Growling he demands,
“Promise if you need me you’ll call straight away. You don’t wait. You pick up the fucking phone and dial. Promise me, Tilly, or I’m coming over there right now, and I won’t give a fuck what the asshole you’re married to has to say about it.”
I love that he’s protective of me, and love that he’d drop everything at a moments’ notice, but the last thing I need right now is the six-foot-three, Charlie Hunnam look alike beating down my front door. Especially not with my equally large, equally scary husband inside.
“I promise,” I whisper disconnecting the call.
Seeking Saint out, I find him already waiting for me in the living room with a mug of coffee sitting in front of my favorite chair. It’s the little things like this that make what I’m about to do even harder. He knows how I like my coffee, and where I sit when I want to have a serious talk with him. He knows I twist the ends of my hair when I’m thinking about something, and he knows I chew on my lower lip when I’m nervous. Saint knows everything about me and I thought I knew everything about him, but I was wrong. More to the point, that’s why we’re sitting here in awkward silence right now, isn’t it?
At the sound of him clearing his throat, my head jerks up from where I was studying a dust bunny hiding under the couch, and I suck in a deep breath at the defeated look in his eyes.
“Baby, you wanna tell me what this is all about, or am I going to keep sitting here looking at your pretty face in silence.”
That’s the thing about my husband. He can be the most charming man on the planet when he wants to be. It’s one of the things that drew me to him in the first place. The memories of all the times over the years he’s been kind and caring assault me all at once, but I refuse to fall into that trap again. Too many times I’ve pushed this aside and put it on the backburner, and I’m not doing it again all for the sake of one kind comment amongst a myriad of horrible memories.
Reaching inside the drawer of the small coffee table to my left, I pull out the thick envelope I’ve kept hidden there for over a week. It’s now or never. The one thing I never wanted our relationship to come to is happening regardless of all our good intentions, and our promises to each other that we would have a beautiful life.
I glance down at it one last time and steel myself in preparation for his reaction. Internally I’m crying at knowing what this symbolizes. It tears me apart to think that our marriage comes down to a few signatures on a stack of papers.
Handing it to him I see the confusion written all over his handsome face, but confusion morphs quickly into anger, and his response proves I was right in thinking this isn’t going to go smoothly.
“That better not be what I fucking think it is, babe?”
Nodding my head in affirmation I reply,
“It is. It’s time, Saint, and we both know it.”
Jumping to his feet Saint starts pacing, wearing a path in the carpet.
“Bullshit! I don’t know anything of the fucking sort.” Turning to glare at me he says, “You can’t be serious, Tilly. I thought shit was just starting to come good between us. Why now? What’s fucking changed that you want to do this now?”
Funnily enough, he’s actually calmer than I expected he’d be. Nowhere near ready to sit down and go over the details I know we need to hammer out, but I didn’t expect him shut down and storm out, so this is better than the alternative. I’ll give him time to come to terms with it, time I know he’ll need, because I don’t need him to hear everything I have to say today just the most important parts. Hopefully he’ll stay calm for at least that long.
“I’m not sure what your idea of good is, but fucking another woman at least twice a week, is not good, Saint. Not even close. I’ve put up with this for years. You not coming home, leaving in the middle of the night when you don’t think I’ll notice. I’ve shared you for God’s sake. I’ve shared my husband for nearly three years, and I’ve finally realized that if this keeps going it’s on me. That I’ll need to take responsibility for it not you, and I don’t want that for myself, Saint. But I especially don’t want any of this for the girls.”
“Well if my wife,” he says with exaggeration on the word wife, “was fucking opening her legs, I wouldn’t be going elsewhere would I?” He enquires all but baring his teeth at me.
Rolling my eyes, I can’t help but find him the tiniest bit amusing. I don’t have to be a genius to know it would come to this. That he’d use our lack of sex life as a weapon. It’s been the biggest bone, (no pun intended), of contention for him since I found out about his affair. We haven’t slept together since the night before I originally confronted him about his infidelity, and although I miss him desperately, sometimes so much I ache with it, the one thing I refuse to do is share my husbands’ cock. It’s bad enough I did it unwittingly for months, but it’s another thing altogether to knowingly have sex with him when he’s having it with her as well.
It should make me angry that he’d dare to say shit like this to me, but I know him too well for it to affect me the way it should anymore. This is what he does when he feels cornered or trapped by something. He lashes out. He may apologize after the fact but that doesn’t soothe the sting of the initial burn, and for all my bravado I can’t just shake that off. I know each and every time he does it, it leaves yet another scar on my heart. Scars that are now taking much longer to heal.
This time I choose to laugh at his bitter, hateful words though. Because honestly, it is fucking laughable. What, did he think I would let him put his dick wherever he wanted and I would welcome him back into my bed, into my arms without question? I hope not, because if he did he’s dumber than I thought.
Giggling at the thought, I attempt to pull myself together and approach the rest of the conversation with the seriousness it deserves.
“Sign them or don’t sign them, it’s up to you. I don’t much care what you do anymore. If you don’t sign them the divorce will go uncontested and the judge will sign off on the papers three months from now. If you read them you’ll see I don’t want anything from you. You can have it all. I don’t even want child support. When you’re finished, if you sign them, the divorce will be processed in the next two weeks and you’re free to do whatever you want, with whoever you want, but either way we’re through, Saint.”
Dropping to his knees in the middle of our living room, Saint lets out a strangled noise, one that sounds barely human. Looking at him for the first time since I handed him the envelope, I can see his eyes are overflowing with tears. Red and irritated, they practically beg me to reconsider, but I can’t and I won’t. I’m done being put second. I’m done having to fight for scraps of the man that should have been mine, and only mine. I’m just done. And while my heart cracks at the sight of him so broken, so lost only feet away from me, I can’t help but be saddened even further at the knowledge our relationship wasn’t forged from something lasting, but from lies and half-truths.
Making his way hesitantly across the room until he’s kneeling at my feet, Saint pleads with me.
“Please don’t do this. Please, Tilly. I’ll do anything, and I mean any-fucking-thing to make this right. You want me to never see her again, done. You want me to resign my position with the club, done.” Swallowing heavily he says, “You want me to give up my rights to Tucker, I’ll do it, but please don’t fucking leave me, Tilly. I love you, babe. More than you’ll ever know. If you leave me I won’t survive it. It will fucking break me.”
It’s in that moment I know I’m making the right decision. Because as much as I love this man, and I do love him with every piece of my soul, any man that would offer to give up one child could very easily do the same if mine and Stacey’s positions were reversed. Then it would be my girls he would have left floating in the breeze, and thought he could isn’t something I can live with without an innate fear it would become my new reality.
Cradling his face in my hands, I take one last long look into the eyes of the man I’ve spent my
entire adult life with. He still looks like the same man I fell in love with. Six-foot-three, with the build of a quarterback, because he still works out every day without fail, and he has the body to prove it. His jet black hair is longer now than when I met him, but it’s no less beautiful. Back then he shaved it close to his scalp, but when he learned that I loved running my hands through it he started keeping it longer for me.
But it’s his jade green eyes that captured my heart the first day I met him, and have kept me enamored every day since. The depth to them is amazing. I’ve never seen eyes so vibrant but intense at the same time, and the way they are looking at me now tells me everything I need to know. Everything he’s never needed to say to me. They tell me he loves me. That I’m his other half, as he is mine. They tell me he’s sorry. Sorry he did this to me, to us, and to our children. They hold remorse, guilt, pain, and unwavering sorrow. They beg me to reconsider and to give him another chance. But most of all they tell me he was serious when he said he couldn’t go on without out us.
I wish there was something I could do to make him see that he can. That it is possible to live without us, because let’s face it, he already has been for years. I want him to see he’ll be able to move on one day, whether that be with Stacey the mother of his other child, or someone else he can keep going. And I hope for his sake he does because he has four beautiful babies to live for.
I lean in and kiss his forehead softly, for what I know for a fact will be the last time. I can feel his body shudder beneath my hands and then turn rock solid. He stops moving completely. Stops breathing altogether. Whispering to him I say,
“There will never be a day that I don’t love you, Tobias Malachi Phillips. You were the first man I ever loved, and nothing can or ever will change that. I hope you know what beautiful gifts you gave me when you gave me our children, and no matter how far apart we are I’ll always carry a piece of you with me.”
I speak from my heart willing him to absorb what I’m saying and hold it close. Because this is all I can give him. My last promise that I’ll treasure what we had together forever. I just hope it’s enough.
CHAPTER THREE
Tobias
“They say absence makes the heart grow fonder,
I call bullshit. Nothing makes the heart grow fonder except rum and vodka.”
- Rotten eCard
‘I just lost my life’ keeps repeating over and over in my head like a sick, twisted mantra. I just lost my reason for waking up in the morning. My reason for breathing. I just lost everything I hold dearest, and from the look on my wife’s face there’s no getting it back. I could promise to be better, to do better, but it would be pointless. She’s not backing down this time. And no matter how hard her words are to hear that doesn’t make them any less true.
When Tilly handed me this envelope I didn’t expect what was inside would end up being my complete and utter destruction. I thought it’d end up being a bullet that killed me. A road accident on my bike maybe. I never considered my death would come at the hands of my wife when she served me with divorce papers. It shouldn’t have come as so much of a shock, but it has. I sure as shit don’t deserve to be angry at her for doing what she should’ve done months, hell, years ago, but I am. I’m fucking furious. Rage burns through my veins like wildfire, threatening to annihilate everything in its path.
My woman is staring at me with a look in her eyes I haven’t seen in longer than I can remember. It’s a look I saw her wear every night I climbed in bed with her, just before I slid deep inside her fucking magnificent body. It’s also a look I put on her face in the afterglow of our lovemaking. After I finished fucking her so hard her toes would curl and she’d scream my name. It’s a look of peace. Tilly mightn’t have wanted our marriage to end like this, but now it has she can’t hide the sliver of relief she feels, and I don’t blame her for that either.
I cover her hands that are currently resting lightly on the sides of my jaw, continuing to capture her eyes with mine. I need her to see me. To feel me. To know everything I’ve told her is true. I need to ask her for something I don’t have the right to ask her for, but I want it nonetheless. She shouldn’t even consider it, but I need this from her. We need this.
“Let me love you one last time, Tilly. I need to feel you around me one more time before I never get the chance again.” She doesn’t say no right away, her eyes flickering with indecision so I beg. “Please, baby. Please let me make love to my wife one last time.”
Without warning Tilly stands up taking one of my hands in hers. As she walks up the stairs I don’t say a word, because I don’t want her to stop and change her mind even though she should. I don’t want her to deny me the pleasure of what I’ve been missing for two and a half long years, because I desperately need this. It’s fucking selfish of me, and I’ll probably feel guilty as hell after we’re done, but that doesn’t stop me from craving her. From salivating at the memory of what she feels like under me.
Looking back when she reaches the top step she whispers,
“One last time, Tobias. One last time I want you to make love to me like there’s no one else.”
I can do that. I can so fucking do that, because there isn’t anyone else. There never has been. I haven’t told her, I haven’t told anyone, but I only ever fucked Stacey once. One night with her, the night she conceived my son, is the only night I’ve ever spent with her and I can’t even remember it.
Finding myself in the situation I am, you’re probably wondering why I haven’t told my wife that it was only a one-time thing. The answer’s fucking simple. Every time I left the house, even if was innocent so I could see my son, I felt like I was cheating on her. It doesn’t make a difference that I’m not actually fucking Stacey, it’s still a betrayal to Tilly and everything our marriage stands for. It also wouldn’t have changed things between Tilly and I, I know her well enough to know that. Now it’s too late, I can’t claim I never did what I falsely led her to believe, because now it would look like I’m just saying that shit to keep us together.
This is my penance for every time I snuck out the house so I didn’t upset her or my girls. This is how I pay for every time I told her I had to go pick up Tucker and take him somewhere feeling like I was choosing him over her. This is how I atone for every time I couldn’t make it home because Tucker was sick, or he’d cry when I was leaving, making me stay just another hour that ended up with me sleeping the night in his bed. This is how I live with the consequences of my actions.
Taking control of the situation, I grab my wife and spin her up against the wall just outside our bedroom door. We’re lucky our house is laid out the way it is, our room, a huge master suite, and another guest suite being only rooms on this floor, with the three kids bedrooms downstairs. Because what I intend to do to her we need privacy.
Stepping into her space I ask,
“You going to let me have you the way I know you want me to?”
She’s knows what I’m asking her. She knows I’m asking if I can fuck her the way we both love it. Hard, rough, and completely without restraint. It’s just another thing that makes this woman perfect for me. The way she matches my hunger in the bedroom and out of it is fucking perfection. Not to mention, my Tilly likes it a little rough. She loves it when I pull her hair, spank her delicious ass, and thrust into her unrestrained. I might like controlling her and showing her she’s mine, but get Tilly naked, then it’s her who owns me body and soul, and she knows it.
Tilly shivers, and I barely hear her over the roar of blood in my ears when she says,
“Yes.”
The quiver in her voice, the way she’s clenching her thighs together, and the way her chest is heaving, fighting for air tells me she’s as turned on as I am. Something that’s becomes more evident when I grind my rock hard cock against her jeans encased pussy. The heat coming off her in waves proves she wants this as much as I do.
“Are you wet for me, Tilly? Do you want me to sink my cock inside you so dee
p you don’t know where I start and you begin.”
That’s another thing my woman loves, when I talk dirty to her. Nothing gets her hotter than me telling her exactly what I’m going to do to her in every dirty, explicit detail.
“Do you want me to bend you over, strip your jeans down those beautiful legs, pull your panties aside, and see how much your tight, little cunt wants me?”
On a moan she arches her hips toward mine, rotating, grinding, trying to get closer to what she needs. What only I can give her. She doesn’t need to worry though, I’ll give her everything she needs and then some. Crashing my lips to hers, not able to hold back any longer I attack her mouth. I want the taste of her on my tongue. I want to memorize the shape and feel of her lips on mine. I need to absorb everything I can, so that when it’s gone I can remember exactly what I lost. Exactly what I threw away.
Tilly isn’t shy or timid when she kisses me back. Taking what she needs from me, she pushes her tongue past my lips, her taste exploding on my taste buds. Coffee, a hint of cinnamon from the rolls she baked earlier, and a flavor that’s unmistakably Tilly invades my senses making me almost shake with the desire to take her now. My tongue slides against hers fighting for dominance. This isn’t a soft slow kiss; it’s all teeth, aggression, and raw, carnal need.
Forged: A Devil's Spawn MC Novel Page 4