Total pages in book: 45
Estimated words: 44254 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 221(@200wpm)___ 177(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 44254 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 221(@200wpm)___ 177(@250wpm)___ 148(@300wpm)
And then he wants to…to what? Leave me?
He can’t leave me if we’re not together.
Maybe it’s spite that makes me ask the question.
I’m not proud of it. But I do it anyway.
“Do you think you would’ve had more kids if Christine hadn’t….”
I trail off, realizing just how cruel this is, but far too late.
Dominic pulls the car up at the side of the road on the residential street, parking and sitting back. His fists rest on his legs, clenched, his body heaving.
He’s like a volcano in human form, always ready to erupt with heat, fire, and passion.
Jasper makes a soft noise from the back seat as if asking why we’ve stopped.
“No,” Dominic says after a pause. “I don’t think so.”
“I’m sorry.”
He looks at me, expression hard. “Why are you sorry?”
“I shouldn’t have brought this up.”
“It’s fine. You don’t have to apologize. But you can’t tell Elizabeth I ever told you this. She can’t know. She loved her mother, and I want it to stay that way. She doesn’t deserve to have her memory tarnished.”
The street is quiet, as though we’re the only two people left, just me and my man.
And Jasper, of course.
Anyway, he’s not my man. He’s made that clear.
“Tarnished how?” I whisper.
Dominic laughs, smirking tightly, but it’s more like he’s trying to expel the pressure inside. “Christine cheated on me.”
I gasp, the shock sending me back in my seat. Lizzy always gave the impression they were happy together.
She’s always talked fondly about Dominic and Christine’s relationship.
“And not just once,” he goes on.
“Oh, Dominic,” I murmur.
“I was emotionally distant, she said, which was true. I was. I couldn’t help it, not with her or any woman. Maybe it was my job or just me. But when Elizabeth came along, I put my feelings aside. It was time for duty.”
I would be tempted to let this comment make hope flare in my heart, my core if it wasn’t for what he said before.
He could commit with the same sense of duty to our family.
“But Christine didn’t feel the same. She felt like her wild days had been stolen from her. She was active in lots of…I don’t know what you’d call them, hippie groups, maybe? Free love, all that kind of stuff. I was overseas often and had no clue exactly what they were discussing until after.”
He doesn’t speak with any anger. It would be understandable if he did, but he talks matter-of-factly, almost coldly.
“It turns out they had special parties where they’d pass each other around.”
“That’s sick,” I say without thinking.
He looks even more closely at me.
“I know I shouldn’t judge, but I just think, well….”
He reaches over, taking my hand with surprising gentleness. But I can feel the carnal impulses within the touch, as though he’s fighting off the instinct to do more.
“It’s okay. What were you going to say?”
“If you’re committed to somebody, you should be committed to that person. Fully. That’s the sort of relationship I’d want, one day, with my future partner.”
When I repeat the phrase he used, he withdraws his hand as though he’s somehow offended by it.
As though he’s not the one who said it first.
“I agree,” he says sternly. “Christine felt different. And then, when I found out, she started threatening to take Elizabeth from me. It was a horrible time, but I did my best to shield Elizabeth from it.”
“You succeeded,” I tell him. “She only has good memories of her mom.”
“I want it to stay that way. She doesn’t deserve to have that ruined, almost a decade after Christine passed.”
“Did these people know, in this sex club place, that she had a kid, a husband?”
“Yes,” he says, shaking his head slowly. “They did. But it didn’t stop them.”
“I can’t imagine. Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but I feel sort of….”
“What, Danni?” he says, quiet but firm passion in his voice.
“A husband and wife should own each other, in a sense. They should belong to each other. They should get jealous in a healthy way. They shouldn’t need anybody else, ever.”
“Exactly,” Dominic says, looking at me as if to say, That’s us. That’s where we’re going….
But I have to be careful with that sort of thinking.
“That’s exactly how I feel,” he snarls. “So you see why I wouldn’t want more kids, not with her. But there’s something else.”
“What?” I ask.
“I’m not sure I ever really loved her. I’m not sure I knew what love was.”
“But you do now?” I ask, praying, hoping.
He stares at me for a long time, and I think he’s going to say, even if it’s crazy, that he knows what it is because of me.
“I don’t know,” he mutters after a pause, turning back to the road.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Dominic
As I park up outside Matilda’s house, I wonder if Danni guessed I was talking about her when I said I would have more kids.