“I’ll handle this at dinner,” he adds, releasing me.
I don’t speak. I simply blow out a heavy breath and finish cooking.
I feel helpless. I feel out of control. The only thing I can do is make our dinner, so I’ll focus on making it a good one.
Sitting down at the table we have shared so many meals at, a somberness hits me. This is it.
“Did you have to work early today, Papi?” Mariella asks Ruben, opening the door to the conversation that needs to begin yet I would give anything to avoid.
Ruben lays his fork on his plate, moving his elbows onto the table and lacing his fingers together as if he were saying a prayer. After a moment, he looks up at our daughter. “I stayed at the compound last night.”
And so it begins.
“Why?” RJ immediately asks.
As Ruben looks at our children, I can see the pain in his eyes and again find some satisfaction in it. I shouldn’t, but I do.
“Sometimes people”—he pauses—“grow apart. Things change.”
“Are you and Mami getting a divorce?” Maritza spits out.
I can’t help looking at my daughter in shock. “How do you know about divorce?”
They say kids are resilient, but I don’t see how they can bounce back from their family falling apart. As a result, the way she calmly answers scares me.
“At school, Jimmy’s parents are getting a divorce. He said his dad moved out, and that’s how he knows.”
“It happens all the time,” Mariella adds as if we are discussing a change in vacation, not our entire lives.
Looking at my son, my world crashes once again. Tears are falling from his eyes one by one.
“We won’t see you anymore,” RJ starts before his emotions become too much.
“No, no, I’ll be here. You’ll see me every day. I just won’t live here. Your mom and I, we just need some space to regroup.”
At that answer, RJ wipes his eyes with the back of his hands. Satisfied that they will see their father, the kids seem to take the rest of the night in stride. I’m glad they can, because in my mind, everything is still falling … falling apart.
New Routine
One Month Later…
The duplexes are nice. I have a furnished place to stay. I can’t really complain … Only, it definitely isn’t home. If I were a single man, I could see living here and being completely satisfied. I’m not a single man, yet in some ways, I am.
What a mess of things I have made. Part of me wants to go out and live the life of a bachelor. I want the rush of no responsibility, the freedom of doing what I want, when I want. The thing is, as much as I think I want that, I can’t stop thinking about my wife and children. I can’t stop wondering if Jenna is sleeping, if the kids are fighting, or if they need me and I’m not there.
On one hand, I am single and alone. Except, I have dinner every night with my wife and my kids. I leave then come back here to feel the emptiness, all knowing they are at home, full of noise and life, a life I helped build and am walking away from.
We have spent a month creating our new normal. Will anything ever feel right again?
Picking up my phone, I do something I haven’t done in so long I can’t remember the last time.
“Ruben,” she answers on the third ring, “I’m getting the kids ready for school.”
“Wanna go out to breakfast together before work?”
I hear her shuffling around, but I get no reply. Faintly, I can make out the sound of a door shutting, I think.
“Ruben, I don’t see why we need to be together unless the children are involved.”
She was moving to a room where the kids couldn’t hear us.
Rubbing my chest, I try to calm the physical pain I feel from her words. “I was thinking—”
“No, don’t go there,” she interrupts me. “You’re lonely. Nothing has changed with how you feel about me. As the mother of your children, I have an obligation to you where they are concerned. Beyond co-parenting, we don’t need to play games with each other. I will not be a doormat. I will not be with a man who doesn’t love me for me.”
I hate hearing the pain in her voice, pain I caused.
“Jenna, baby, breathe.” I sigh. “That wasn’t my intention. I just thought—”
“Don’t think. I’ve gotta get the kids on the bus and then get to work. I’ll see you tonight for dinner since you set the kids up to expect that. Beyond our children, though, we have nothing to discuss.”
The silence that finds me on the other end lets me know she disconnected, and I think on what she said.
I am messing up at every turn. I did make it so the kids expect me at dinner. I didn’t think about her. My only thought was how I want my kids to see me every day. I want them to be impacted as little as possible while Jenna and I sort out our issues.
It’s not that I don’t love her. Can’t she see I just miss the person she was before? The passion between us died somewhere over the years. Since everything is about the kids for her, I thought, by making their needs my priority, it wouldn’t hurt anything … Although, it somehow did.
Two hours later, my day is not improving, my thoughts stay on Jenna and how much I fucked everything up. Now I’m in the truck with Frisco, going to get parts for a bike, when we drive by the office for the mini storage.
Jenna is standing outside with some guy I have never seen before, pointing to the storage buildings. She is doing her job and most likely giving him directions. When she looks up, though, I see her smile for the first time since I created this mess for us both.
It’s time I really sort myself out so she can do her own thing, too.
“What’s up with you, brother?” Frisco asks after we get the parts and get back in the truck.
I shake my head. “You and Tilly”—I bring up his ex, not sure if this will really help me or not—“when did you decide it was done?”
He looks over to me from the driver seat. “Fuck, that bad?”
“That song, you know the one about losing that loving feeling from back in the day?”
Frisco laughs. “Yeah, man, but that’s not you and Vida.”
“The heat, it’s gone.”
“Me and Tilly, we were fire and ice. She couldn’t handle the life. She felt like the club was more important than her. Every event, every run, damn near every day was a battle in my own home. If I left, I didn’t love her, even if I was coming home to her. If I put my cut on one more time, I didn’t love her. Hell, if I took a shit that stank, I didn’t love her, because I wasn’t thinking of her precious fucking nose.”
I laugh. “I bet it kept things alive.”
“Alive and exhausting. There was never a moment of calm. Back then, things were full of chaos for the club. We were trying to sort out exactly how far over the line of law abiding and outlawing we were willing to go. I had trouble at work, we had trouble in the club, and I damn sure had trouble at home.” He makes the right turn back out onto the highway. “I had no escape.”
I can understand where the man was coming from.
“It was war between your woman and your club.”
“A war she declared unnecessarily. You’ve got good with Vida, Ruby. She’s your escape when the days are long and the runs even longer.”
I let out a huff. “When the kids aren’t on her brain.”
“Brother, she’s a mother. She carried them babies inside her body. She felt them long before anyone else could. She held them first. They will always be on her mind. I heard a saying once: men’s brains are like waffles. We put everything in a box. If we are in the kid box, then we think of our kids and focus on those needs specifically. When we’re fucking our woman, we’re fucking our woman. On the flip side of that, women’s brains are like spaghetti; everything swirls together. So when they’re in the kid zone, they’re also thinking of work, home, and their man. A woman can be riding you like she can’t get enough of your cock, and in her mind, she could be making a damn grocery list.�
�
“Fuck you, Frisco!” I laugh. “Ain’t no one riding my cock and thinking of a grocery list. I work it better than that, brother.”
He smirks at me. “So you think.”
We both laugh. However, his words hit home. He’s right; Jenna’s brain is always going. Maybe she got lost in her lack of an escape. When does she get to turn it all off and worry about herself and only herself?
Getting home, I am just as irritated with Ruben as I was this morning. How dare he think he can call me up for breakfast like we are old friends! He told me to my face he wasn’t in love with me anymore. Sure, I asked the question, and some may view it as I brought this on myself, but never in a million years did I really think he would hesitate and, beyond that, actually tell me he loved me as the mother of his children yet was no longer in love with me.
There is a level of maturity we both must maintain. We have children together. For them, I will not get ugly, or at least, not in front of them. To call me to go to breakfast, though … The man has balls. The wall has been built between us, and it’s so high, even if he reached the heavens, he couldn’t get to me again.
As I fold some of his remaining clothes into a box, the dryer goes off, and I move to get the clothes out and add them to the rest. I should have mixed the dirty with the clean and left him to sort it out. I shouldn’t have worried over his clothes at all. It’s done now, no more. This is another step closer to getting my life back. I gave him too much for too long.
I could not fathom ever being anything other than in love, head over heels in love, seeing fireworks at every touch in love with Ruben Castillo … until now. There is so much anger inside me I don’t feel the love. No, I feel the need to move on. I have my kids, and for that alone, I don’t wish him any harm. The time for me to find out who I am without Ruben Castillo is here.
I look around our bedroom. I have taken the time to remove our couple pictures. The only ones left are family ones. As much as part of me wants to hate him for the hurt I feel, I can’t deny he is still the father of my children, and for life, we will be a family, even if it is a new definition of what we once were.
There was a watch on his dresser, but I dropped it into the top drawer. Visibly, I have cleared him from our marital space as much as possible.
Going into my bathroom, I look into the mirror.
“I am strong.” Thinking of my childhood, I sigh. “I have been through worse. Besides, I have my babies.” I blow out a breath. “I am a damn good mother,” I say with all the confidence in the world. I may not have done anything else right in my life, but I am a damn good mom. “I am beautiful … in my children’s eyes.”
Rolling my shoulders back, I gather my strength. “No more tears allowed. I am Jenna Mariella Natera de Castillo, and I will survive this.”
Pep talk complete, I go to the kitchen and set the table. Ruben arrives not long after the pizza I ordered does, and like every other night since our separation, we sit down and eat. The casual pleasantries commence, and our children share their day as if nothing has changed when, in essence, everything has fallen apart.
He tucks the kids in for bed while I move the box to the front porch and wait outside. When he finds me, he laughs, making fire build inside me like never before.
“Oh, my stuff goes outside once again, Vida. Why not in the yard?”
I glare. “No, your stuff goes in my van for me to return to you tomorrow after work.”
“Is that so?”
“You fucked up my life, Ruben!” I yell, praying that, since we are outside, my children can’t hear. I need this, though. I need to get it out. “You fucked up our life. Everything we built, you made crumble.”
“Oh, now she has fire,” he goads.
“Don’t push me too far. You created this mess, and now you come and go like it’s nothing. I’m over here, doing your laundry. That ends today. I’m cooking your meals? Tonight was your last one. If you wanna see the kids, fine, but you don’t get to eat meals with us. You can take them out on Wednesday nights. You can have every other weekend, like normal, separated parents do.”
As he steps into my space, I inhale his scent, and my heart beats even faster.
“You want papers; is that where this is headed, Vida? It’s been a month. We’re still sorting shit.”
“I’m your Vida no more. I’m not your life. Your life is your own. As for papers, let me make one thing clear to you, Ruben Castillo.”
“Yeah?” He smirks, getting off on my anger. “What’s that?”
“I’m not signing shit! I was the first Mrs. Ruben Castillo, and I’ll be the only. I’ll be damned if all the years building this life together end with some barfly raising my kids and having their name. You’re gonna give me that, too, out of respect for our children.”
“Is that so?” He smiles. “I see my wife found her heat again.”
“There is nothing about this you should be smiling about. As for my heat, you should be careful. I’m not sure you can take the flame.”
“Oh, baby, I can more than handle the flame. I just don’t ever want to see it fizzle again.” He kisses my forehead quickly. “This is the woman I fell in love with. This is the woman I breathe for.” He watches me as he backs off the porch, still smirking. “See you tomorrow, Vida.”
“Fuck you, Ruben Castillo, and the steel horse you rode here on.”
Family Redefined
Six Months Later
The Hellions annual barbeque is here. All the chapters, charters, affiliates, and families are at the thirty-acre compound. Business is off the table today. This is an event for appreciation and family coming together.
Helping to line up the pig cooker and the other barrel grills for hotdogs and hamburgers, I am caught off guard when Roundman approaches my side.
“Ruby, is Vida coming out today?”
Placing the bricks under the tires to keep them from rolling, I then look at the president of my club.
The man has aged well. His long hair is braided down his back, and his goatee is trimmed with streaks of gray. He is tall and built like he works out at a gym regularly, even though he doesn’t. He is a man I look up to, not only for his role within the club, but because he’s the type of man who truly leads by example. He is the walking, talking real deal of what he expects every man around him to be. He has been more of a father to me than the man who created me.
“Yeah,” I reply, moving to block up the next grill.
“That doesn’t sound too sure.”
I swear the man can read minds sometimes. I pause, putting my hands on my hips and looking to the ground. I don’t know how Roundman feels about my separation. Is he disappointed in me? We haven’t had any time to really talk about it.
“It’s my weekend with the kids, so she’ll at least be here to drop them off. Hopefully, having Doll here, she’ll want to stay and hang out with the girls.”
He rubs his goatee in thought. “I get things aren’t good with you two. Typically, when an ol’ lady and her man split”—he pauses—“well, I hate to say it, but typically, the club splits, too.”
I raise an eyebrow at him in question, not following.
“We are a brotherhood first. A lot of times, if things go south, we ride with our brother.”
Not being someone who is good at reading between the lines, I ask, “What are you trying to tell me?”
He looks at me as if he’s trying to get the words right, and for the first time, I wonder about my position in the club.
“Can’t leave her out, brother.”
Apprehension fills me. “I never expected you to.”
He can’t really think I would want the club to turn their backs on Jenna. She’s here because of me. She left everything and everyone behind to be here with Julio and me. When her brother got in trouble, she could have gone back to Mexico, but she didn’t. She stayed and chose to ride it out with me.
“I hate watching both of you go through this. I know you’ve got your reasons. I�
�ve been around a long time, Ruby. I had a love like yours once. Lost it to fucking cancer. I get you’ve got shit to work on, but you’ve got time and you’ve got opportunity. Instead of hoping the girls keep your ol’ lady hanging around, why don’t you be the reason she stays?”
Before I can reply, he slaps me in the man way on the shoulder and walks away.
Could I find a way to be the reason she stays? Over the last few months, she has gone out with Pami and Sass a few times. She has found a new routine. She dresses up, gets her nails done, wears makeup when she’s going out, and she even went and had her hair cut and styled.
Our interactions have been kept to the kids. I have tried to talk to her as a friend. I have tried to have something more between us than our children. However, the more fire she finds back in herself, the more she pushes me away.
Making my way around front, I watch her van pull into the compound. My kids jump out as soon as she opens the door. All three run to me for hugs I gladly give before sending them on their way inside. I don’t have to worry over them here. There are enough ol’ ladies around to make sure they are having fun and not killing each other so I can try to convince my wife to stay for a little while.
“Jenna,” I greet, shutting her car door behind her.
“Ruben,” she replies, attempting to walk away as I reach out and squeeze her arm gently.
“Wait,” I start. “Before you go in there, can we have a minute?”
“Ruben, I’ve been an ol’ lady long enough; I know how to act,” she says in an exasperated tone. “Whether we’re together or not, I still represent you. I get it. No need for the breakdown. I’ll follow the rules and not make you look bad in front of your brothers.”
“I love that heat you’re throwing around, Vida.”
She throws her hand up at me. “Stop, Ruben.”
Heated Ride: Hellions Motorcycle Club (The Hellions Ride Series Book 7) Page 8