had decided they wanted to pretend to be super glue that day, and had attached themselves firmly to my side not letting me get a few feet away from them before one of them demanded my attention.
Rob offered to take the girls to play that way I could finish the million things I still had to get done in the very little time I had to do it. I was hesitant at first, but the sweet way in which he spoke to them reassured me he’d take care of them and I had nothing to fear. The way their little faces lit up when he crouched down listening attentively to every word they said was priceless, and exactly what they needed.
Saint had just been voted in as the new First Rider for the club, hence the celebration, and with his new job things had gotten crazy hectic. Devil’s Spawn had been without a First Rider for three months out of respect for the previous position holder. But it was now time to move on, and they were doing that by Saint taking Davey’s seat at the table.
I loved Davey, he was one of the sweetest men I’d ever met. He wasn’t as hard or gruff as many of the other older members, and he was always quick with a smile or compliment. It was devastating when we lost him, not just for me, but for the club too. Davey had held the position of First Rider for almost forty years, and he would be sorely missed.
His wife had passed to breast cancer five years earlier, and at only sixty-one, Davey was taken from us far too. As sad as it was when he passed, it wasn’t a complete shock. For years Davey had been battling kidney disease, and eventually they just shut down and stopped working altogether. It was a long, slow process. A horribly painful one at that. The only light at the end of the tunnel was that he wouldn’t be suffering anymore.
At first I was happy for my husband, being given Davey’s old position was an honor, but all that faded into nothing but another bitter disappointment when I realized what it actually meant for my family. Not just me but my children too.
Saint would be away from home a lot, probably more often than he was here, but that wasn’t what bothered me most. No, what concerned me was who he would go home to, not if he would come home to Blackwater alive and well. Maybe that was selfish of me, not caring about my husbands’ safety, but Saint was a skilled rider with thousands and thousands of miles under his tires, so the thought he may be hurt or injured while doing his job never entered my mind. Where he would lay his head at night did though.
At first Saint called me daily, several times a day actually, but over the months that followed it dwindled down to only occasional calls. When it further deteriorated to sporadic text messages here and there, if any at all, that was when I knew I didn’t need to wonder anymore. He’d made his decision. His time may have been split between two separate families, but it was me and our girls that were getting fed the scraps of time he had left over.
About three months ago, when he started coming home later than he was expected by hours, I came to the realization I couldn’t keep doing this. I had to make a change, and regardless of how badly it hurt me, and in turn our children, this was no way to live. For any of us.
I kick myself daily for suggesting he live out the life he’s carved for himself, but I hate him even more for going along with it. I thought I was strong enough, selfless enough to allow him time to spend with Tucker, but I’m not. Every time he leaves me to be with him, and ultimately her, it tears off another already fragile piece of my heart.
Don’t get me wrong, Tucker is an amazing little boy from what I’ve seen of him around the clubhouse, but that doesn’t stop the jealousy I feel when Saint picks him up smiling, looking down on a child that isn’t ours with pride glowing in his eyes.
The ringing of my cell phone snaps me out of those dark thoughts, and seeing Rob’s name come up on the screen has me smiling a little to myself.
“Hey,” I say softly into the phone.
I’m not hiding talking to Rob from Saint, but I don’t advertise it either. I don’t think Saint would be bothered by it, but I don’t want to risk him throwing a shit fit over it so I keep the calls to myself.
“You told him yet?”
I know why he’s asking. I promised him that this time I would follow through with the conversation I’ve been putting off for too long. I also promised I would call him when I’d done it and I’d let him know if I needed anything. I haven’t done any of those things yet, so his call isn’t unexpected. I’m not in the habit of breaking promises but this is harder than I imagined, and it is taking everything in me not to forget the whole thing and stick my head firmly back in the sand.
Before you jump to conclusions, nothing has happened between me and Rob, not romantically at least. I’ve seen the interest in Rob’s eyes, which at times is unnerving, and I’m sure he’s seen the curiosity in mine, but that’s as far as it’s gone. I won’t deny Rob is an extremely attractive, desirable man, and given a different set of circumstances I’d probably be more than willing to see where things went with us. But things aren’t different and I love my husband, so friendship is all I have to offer him.
Ours is an easy friendship. He listens to my problems, and I do the same for him. If I need a shoulder to cry on and Lexi isn’t available, I go to Rob. He loves my girls and they love him, but what I feel for him isn’t remotely close to what I feel for Saint. It’s not even in the same ballpark.
To give it some perspective, I’ve been with a total of one man in my entire life. Saint was my first, and until recently I made the assumption he would be my only. Depending on how today goes that might change no matter how much I wish it wouldn’t. But that aside, it won’t alter the fact that Rob and I will only ever have friendship between us.
“No,” I whisper hesitantly. Albeit Rob has been supporting me in my decision to talk to Saint, in the end it’s still my choice to make, and I can’t help feeling my hackles rise at his insistence I get this over and done with.
“Why the fuck not, babe? You’re not getting cold feet are you?” Rob sighs heavily in exasperation. I hate that I’m disappointing him. I hate that I haven’t had the courage to tell Saint yet, but I need to do this in my own time and him pushing me isn’t helping. “For fuck�
��s sake, Tallulah. You fucking promised you were gonna go through with it this time. Hasn’t this shit gone on long enough, or do you like him treating you like a fucking side dish?”
He’s right it has gone on too long, but I don’t need him or anyone else telling me what to do. I’ve had more than enough of that already to last me a lifetime.
“I’m going to talk to him in a minute, Rob. He’s just putting the girls down for their nap and we’re going to talk.” He starts to speak but I cut him off. “You’re my friend but you are not my mother, or my father for that matter. I appreciate everything you’ve done to help me, but you can shove your judgements up your ass and keep your opinions to yourself if you don’t have anything supportive to say.”
Rob surprises me with his reaction when he laughing. I expected him to keep harping on about my lack of action, but no, the big bastard laughs instead.
“Good for you, babe. Anyone ever told you that you sound hot when you’re bitching at someone?”
Fucking men, I think shaking my head.
“Shut up.” Hearing the soft click of Nevaeh and Avery’s door, I do my best to hurry him off the phone. “I promise I’ll call later, I need to go.”
Forged: A Devil's Spawn MC Novel Page 3