I see tears. I hate tears. Especially tears in the eyes of a female. Be it in sadness, pain, or about to flip shit, I hate them.
I hold my hands up and step back. “Okay.”
“Okay? Okay!” She steps forward and pushes me.
I nod. “Okay.”
She walks back to the door and opens it. “Now go.”
“Sweets …” I begin.
“Don’t call me that!”
“Fuck.” I hurry to the door, shut it, pick her up, and then set her on the bed.
“Don’t you—”
“I’m trusting you.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you.” She scurries back.
“I’m trusting you, and I expect—”
“Get OUT!”
“Mara, she’s my wife.”
Twelve
Real Talk
Bella
If ever there was a time that I wanted my daddy, it was right now. I feel sick to my stomach and truly fearful for probably the first time in my life.
Mara, aka Mayhem, the executive producer’s daughter, is the wife of the man I fucked. The man who tagged me.
When he sits on the edge of the hotel bed, all I can do is look at him.
“She isn’t going to try to hurt you or any shit like that because you and I are fucking.”
“No? Because, before she even knew I fucked her husband, she dumped me off a few miles away from here.”
“It’s a long story.”
“I don’t want to hear it.” I shake my head back and forth.
He fills in the blanks. “But you need to.”
“I still don’t want to hear it.”
“Neo and I met in juvy. He was in for drugs. I was in for”—he smirks, and I want to kick him—“vandalism. When we got out, I didn’t have a home to go back to, and he didn’t have one he wanted to return to, so we became family.”
My skin crawls at the thought of that.
“We joined a gang. We met Mayhem at a rave. We were all fucked up; had a threesome. The next morning, we wake up in a fat pad, and Neo decided she was his. A few months later, she’s pregnant and it was too late to do anything about it. Neo ditched her, because the baby came out my color and not his. He took off. She insisted I marry her. A few months later, she was gone, and Luna, my daughter, and I were on our own.”
I want to scream, run, cry, hide … kick his ass, hug him, kick my own ass for wanting to hug him, but I say nothing.
“Mara’s been in and out of rehab for the past couple years. She hasn’t seen Luna since she left. She’s avoided being served. I hired a PI and found out about her father.”
“And now you know he has money and—”
“I don’t give a damn about money; I give a damn about my girl. I want a divorce so we can move on.”
We?
“Luna and I,” he answers my unspoken question. Then he pulls out his phone and turns it. The screensaver is of him and a little girl. “She just started asking about her mom this year—since she started preschool. Paula said—”
“Who’s Paula?” I’m holding his phone that I didn’t even realize I’d taken, scrolling through pictures. She’s beautiful.
“An older woman who took me, a nineteen-year-old, homeless gangbanger with an infant, into her home on a hunch. She took care of that baby when I turned myself in for my past mistakes, told me to learn a trade while I was in jail for a year, and didn’t ask for shit in return. A woman who had a job lined up for me when I was released from jail. A woman who gave me hope. I owe her for helping me remember why I need to be the best man, the best father I can be.”
The softness in his voice makes me look up.
“I’m going to pay her back for what she has given us.” His eyes search mine, and then he stands up off the bed. “She lost her two kids to gang violence yet still believes there’s good in the world. I’m gonna prove to her she’s right.”
I watch him pace back and forth at the end of my bed, then he stops and pins me with an intense stare before smiling. “And I’m gonna prove to you that what I put on your back was the truth because, Isabella Steel, the moment I saw you, I knew it to be true. That kind of connection doesn’t happen every day—never in my lifetime—and I know damn well you feel the same.”
I open my mouth to deny the statement, but nothing comes out. I consider the possibility that the reason I’m unable to reply is that I know what I would say isn’t the truth. But the things he’s saying about us aren’t real, are they? I mean, they sound real, feel real, and I want to kick my own ass because I want them to be real, but … really?
I don’t know why I close my eyes—possibly in hopes to see the truth—but all I see is the dozen or so happy couples I’ve been surrounded by most of my life. None of them had a well-executed plan on how to fall in love, none of them in the best places in their lives; it just happened.
Like this is, a voice inside of me whispers.
But he crossed a line. I should be so pissed at him.
Yet here you are.
When I open my eyes, I know he sees me—my wants, my desires, my confusion, the incredible respect I already have for him, or how astoundingly smitten I am with him.
“I’d rather be inside you than on the other side of that wall. I’ll wait for you to accept it. But, for every night I’m wishing I was inside of you, you’ll get two nights where you’ll beg for me.” He exits the room the way he came in, and I fight the urge to go after him.
It’s easy to do, because I’m not sure if I want to tell him how delusional he is … and possibly me, too, or do what feels good—him.
Sleep doesn’t come easy as I lie here, thinking about the little girl, Luna, and the similarities between her and me. No, my mom didn’t leave me in the same way that Luna was left, but she was left just the same. Her father wasn’t forbidden then court-ordered to stay away from her, but the way he spoke of her and the … nauseating similarities between him and my father and uncles is apparent.
He would prove her right. He wanted better for his girl. And the statement about Neo: we became family …
Fuck!
I sigh as I roll over onto my stomach and bury my head in the pillows that smell like her.
I jump up and pull the blankets off the bed, dragging them to the door so that maid service would take them away. Then I walk over to the glass doors to shut them and see my phone sitting on the table. When I walk out, the smell of cigarette smoke mixed with the smell of the Atlantic Ocean lingers in the humid, evening air.
I look over as he looks up. In the moonlight, I can still see his eyes. The initial confusion morphs into lust.
“I forgot my phone.” I walk over and grab for it as he stands, butts out his cigarette, and then walks over to the railing.
“I’m sorry you haven’t had it easy.”
“I’m not,” he says with conviction.
My hand still on the phone, I lift my chin. “How does a man like David, with all the resources he has at his disposal, allow his daughter—”
“He doesn’t know about me or Luna.”