by West, Jade
The message was from a long time ago, but the implication was still fucking timeless. She was a vile bitch, who’d played on my drunken night and stupid mistake to snare me for the rest of my life. If there had even been one stupid mistake on that one drunken night.
If I really had been able to get my dick up that night in her bed.
But I couldn’t go there…
Even I couldn’t bring myself to challenge that much of a cuntish pack of lies and come out the other side being civil enough to handle the logistics of our daughter together.
I smoked my cigarette and went back in, and she was still blubbing on the sofa, her usual switch from being the self-righteous bitch ruling the world to the poor little princess who was being treated so bad.
I’d bought into it for so long.
I’d believed it for so fucking long.
“You do know that Anna got epilepsy when you fucked me out of her life, don’t you?” I said, managing to keep my voice calm enough to speak. “You do know that I’ve spent the past decade hating myself for what I did to her?”
“We made Millie!” she snapped. “My God, Lucas! We made Millie! That’s all that matters here!”
But it wasn’t all that mattered.
All that mattered was that she was a piece of shit who deserved nothing from me, not even the slimmest little scrap of respect.
I cleared my throat before I sat down beside her, and I was bristling so fierce she didn’t even try to worm her way up close.
I was very calm, and very clear, and every scrap the man I should have been a thousand times over across the years.
The man I truly was, with the spine that I should have made sure was damned fucking solid all the way through.
I told her that she wouldn’t be moving to Hampshire, she’d be staying right here, and Millie would be splitting her time just fine between us.
I told her that she’d have to accept that she was a lying bitch who’d twisted me around her warped fucking wishes for too fucking long, and now was the time she’d be letting me go.
I told her that we were getting a divorce, and if she had so much as a sliver of sense in that calculating brain of hers, she’d see it’d be in her interest to sign on the line and keep her games to herself from here on in.
I told her I loved Anna.
I told her I’d always loved Anna.
I told her she’d never be coming between me and Anna Blackwell again for as long as I lived.
And fuck, I meant it.
I’d have signed that declaration in blood.
She cried.
She wailed.
She told me it had never been like that, and she’d loved me, and the road was the road, and we had Millie and yada yada fucking yada.
I asked her if we should let people make their own call on that and bring them into the story of how much of a twisted lying bitch she’d been when it mattered, and she paled before my eyes.
If there was ever anything more important to Maya than getting what she wanted, it was that the world saw her as Mrs fucking Perfect with her perfect fucking smile.
So, I used it. I told her I’d be very happy to keep the deviant truths of her bullshit lies to myself, just so long as she didn’t stand in my way of living my life with the woman I loved – and allowing my little girl to be a part of that.
Hell, she blubbed some more, but it didn’t matter. I’d have eaten my own shit before I compromised for one single second with that scheming bitch.
I told her it was my way or no way, and I’d destroy her in every way I could, in every court in the land if she didn’t swallow down her cuntish ways and draw a line in the sand for a new life. A separate life. A life where we were never going to be together again.
And then I left.
I didn’t wait for a response, I got up from the sofa with her wailing in her seat and I left.
Fuck her.
Fuck her lies.
I lit up another cigarette on my way down the path, and my heart was thumping, and I felt sick from the confrontation, but I left with a greater feeling of freedom than I’d had in years.
I was free of Maya.
I was free of being the asshole who was never good enough.
I stubbed my cigarette out in the truck ashtray and set off back to my house. I walked the dogs and logged into work from home, and checked out what was in the freezer for dinner.
And then I did what I should’ve done a decade ago.
I went to pick up Anna and tell her exactly what I’d just done with Maya fucking Brooks.
Chapter Forty-One
Anna
Work was surreal.
Stacey and Lucia had spent photocopy breaks through the morning telling me all about their weekends, and I’d listened and smiled and said nothing about mine. There was a comfort in the familiarity of my daytime routine. Meeting rooms, and coffee breaks, and people’s shoes making the same familiar sounds across the carpet when they passed by my desk.
But still, my whole soul was spinning.
Spinning with Lucas, spinning with hope, and fear, and dreams.
Spinning with the possibility that Maya Brooks could have ever told those lies and torn our world apart.
Spinning with the possibility that her friends could have ever supported that. Because how could you? How could you ever watch someone lie to tear other people’s dreams to the ground?
It was only when I grabbed my handbag from my desk and stepped out onto the street to find Lucas waiting there that evening that I realised none of it really mattered.
You can’t ever change the past, no matter how much you want to, so why give it any more of your future than you have to?
I was damn well determined not to give either Sebastian Maitland or Maya Brooks any more of ours.
Lucas was smiling bright as I climbed up into the passenger seat of the truck with him, reaching straight over to squeeze my fingers in his just as soon as he’d pulled away.
He asked how my day had been and I told him. I gave him the small talk little catch up with a grin and gossip, but it was there, and we both knew it – a whole topic was brewing right under the surface.
“Tell me about Maya,” I said to him. “I know you must’ve been to see her.”
He looked vaguely surprised that I knew that, but of course I did. I knew him.
We were back onto the Lydney lanes when he took a breath and started the rundown of his morning. He told me how Maya was every bit the spiteful scheming bitch Yasmin had painted her as, and she was right when she said we owed her nothing.
He told me about the New Age psychic crap she’d bought into when she’d wanted to believe their destiny was together, and it made me feel queasy just to think about it. Queasy to think that Hannah Ames really had been pregnant with Jamie, her eldest, and handed over her positive test to Maya to use for her games.
I had to say it, so I did, even though it made Lucas visibly flinch.
“Do you think you really had sex with her that night?”
“I can’t think about it,” he said. “Because if I even begin to think she lied about that too, I’ll never be able to be in the same room as her again. It’s bad enough already.”
“But she might have lied about it,” I pushed. “I mean, if she can lie about being pregnant with your child for the sake of psychic destiny, then surely she can lie about anything?”
He pulled onto the driveway and turned off the ignition, but he didn’t move from his seat, just stared out at the house across the garden.
“I was absolutely fucked that night,” he said. “I should never have been that fucked, and I should never have been in a state bad enough to end up in some random woman’s bed, regardless of what happened or not when I was in there.” He turned to face me. “I should never have been in a position where I could believe I’d make a mistake that bad, regardless of whether or not I actually made it or not.”
“But you might not have made it,” I said. “You might just
have got so drunk, you stumbled out of a taxi and thought you were home.”
“Or I might have been so drunk, I stumbled out of a taxi into Maya Brook’s bed and thought she was you enough that I fucked her. I’ll never know.”
He was right on that front. She was sure as hell never going to admit it, whatever the case.
I sighed and leaned back in my seat, staring out at the house along with him.
“So this is where it starts again, is it?” I asked. “Our whole new life, a decade later.”
“This is where it starts again,” he said, and his hand was right back in mine. “It’s been one fuck of a road getting here, but we’re here. Jesus Christ, Anna. I’m so glad we are.”
I tried to imagine living in the house, with him and the dogs. I tried to imagine this being home now, and meeting his sweet little girl and being Daddy’s girlfriend.
The whole thing would be so bizarre.
So bizarre, but so right.
“Let’s get it going then,” I said, and I was smiling as I dropped down from the truck.
He cooked me dinner, and we moved the conversation back to the more positive sides of life and we were laughing by the end of it, staring at the ceiling in bed, hand in hand and throwing around our ideas for the year ahead. We talked about summer trips, and whether we should get a batch of chickens for the garden, and how maybe, just maybe, we could get ponies for our new countryside life.
Because that’s what this was. A countryside life. The life we’d contemplated having one day when we were living our regular lives in the city way back when.
And now we had it.
Now we really had it looming ahead.
I knew what was coming before the police turned up a few days later. I knew as soon as they sat down opposite me in Lucas’s living room and began the conversation.
My word against his, unfortunately not enough evidence to prosecute, and I managed to nod my way through it without crying, because I’d tried.
I’d been honest and at least I’d tried.
After they’d gone, he held me tight, and I let out the fears I’d been pushing away for days on end.
“What if he comes after me, Lucas? Because he might. He never lets things go, and he’ll be raging. Totally raging that I went to the police about him.”
“He won’t be thinking of coming after you for long, Anna, I promise you,” he said, and put his hands on my shoulders and pushed me back enough to look me straight in the eyes. “I never let things go, either, and he isn’t going to be capable of coming after you for very long. I’ve made sure of that.”
There was a flash of panic inside, because I knew whatever he was talking about would be serious, but his eyes were so steady and so true.
“Tell me,” I said. “Please, Lucas, just tell me.”
So he did.
He finished making dinner and we sat down at the table together, and he told me all about how Sebastian Maitland was a corrupt little prick who’d used his career position for fraud and bribery. He told me how Sebastian was arrogant, and over the years had become careless with his bullshit, and it had been so easy to piece together behind the scenes by checking out his communications activity from three different phone accounts.
And how easy it had been to assemble and report anonymously.
“It’s just time,” he said. “I can assure you, his career days are reaching their end, and he’ll be suffering the consequences of the life choices he’s made for his own gains.”
“But you shouldn’t have done that, right?” I asked him. “That’s abusing your position, isn’t it? What if they come after you, too?”
“I hope I’m a little more careful than he is,” he said. “But yes, I’ve abused my position. It’s a rarity, but I’ve abused my position, there’s no denying that.” He shrugged. “I think it’s worth it, though. I wouldn’t have been able to use anything he hadn’t done himself. One day someone would have found him out for it, I’ve just sped up that process.”
I reached out across the table to take his hand. “You didn’t have to do that. You didn’t have to make Sebastian pay for what he did.”
“I didn’t have to do that,” he said, and took both of mine. “I wanted to.”
We stared at each other in silence for long seconds, both of us lost in that moment.
“Please don’t do that again,” I said. “You aren’t some super moral hero behind the scenes, trying to make the world a better place. You’re Lucas Pierce, here with me, having chickens and ponies and walking the dogs. I love you that way, please don’t change it.”
“I wasn’t planning on it,” he replied, and kissed my hand. “I’m very, very happy to be Lucas Pierce, here with you, having chickens and ponies and walking the dogs. I’m not intending to change that. We’ve got more than enough time to make up for.” He paused. “I just wanted Sebastian Maitland to get what’s due. I could have dug a lot deeper and done a lot worse to him, I assure you.”
I let it settle at that. I took a deep breath and we cleared the plates and my heart was thumping with a nice wave of comfort that I was really here, out the other side of the battle.
Because love is a battlefield. It really is.
We’d taken our blows, and we’d hidden in the trenches, and luckily, finally, we’d won the war.
Or so we thought.
It was just a shame the enemy didn’t want to surrender.
Even now, there was one final wave of attack still to come.
Chapter Forty-Two
Lucas
Within a few days we were living in bliss, waking up in the mornings and being so happy to be there. We’d eat breakfast in dressing gowns and shower together, then take Bill and Ted out before work.
I’d drop her outside her office, and we’d ping each other through the day, and I’d be there every evening to pick her up for home. Sometimes we’d grab the rackets and hit the tennis court, and some games she’d get so close to winning that she’d dance along the net, blowing me raspberries. Fuck me, I loved her for it.
Sometimes we’d be too desperate for flesh on flesh to do anything other than rip each other’s clothes off the moment we were back in through the door.
We’d talk. We’d laugh. We’d hold each other tight. Just like we should have been doing the past decade through.
She’d talk to her parents, and Vicky, and Nicola, and message the girls from work. I’d be on video chat to Millie every evening, talking about her school day without so much as a peep from Maya in the background.
My mother was silent. Just like she should have always been when it was none of her pissing business.
We were happy.
Really happy.
It was that first Friday in our new life that I took Anna out into the city to celebrate. We ate pizza, and laughed as we tore into garlic bread, and toasted our happiness with a prosecco at the table.
But she wasn’t smoking, not anymore, and neither was I.
She hadn’t had any seizures either. Not in days.
“Maybe we could do a pizza night again when I meet Millie,” she suggested, and I smiled over at her.
“Millie does like a good slice of pizza,” I told her. “Maybe we could do an ice cream sundae to follow.”
I had a strange tingle of excitement every time I pictured Anna meeting my little girl. I loved the thought of them laughing together in our kitchen, and eating popcorn on the sofa and watching old kid’s films, and Millie’s explosion of absolute joy if we really did go through with our potential plans to get her a pony in the paddock.
Yet still, I was nervous.
I was so fucking nervous for the two most important parts of my life to combine and make a new one.
“You’re thinking,” Anna said across the table, and I jolted back to my senses. “What are you thinking about?”
I took another sip of prosecco.
“I’m thinking of you meeting the little princess.”
“I’m looking forward to me
eting the little princess,” she told me, with a big smile on her face. “I’m sure I’ll love her loads if she’s even a tiny bit like her dad.”
I hoped so.
Holy fuck, I hoped so.
“Maybe we’ll make another little princess one day,” I said, and her eyes shot open wide. “Sorry,” I added. “Thinking out loud there.”
She pulled off another piece of garlic bread. “Maybe we will.” She took a bite. “Maybe if the epilepsy eases, and things settle down with everyone around us, and we can be that little family we want to be.”
“Maybe,” I said.
“Maybe,” she smiled.
“Maybe in the meantime we should hit the bars, and head on out for another prosecco or two.”
“Maybe in the meantime we should indeed hit the bars, and head on out for another prosecco or two,” she laughed. “I think the girls from work are out at Bar Royale tonight.”
So out we went.
We met up with Stacey, Melissa and Lucia and I watched Anna join in with their work chat with a big grin on my face.
We danced to some terrible tunes that neither of us liked, laughing right the way through, and resisted the urge to head out onto the smokers’ terrace like true champions.
I couldn’t keep my hands off her when we left the club, my mouth on hers all the way up the street on our way to the taxi rank. Her arms were around my neck, and her tits were pressed to my chest, and clothes were a barrier I’d tear off in a flash just as soon as we were out of the realms of public indecency.
I hadn’t had quite enough proseccos for that just yet.
It was Anna who suggested we take a detour a few streets over and head to the Neptune fountain.
It was me who grinned right back at her and said I’d love to go the Neptune fountain, just so long as she didn’t expect me to be making any wishes with any damn coins.
Neither of us expected to be standing on the lawn at the front of the spurting water, staring up at Neptune himself, hand in hand, when the charge of stumbling feet sounded up the street behind us.