Until Cece

by KD Robichaux

  Until Cece

  KD Robichaux

  Boom Factory Publishing, LLC

  Until Cece

  Copyright © 2021 by KD Robichaux

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  Published by Boom Factory Publishing, LLC.

  KD Robichaux, CONTRIBUTOR to the Original Works, was granted permission by Aurora Rose Reynolds, ORIGINAL AUTHOR, to use the copyrighted characters and/ or worlds created by Aurora Rose Reynolds in the Original Work; all copyright protection to the characters and/ or worlds of Aurora Rose Reynolds in the Original Works are and shall continue to be retained by Aurora Rose Reynolds. You can find all of Aurora Rose Reynolds Original Works on most major retailers. No part of this publication may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, distributed, stored in or introduced into any information storage or retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic, photocopying, mechanical or otherwise, without express permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review purposes. This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, story lines and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, events, locales or any events or occurrences are purely coincidental.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Dedication

  1. Cece

  2. Cece

  3. Winston

  4. Cece

  5. Winston

  6. Winston

  7. Cece

  8. Winston

  9. Cece

  10. Winston

  11. Cece

  12. Winston

  13. Cece

  14. Cece

  15. Winston

  16. Cece

  17. Cece

  18. Cece

  19. Winston

  20. Cece

  21. Winston

  22. Cece

  23. Cece

  24. Winston

  25. Cece

  26. Cece

  27. Winston

  28. Cece

  29. Winston

  30. Cece

  31. Winston

  32. Cece

  33. Winston

  34. Cece

  35. Winston

  36. Winston

  37. Cece

  Author Note & Acknowledgments

  Also by KD Robichaux

  Happily Ever Alpha World

  Dedication

  For my daddy.

  Although your name was Mike, you were nothing like the villain in this book. There will never be another dad quite like you. Love and miss you forever.

  Also, for BTS.

  This book wouldn’t have been completed without your music getting me through the loss of my dad right after I started writing it. This ARMY purples you.

  1

  Cece

  “I slept with another woman, okay?”

  The words thrown at me so carelessly, so callously, almost accusatory in their tone, reverberate throughout my beautiful kitchen. Or maybe it’s all in my head. Because my magazine-worthy kitchen, with its gray wood flooring, glass-fronted white cabinets, and pristine white marble countertops, is full of homey accents, stocked with food, dishes, and appliances, and full of memories of love and laughter—at least up until a moment ago. We always saved our marital spats for the privacy of our bedroom where the girls wouldn’t hear. No, the kitchen isn’t hollow or cavernous, so the words my husband just shouted wouldn’t echo the way it continues to do inside my mind.

  “I slept with another woman, okay?”

  “I slept with another woman, okay?”

  “I slept with another woman…”

  “…slept with another woman…”

  “…another woman…”

  I swallow, frozen, unable to even drop my hand that’s midair holding a whisk, my other arm wrapped around a mixing bowl as I was in the middle of whipping up a batch of my three little girls’ favorite peanut butter chunk cookies.

  I’m stuck. Unblinking. Did I hear him correctly? The look on his face—a mix of anger and resignation—tells me I did. But inside my head, as I try to actually process what he just told me, it’s the blue screen and spinning circle of death. I need someone to Control, Alt, Delete me. Am I a Mac? Please, Force Quit my programs and give me a restart. My entire system is malfunctioning and needs to be rebooted.

  Hell, it doesn’t even feel like those simple measures would work on the devastation working its way through my consciousness. Looks like I’ll need a factory reset, because once this actually registers in my brain, I don’t think there will be any coming back from it. A bowl of uncooked rice is not going to make everything all better either.

  I’m already crashing. Why am I making electronics references? I’m a stay-at-home mom, a Susie freaking homemaker. The only reason I know how to reset a computer is because of that time my laptop froze up while I was making a Pinterest post on the best solution to get gum out of carpet—a plastic bag of ice cubes, and once the gum is frozen, you can scrape it out, and then use soap and a drop of white vinegar.

  I hear my name.

  “Cece…”

  But it sounds so far away, as if it’s from a great distance. Or maybe muffled, like there’s something over the speaker’s mouth.

  “Cece… are you listening to me?” comes the voice again, but I can’t answer. My mind is starting to catch up with Mike’s words, and it’s choosing to portray a slideshow of our entire marriage behind my eyes. They say your entire life flashes before your eyes right before you die. Is this what happens at the death of your marriage?

  The moment we met—me, just days after graduating high school, and him about to graduate college. He was dreamy, seeming so much older and more worldly to my eighteen-year-old libido.

  The moment he proposed—down on one knee at dinner in front of his parents.

  Our beautiful wedding, paid for by his loaded family, since my dad is a piece of shit who left my sister Mia and me with nothing but a bunch of daddy and abandonment issues. And while my stepdad is truly the greatest man on the face of the planet, he couldn’t afford the extravagance the Willimsons required to keep up with their hoity-toity appearance.

  Getting pregnant on our wedding night—with twins, no less. Now nine-year-old girls, they came into this world before we even reached our one-year wedding anniversary. And trust me, the rumors spread like wildfire, people thinking it was a shotgun wedding, as if we only got married because I was knocked up. But thankfully anyone who could do math and remembered we’d spent months planning the wedding would shut the other assholes down.

  Then our sweet troublemaker Ruby came three years later, and our little family was complete. Well, according to Mike, after he read an article about how if the same mom and dad have two babies that are the same gender, then the likelihood of the third being the opposite gender is less than 20 percent. And if that same mom and dad have three kids of the same gender, then the likelihood of the fourth being the opposite gender is less than 10 percent. If his chances of getting a boy were that low, then he was done making babies.

  I, on the other hand, would have had a hundred babies if it were up to me. They’re the center of my universe, my whole reason for living. I literally breathe for them. Only them. Certainly not my husband, who’s been distant for so long.

  Busy. He’d been busy.

  Working all hours, sixty a week, to take care of his wife, three kids, our big house, his sports car and truck, my fancy Tahoe with all the bells and whistles, because he would be damned if he’d buy something so… “middle class” as a minivan. Anything below sixty grand and he wouldn’t be caught dead in it—his words.

  And it was up to me to
stay at home and take care of the house and kids. Which I absolutely love, don’t get me wrong, but that’s just a happy coincidence. If I didn’t love being a homemaker and spending every spare second with my children, then I would be shit out of luck, because this is who Mike groomed me to be. He needed the Stepford wife, the perfect Pinterest mom. He needed me to put Joanna Gaines to shame.

  I internally snort.

  Yeah, right.

  Like anyone could put that goddess to shame.

  He needed all this, because that’s what his own mom was, to keep up the appearances that we were the perfect 1950s couple. I got married and pregnant with twins right after high school. I didn’t go to college. Hell, I’ve never even had a job before, except for that little fast-food job I had through my junior and senior year. Ten years later and I still reply “My pleasure” when someone says thank you.

  But I didn’t mind that this was what he wanted. I live a pretty cush life. I got to make my home absolutely beautiful. I got to be with my babies and not miss a single moment of their lives. I got to spend my days trying out different recipes I found, arts and crafts projects with my kids, all sorts of things to fill the hours of the day that Mike was at work to the point I was just as exhausted as he was when he got home and passed out not long after we put the girls to bed at nine every night.

  “Cecilia!”

  It’s not my proper name being shouted in my face that startles me and makes me drop the glass bowl of peanut butter goo to the floor, the shards and sticky mixture exploding at my feet.

  It’s Mike’s hand on my upper arm, his touch a searing pain as the reality of his words finally slam into my mind like the wrecking ball they are.

  “Don’t touch me!” I sneer, lifting my foot to take a step back. And although my husband is apparently a cheating motherfucker, he at least cares about me just enough to lift my stiffening body from the floor before I can set my bare foot down onto the pile of glass and sits me on the marble counter.

  He jolts backward out of my reach when my hand swipes out, fingers curled like claws to scratch him, and he steps in the gooey cookie dough, his foot shooting out from under him. He barely catches himself on the refrigerator door handle before he can hit the ground. Pity.

  “Cece, I know you’re upset—”

  “Upset? Upset!”

  “—but this can’t be too much of a shock. Surely. We haven’t been happy in years,” he continues as if I’m not about to reach over to the butcher block, grab all of the steak knives from the bottom two rows, and start chucking them at his freaking head.

  “Oh, we haven’t? That’s news to me, Mike! I’ve been pretty damn happy giving you the perfect home and raising your babies, taking care of everything while you go to work. Speaking of, when did you even have time to sleep with someone else? As far as I knew, if you’re not at work, you’re here. So when?” I glare, and if looks could kill, I’d be calling a coroner for my husband of ten years.

  “And that’s true,” he says, and he gives me a look that makes his words sink in.

  “Work? You slept with someone at work?” My voice has reached an octave I’m sure only my sister’s dogs would hear. I look at him with disgust. “That’s just… so fucking cliché, Mike. Really? Sleep with a coworker while your wife is at home cooking you dinner? You’re disgusting.” I spin on the slick countertop and hop off on the other side of the island.

  “That may very well be, but I’m a fucking man, Cece. I have needs. And you never want—”

  “Don’t you even blame this on me, Michael. If you wanted sex with your wife so badly, then maybe you should’ve done a little more to make her feel like she was more to you than your maid, nanny, and personal chef!”

  “What more do you want from me? I provide you and the girls with everything you could ever want. You have unlimited funds to do with what you please!” he yells, and I’m shaking my head before he can even finish that stupid-ass thought process.

  “When was the last time you took me on a date? When was the last time you got home and greeted me with a kiss, or told me you love me, or sent me a text just to see how my day is going?”

  His mouth opens and closes like a fish, trying to come up with an excuse, I’m sure, but I don’t give him the chance. I’m so over this conversation already and want him the hell away from me.

  “Get out. Right now. Get the hell out of this house before you wake the girls up with your absolute stupidity or make me do it when they hear me castrating their father. Get. Out!” I pick up his laptop case, and what normally feels really heavy when I set it by the door each morning with his perfectly prepared lunch cooler, feels like it weighs nothing with my adrenaline pumping, and I throw it at him with all my might. He catches it with a panicked look on his face and a loud “Oof” when it slams into his chest.

  He doesn’t speak another word. Not even an apology for coming home and imploding my entire world. Without another look my way, he turns and walks out the door, closing it quietly behind him, and I hear the electronic lock slide into place.

  2

  Cece

  It’s been a week since I kicked Mike out of the house. A week of acting like everything is fine in front of my daughters and then collapsing into a pile of woe is me after I tuck them into bed. I’ve managed to dodge their questions about their dad not being here, telling them he’s working on a special project at work that keeps him out late, and then he leaves in the morning before they wake up. I feel guilty as hell for lying to them, and I decided this morning I’m not doing that anymore.

  Why the hell am I trying to protect the man who cheated on me and destroyed my life?

  But before I tell them the truth, I need backup. I’m not going to be able to do all of this on my own. It’s a simple fact of logistics and income.

  I’ve talked to Mike once since that night. For now, he’s going to give me a certain amount to keep up with the house and kids, but I told him I don’t want anything else from him. My pride reared her bitchy head and told him where to shove it when he told me he’d give me whatever else I needed. I’m a goddamn stay-at-home mom. If I can survive nine years as a homemaker and mom to twins and a Ruby, I can do fucking anything.

  Sure, Mike is the one who always took care of all the bills and stuff, so I’m not exactly sure how much all of this costs, but still. How much could it be? A little part-time job to stack cash on top of what Mike will put into my brand-new personal bank account that’s separate from the joint one we’ve always had should be plenty. I know I’ll probably have to cut back on certain things, like going to the salon, my fancy gym membership, maybe not buy the twenty-dollar thimbleful of paprika at Sur la Table.

  But what I decided should be number one on my list, after I finally came out of my fog of “I can’t believe this is actually happening to me” is childcare. After doing research, it was clear to me that the cost of childcare for just the couple hours after school I’d need for my girls in order for me to have a regular nine-to-five would eat up the amount I’d actually earn, seeing as I have hardly any experience and even less of a college degree. So I need an alternative.

  A temporary alternative.

  Because this is all just a bump in the road before we get back on track.

  Along with my sobbing hysteria every night, I’ve done all sorts of research when it comes to marriage and infidelity. With enough faith in us as a couple and the help of a marriage counselor, there’s hope that we can turn this around and be happy. Happier than we’ve been in years, in fact. I’ve read so many articles, so many testimonies, saying that even after one of them cheated, after the grief process and therapy, they ended up on a level of wedded bliss they never had before the infidelity happened. That could be us, right? Was this just the defibrillator we needed to shock some life back into our relationship?

  It makes me physically sick to imagine having sex with Mike now that he’s been with another woman, but I’m sure that’s something I could work through. And I’m positive it
has a lot to do with the fact that I gave him my virginity. He’s the only man I’ve ever been with, so the thought of my husband being with some other woman has a tinge of… jealousy? I don’t know. I’m not jealous of the other woman. I’m more jealous of the fact that he’s gotten to experience someone else when I never have. I mean, he was by no means a virgin when we got together, but… as far as I knew, it was only me for ten years. Those other girls before we met didn’t matter. But now? It’s fucking unfair that he got to have this tryst, when I can’t even remember the last time I had sex. And much less, the last time I had an orgasm. Because God knows that didn’t happen every time we did have sex… whenever the hell that was.

  But it’s a silly notion anyway—being jealous, I mean. Once I had Ruby, I lost a lot if not all of my libido. It certainly didn’t help that Mike isn’t the most affectionate man on the planet to begin with, but once I had our third baby, I didn’t really want to be touched. I had our three-year-old twins, Lola and Kate, crawling all over me day in and day out, and then add a newborn, and by the time night fell, I was absolutely done being physically touched. You stay on your side of the bed, and I’ll stay on mine. I wanted to sprawl and just be left the hell alone, and then I’d pass out within minutes of my head hitting the pillow.