Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 141251 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141251 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
“I was twenty-two when I met Alina.”
What?
“She was at the same university as me and I’d seen her around. She was pretty.”
I smile imagining him younger.
“We hooked up one night after going to a nightclub.”
God, he would have been a good-looking twenty-two-year-old. He’s insanely hot now at thirty-nine.
“We slept together again a few weeks later after another night out. I didn’t see her again until she turned up at my dorm room three months later. She was pregnant.”
My heart drops.
He licks his bottom lip as he stares into space.
“What happened?” I ask.
“I did the right thing.”
My stomach twists. “You married her?”
He nods softly with his bottom lip caught in his front teeth, and I wait for him to keep going but he doesn’t.
“Did it go okay?” I whisper softly.
He shrugs. “I tried. I tried every damn day to fall in love with her.”
My eyes fill with tears.
“Twenty-three with a wife and a baby,” he mutters softly.
I kiss his chest and rub my cheek on his skin. I hate this story because I already know how it ends.
“It wasn’t so bad at first. We both put a front on for the sake of the other. Until she fell in love with me, but I didn’t fall in love with her…” His voice trails off.
A tear falls free, and I quickly swipe it away.
Stop it.
He clenches his jaw and I know he’s right back there, all those years ago. “I couldn’t even force myself to make love to her.”
Oh, this is a horrible story. “Jules,” I whisper, and he wraps his arm around me and pulls me closer.
“Samuel was conceived when I came home drunk one night. That’s the only time it would happen.”
I close my eyes.
“Then… she started drinking.”
God.
“It got so bad that I had to have a full-time nanny to care for the children even while she was home.” He stares into space. “Some days, she never got out of bed.”
Oh, this poor woman.
“I tried, I tried to get her help. I just didn’t do enough.”
My chest hurts for both of them.
“I couldn’t take it anymore. I told her before I left for work one morning that I was filing divorce papers that day.”
I scrunch my eyes shut as I wait for the next part of the story.
“She said goodbye to the children.”
A lone tear rolls down my face onto his chest.
“And she drove drunk down a dead-end street at around 130 miles an hour, straight into a tree.”
The lump in my throat hurts as I try to hold my tears back.
He stares straight ahead, almost frozen.
“Do the children know?” I whisper.
“No. How could you ever tell your child that their mother killed herself because their father didn’t love her.”
I sniff as the tears roll down my face. “I’m so sorry.”
He kisses my temple. “Me, too.
Chapter Nineteen
“Are you going to watch the movie with us?” he asks me.
“Yes.”
It’s Sunday night. We’ve had the kids with us all day and haven’t had a moment alone.
He slowly brings his hand up to cup my face and my eyes close.
His touch is magic.
“I need to you to know how much I regret how I treated you at that dinner,” he whispers. “It’s playing on my mind.”
I nod. “I know.”
He shakes his head. “I don’t know what came over me. I just handled the whole thing so badly.”
I watch him as he struggles with this conversation. “I know.”
His eyes search mine. “My children have to come first.”
“For me, too,” I whisper. “Their needs will come before mine or yours.”
Our eyes are locked, and I feel like I’m agreeing to a deal here. He wants me to secure his children’s happiness for him. How do I assure him of that?
Kiss me.
“This is harder than it should be,” he admits quietly. “I can think of nothing else but you.” He dusts his thumb over my bottom lip. “Promise me. Promise me that when we fall apart, you won’t leave them.”
Why is he so sure that we are going to fall apart?
I frown and nod before I can stop myself. “I promise that your children will always come first.”
His eyes drop to my lips, and my heart begins to race. Right on cue, we hear someone bounding down the stairs, and we jump back from each other. He goes to the fridge and gets out a bottle of wine as a cover.
Sammy comes into the kitchen. “Come on. Let’s watch the movie.” He disappears into the living room and I hear Willow and him talking. They get comfortable on their new beanbags, snuggled with their baby animals.
Julian comes up behind me and snakes his arms around my waist, pulling me back onto him aggressively.
“Go and change into a skirt,” he whispers into my ear. He nips my lobe and goosebumps ripple my skin.
What?
Holy fuck.
I walk into my room and start going through my wardrobe quickly. What the hell? I don’t even have a skirt that isn’t tight.