"How upset?'
Long pause, then, "Very. She's . . . I heard her say to Stephan that you'd lied to her. I think that's the part she's freaking out about."
"Lied? About what?"
"About sleeping with that girl."
She'd seen the video and believed the worst.
It more than stung. It sliced me right open.
In spite of how it all looked, I'd hoped she just knew me better, knew that my faithful heart was unassailable.
"She really thinks I slept with another woman?" I asked, feeling lost.
"No! Not like that. She thinks you lied about sleeping with her before, as in before Bianca."
"I just met that woman a few days ago," I told him.
"I don't know what to tell you. You should just come over, talk to her."
I did. She and Stephan were in their den. He had his arm around her, and she wasn't looking at me.
I watched her face, an all too familiar out of control, helpless feeling overtaking me.
Her face was closed off, expression very blank, and when Bianca didn't want you to read her, she was unreadable.
It was so cold, her anger, her silent condemnation.
I couldn't stand it. I'd rather she raged and caused a scene. Instead, she closed me off, closed herself off, while she processed, sometimes asked a few questions, and then eventually came back around.
It was always on her timeline, though, and often after spending copious amounts of time with Stephan, who could soothe her as no one else could.
I looked at Stephan, knowing this wouldn't go over well, but, "Can we have some privacy please?"
He looked at Bianca. Much to my relief, she nodded for him to go.
I sat beside her, but not close, not touching.
She was so untouchable then, and I couldn't stand to even try to when she was like this. That wasn't what I came to her for. Until it was right again, I didn't want to touch her, not even for comfort.
"It was all staged. Clark is getting the full video now. It will show you very clearly that I was not a willing participant in that.
"I know that. I saw your face in the video. I could just tell. That's not what's bothering me. You lied to me."
We hadn't had an interaction like this in a very long time. She was acting like she didn't trust me, and I just couldn't stand it.
She grabbed her phone, scrolled through it briefly, and then handed it to me.
I squinted at the picture on the screen, then cringed. It was a photo of me. My college days, I saw. At a frat party. I had my arm around a girl with dark hair. Her hand was on my crotch.
I remembered the college me, and though I didn't remember her, or that night. I knew the college me had fucked her right after taking that picture, or at least it was more likely than not what had happened.
The hair was different, and she was much younger here, but the picture was clear enough that I could tell it was Winona.
I glanced up at her. "I didn't remember her, I swear. Whoever sent you this did a lot of homework into an obscure and unmemorable night in my past. Why? I couldn't tell you, but I did not remember this, did not remember her. I swear it. I never would have lied to you on purpose. I never would have let her work there for even five minutes, for that matter, had I known.
Finally she looked at me, studied me for a long time, as though working something out in her head.
"You really slept with that many women that you could run into some and not remember?"
I looked down at my hands, wishing my answer were different, for her sake. "Most of them, I think. Yes. I'm sorry."
She shifted beside me and suddenly she was burrowing into me, her arms wrapping tight.
Shudders of relief rocked through my body.
There she was, my lover was back, just how I needed her.
Touchable.
I could breathe again, the tight thing gripping my chest finally loosening, my hands running over her.
Time passed. And I held her.
"I owe you an apology," she said eventually. "I'm sorry that for that little blip in time, I felt some doubt in you. It was just, everything was laid out so convincingly, so fitted to my own insecurities. Those pictures were so awful, and then to find out you had slept with her and told me otherwise. The idea that you would hide it from me and be working with her, it really messed with my head."
"I swear, I didn't know, didn't remember her at all.
"I know. I know. I believe you. I just, when you've led a life like mine, with so much heartache, and then become so happy you can hardly stand, I guess I was just waiting for something, something to ruin it all. I'm sorry I was susceptible to that awful stunt. I swear to you that it will not happen again.
It took about three days, but finally the rest of the story came out, or most of it.
The woman was mentally unstable, obviously, but the press found proof of it now, and released it.
And the rest of the video was found (thanks to ninja Clark and Lenny's hard drive) the part that showed the whole interaction, un-doctored. Even without audio, it was pretty obvious I'd been ambushed by a crazy woman, and had not been an active or willing participant.
My phone rang. It was my buddy Parker. "Hey, man," I answered. "How are you? How are Sophia and Elliot?"
"We're fine. Listen, I have something to tell you, something I just found out that I figure you need to know."
"Okay. Go on," I said slowly. His tone spoke of something ominous.
"That scandal. That setup with the naked woman in your office that was plastered all over the press—"
"Yes, I'm well aware of all of that. What about it?" It was the last thing I wanted to talk about.
"Jules was behind it. She was working with your office manager. She was sleeping with him. She set it up. All of it. She was working with that deranged woman. They were old friends from college."
I was shocked, though maybe I shouldn't have been. "Why? What on earth could she possibly have to gain from it?"
"I think she's come unhinged, to be honest. Either she's deluded herself that if your wife left you, she'd have a shot, or it was just some sick sort of revenge. Whatever her motivation, things are going to change now for her. She's won't bother you anymore, I assure you. I just wanted you to know. You see, my parents are aware of her part in it. With you being married now, with no contact with Jules, even they are seeing just how serious her problems are. They've cut her off, won't support her, won't give her a dime unless she gets herself help."
"God, your sister is a psycho bitch."
He wasn't offended. "Yes, yes she is."
"Thank you letting me know."
"Of course. Hopefully it will bring you some peace of mind to understand what all was behind that."
"It does."
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
MY JOB
"Bronson Giles," I said as soon as Tristan answered his phone.
There was a pregnant silence and then, "Who?"
I sighed. "I'm not the police. I need to hear the entire story."
"No clue what you're talking about."
"Just tell me this: Why him? What on earth set you off about some washed-up old actor?"
I knew it had something to do with Danika. That was a given. When Tristan started breaking things or hurting people, there was only ever one answer.
"This is feeling an awful lot like that Milton Sagar incident," I prompted him. "Remember that?"
"Nope, doesn't ring a bell," he said, sounding perfectly innocent, which of course he wasn't.
"You're an ass," I told him. "I remember damn well when you rearranged Milton's face, just like we both know that, for some reason that can only involve your temper, you broke Bronson's nose at a gallery showing, and then proceeded to knee him so hard in the groin that he had to ice his balls for a week?"
"A week, huh?" he asked, sounding entirely too cheerful about it.
"Yes, a week, at least, you bloodthirsty bastard. And somehow his son t
alked him out of pressing any charges, or even talking about it. How the hell did you manage that?"
"None of this has anything to do with me."
"Let's pretend, for just a minute, that it did."
"Hmm."
"How about you just give me a hypothetical reason why a thing like this might happen?"
"Hypothetically, I could see the appeal of beating up some old asshole for 1. Being a lowlife and a deadbeat dad, and 2. Hitting on his own daughter. Hypothetically, if I heard about a thing like that, even if it happened years ago, I could see me doing something about it the first time that bastard was unlucky enough to run into me somewhere, even if that somewhere happened to be one of your galleries."
That certainly shocked me speechless. I pieced it together right away. Tristan was not a subtle man, and he'd given me all the clues. I'd had no idea, no idea at all that Bronson Giles was Danika's biological father.
"I guess that explains why he didn't press charges," I finally got out. "Did he know she was his daughter when he hit on her?"
"No, but you know what? I don't fucking care if he knew. Bastard had this coming. Can you imagine how that would mess with your head, to have your own dad trying to screw you?"
"Point taken. Thanks for clearing that up."
"That's it then?"
"Yes. It was my job to scold you, fine you, or penalize you, per the clause in your contract that forbids you from fighting, and the casino's attorneys were breathing down my neck about it, due to the fact that what you did is lawsuit territory, but I find I have no desire to pursue it. Good job, man. I'd have done the same. Have a nice afternoon."
He was laughing on the other end when I hung up.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
MY LIGHT
We were driving home when it slipped out. I'd regret it later, but like any deep cut, I didn't feel, or even recognize the damage I'd done right away.
We'd just had a wonderful visit with Tristan and Danika. I'd spent the afternoon watching Bianca play with Ming and hold Nikolaj, and it had gone to my head.
"We could adopt," I suggested.
She'd been relaxed. Happy. Smiling. It all shut down suddenly. And she was stiff, distant, unreadable.
I tried to backtrack as soon as I saw her face. "I mean, if you didn't want to get pregnant, or . . . I'm just saying there are a lot of options. Tristan and Danika have had a great experience . . . I mean, I—it's just an idea." I felt awkward, my usual ease with words just escaping me.
Not a word, not one iota of an expression change, not so much as one minuscule twitch in her facial expression, but I could feel her hurt, her pain, in the air. It scared me.
I hated when she did this, when she shut me out. It happened less frequently the longer we were together, but that just seemed to make it harder to cope with when it did happen.
"I didn't mean to offend you," I finally tried again. "They just seem so happy. It's clearly worked for them."
"I thought we were happy. I thought we worked." A hint of the accent that I rarely heard was in the words. That's how upset she was.
My stomach dropped. She said it like the careless thing I'd said somehow undid us being happy, undid us working.
Fuck.
"We are. We do. That came out badly. That's not even remotely close to what I meant."
But the damage was done.
She withdrew.
She left me, for a while. Someone occupied that body, but it was not my wife. It was some stranger that shared nothing with me, none of her thoughts, none of her pain.
For days, she left me.
And then, she said it. It. The thing that broke my heart into a million jagged pieces.
"Maybe we shouldn't have gotten married."
I was having the damnedest time getting air in my lungs. Was this a dream? A nightmare? Had she really just said that to me?
Those soul sucking eyes of her hit me like a punch. Not only was she not taking back the awful thing she'd said, but she looked like she was getting angrier by the second, like she'd actually meant it.
"You should have always been honest with me about it," she clipped out. "People should not get married until they have reconciled a thing like this. We should have waited. I . . . still don't know if I want to have children, but you clearly do."
"Yes, yes, I can't deny, I would love to have children. With you. I want that. But not more than I want you. Never. I want you above all, over anything. This is me being as honest as I can be."
She deflated a little, softened enough that I was dragging her into me, holding her, touching her, when she hadn't been touchable for days now.
"This is hard for me to say, to vocalize, to even utter out loud," she said softly, despair in her voice. "But I'm not sure I can reconcile who I am, what I've been through, with being a mother. There is a darkness in me, a bloody stain that comes from my father."
She was wrong. She was light. My light. All of that darkness inside of her only made the contrast that much sweeter.
"I just . . . I need more time. Please don't rush me. Be patient with me, and I will work it out someday, I promise."
I held her so hard she couldn't have found it easy to breathe. "Take all the time you need. I swear, I won't mention it again. Ever. We are on your timeline here. You know, I know you know, I can't do without you."
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
MY BLISS
Something was up. Bianca had locked herself in the bathroom. She'd been in there for thirty fucking minutes.
I knocked again. "Love, are you okay in there? Is something wrong?"
She mumbled that she was.
I left, did a few things, and came back a good thirty minutes later. She was still fucking in there.
I knocked again. "Are you ill? Did something disagree with your stomach?"
I was a TMI type of guy.
She mumbled a no, but she sounded strange.
I was just getting my phone out to call Stephan when he burst into our bedroom without knocking.
I blinked at him. This had never happened before. He knew very well that our bedroom was not a safe place to enter without knocking. Odds were more likely than not he'd scar his eyeballs for life, doing a thing like that.
What the hell was going on?
His eyes ran over my face, and they were bright with excitement.
And possibly tears.
What the hell was going on?
He was just striding to me when Javier came up behind him to hover in the door.
Without a word, Stephan dragged me into a rough, back thumping embrace.
I patted him back, cause it seemed the right thing to do.
What the hell was going on?
"She didn't tell me first," he said, sounding excited. "I swear it. I just guessed. She said she wanted us to come over so she could tell us all something, and I just knew."
The confusion, the worry, started to change into something else entirely, something powerful and profound blooming in my chest.
"Tell you what?" I asked softly, right as she opened the bathroom door.
I moved away from Stephan to approach her. She looked pale, something vulnerable her eyes.
Her lower lip was trembling, her eyes pure liquid on me.
And she had something in her hand. She held it up with a trembling hand.
Stephan let out a loud whoop, thumping me on the back again repeatedly.
I approached, looked down at the little white stick in her hand. A pregnancy test. With a clear plus sign on it.
I dropped to my knees, burying my face against her belly, rubbing my face back and forth, taking deep steadying breaths, the strongest joy I'd ever known washing over me, head to toe.
I hadn't even been aware she'd gone off birth control. She hadn't told me she was trying, and I understood. She was already so nervous about it anyway. She hadn't wanted that extra pressure on her.
My excited, adoring eyes would have always been looking for signs of a pregnancy, from th
e second I knew it was even a possibility.
"How long have you been off the pill?" I asked her, lifting her shirt to kiss her stomach. It wasn't enough of her for me, and I dragged her shorts down, too, giving myself a generous amount of skin to wallow in.
I wallowed.
"About a year," she said quietly.
"How far along are you?"
"Twelve weeks."
My hands went to her ass, gripping as I rubbed my nose against her soft skin. Then my lips, my tongue, moving down, kissing from hipbone to hipbone.
Javier cleared his throat.
Reluctantly, I stopped, letting the other men embrace her. Stephan held her for a long time, so long that I just joined them, hugging her back as he took her front, my hands snaking around and between to rub over her belly, my face buried in her hair. We stayed like that for a very long time.
I was holding the magical stick. I couldn't stop looking at it.
"You know she peed on that, right?" Javier called out.
I shrugged. I could not have cared less, tracing that plus sign with my finger.
"James," Bianca called.
She was lying on the bed, side by side with Stephan and Javier, Stephan in the middle, looking at his phone. Javier's head was on his shoulder. Bianca and Stephan were holding hands.
She extricated her hand from Stephan's nudging him in the side. "Tell him what you were telling me."
"You need to get some coconut oil, to prevent stretch marks," he said, reading from his phone. "She's freaked out about what's going to happen to her body. Like, really freaked out."
She elbowed him for that, and he smiled, leaning over to kiss the side of her head.
I moved to sit at her hip, hand going to her stomach. It wasn't enough, and I turned, lifted her shirt up to her ribs, and rubbed my face into her skin.
She gripped my hair in both hands, stroking through the strands.
I started kissing her skin, and quickly got carried away.
"Seriously, man?" Stephan asked as I used my nose to push her shorts lower, mouth following.