9. Holly
HOLLY
“ M um? We’re home!”
I burst upright in bed, my brain trying to piece together everything that happened.
Oh, shit. I still have Kane beside me in bed, half naked and starting to stir.
I got carried away with the feeling of having someone holding me while I slept, that intimacy I missed for so long, and never quite got around to telling him it was time to leave.
And now Dylan is home. Early.
Shit, shit, shit.
Mike is supposed to have him until six PM on a Sunday. That’s the agreement. I take the briefest moment to glance at the clock. It isn’t even eight in the morning yet. What the hell is Mike playing at?
“Mum?” The shout comes again. I’m normally an early riser, but the wine I drank, combined with Kane being here, made me sleep later than normal.
“Just coming!” I shout back, and Kane jumps.
He looks over quizzically, and I place a finger to my lips.
“What’s going on?” he hisses at me.
“I’m so sorry. But just stay quiet, okay? Or go hide in the bathroom or something.” My voice matches his hiss. “My ex has brought our son home early. They’re here right now.”
His eyebrows lift. “Your son? You have a son? Was that something you just happened to forget?”
”Please.” I’m begging. “I can’t do this right now. Just lay low until I can get this sorted.”
“You want me to hide? Are you ashamed of me being here?”
Frustrated panic fills me. “No, it’s nothing like that. Of course not. But this isn’t how I would plan for this to happen.”
“Holly?” Mike’s voice comes booming up the stairs. “You not up yet?”
I stare in horror at the shut bedroom door. Footsteps are approaching, and Kane still hasn’t moved.
“Please,” I beg him again, pointing at the adjoining bathroom door.
“Okay, okay.” He hops out of bed, heading towards the bathroom.
I don’t have time to appreciate his body or the patchwork of artwork across his skin. The bedroom door opens, and then my ex-husband and my son are both standing in the gap, gawping at the stranger I brought into our home.
Mike straightens, his eyes narrowing. “What the hell is this?”
I cast my gaze to our six-year-old son. “Dylan, honey, why don’t you go wait downstairs for a few minutes. I’ll be down in a sec, okay? Mummy was just ... showing her friend where the bathroom is.”
Dylan looks uncertainly between us all, and then, perhaps sensing this is an adult problem, nods and vanishes from the doorway.
Kane’s already picking up his clothes and shrugging them on. He looks at me and gives a small shake of the head, as though he’s disappointed in me. My stomach sinks. Shit. Fucking Mike. Why won’t he ever stick to our agreements? I should’ve known better.
Every muscle in my body tenses, my breath catching as Kane pushes past Mike to leave. For a moment, I’m worried they’ll ended up having a fight, but both men ignore each other, and Mike lets Kane go, though he shakes his head in much the same way Kane had.
I follow the thump of Kane’s footsteps going down the stairs, and then I jump as the front door slams shut.
He has left. A wave of sadness sweeps over me.
Yesterday had been one of the best days I’ve had for a long time, and now the reason for the best day has walked out of the door and will never want to see me again.
Mike turns his attention to me. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Holly, bringing a man like that into this house.”
I glare at him. “Don’t use language like that while Dylan is in the house.”
“I think the language I use is the least of his concerns right now. What were you thinking? You’re lucky you weren’t robbed while you were sleeping.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Kane is a nice guy.”
His eyebrows shoot up. “Nice guy? Have you seen the state of him? Long hair and tattoos. Honestly, Holly, I thought you had better taste than that.”
I arch my eyebrows in return. “What, like you, you mean?”
His lip lifts in a sneer. “Yeah, someone with a steady job and who looks like he’s washed once in a while. The thought of his hands all over you makes me sick to my stomach.”
“He has a steady job,” I snap back. “And you have no right to think of whose hands are going anywhere near me. You lost that right when you cheated, remember?”
“Well, I still don’t like the idea of you bringing strange men into my house.”
I gape at him. “Your house? This isn’t your house anymore.”
“While my name is still on the mortgage, I think you’ll find it is, and this kind of behaviour isn’t appropriate with a child around.”
“So that’s convenient. You get to tell me what to do, while you can bring as many floozies as you want into your brand-new apartment!
And by the way, I wasn’t supposed to have a child around this weekend.
You were supposed to have had Dylan until this evening, but instead you’ve brought him back early for some reason. ”
“Something has come up at work,” he says. “I have to go in to the office today.”
My lip curls. “On a Sunday? Seriously?”
“Yes, on a Sunday. You know I have to work Sundays sometimes.”
“The only times you ever said you were working Sundays was when you were out doing something else entirely.”
“That’s not true.”
I fold my arms across my chest. “Isn’t it?”
Mike’s gaze darts away from mine, and I know he’s lying.
“Anyway, funnily enough,” he continues, “I thought you wouldn’t be bothered if I brought him home early. I thought you might actually be missing your son, but obviously you had other things on your mind.”
I shake my head. “That isn’t fair, Mike.
Of course I miss him when you have him. But you’re supposed to have him every other weekend, and considering you only picked him up yesterday morning, and now you’re dropping him back less than twenty-four hours later, I don’t think I should be the one being questioned about whether or not I miss our child.
I’m the one with him most of the time. I’m the one raising him. ”
Mike huffs out a breath of frustration. “I’ll have him one evening during the week instead. Like I said, I have to work.”
“That isn’t how this is supposed to go. You’re supposed to stick to your days.”
“Why, so you can have sex with men half your age?”
“Oh, for goodness sake.” I lower my voice in a hiss. “We didn’t even have sex, okay. Not that it’s any of your business. And he’s only a couple of years younger than me. How young was Michelle, or was it Kimmie? Twenty-three, twenty-four? A good fifteen years younger than you are.”
I’d confessed my age to Kane a we’d lain in bed together, and had been relieved when he’d told me he was twenty-seven rather than the twenty-one or twenty-two that I’d feared.
“It’s different for a guy. We’re naturally attracted to younger women. I don’t know what the hell that thug sees in you. Maybe he thinks you’ve got money.”
My hands ball into fists, impotent anger burning through my core. “God, you are such a?—”
“Stop fighting!” Dylan suddenly appears behind Mike and then pushes past him, getting between us and trying to separate us with his hands. “I hate it when you fight.”
I bite back my hatred of my husband for my son’s sake.
I’m sorry he’s stuck in the middle of this whole mess.
I wish Mike would wait until Dylan was out of earshot before he started giving me grief, but he never seemed to care that Dylan could hear every word, and I don’t want my son thinking it’s okay for him to speak to me that way.
A part of me wishes I’d never met Mike, but then we would never have had Dylan, and that little boy is my world.
There were plenty of times over the past few years where I’d have just given up if it wasn’t for him, but I hate that he’s always going to be caught in the middle.
Mike’s still Dylan’s father, no matter how much of an arsehole he is towards me.
“Sorry, baby.” I reach for my son and pull him to me, his face pressed against my stomach. “Mummy and Daddy were just talking. We’re done now.” I shoot Mike a warning glare. “Aren’t we?”
Mike nods. “Yeah, course we are.”
The right words leave his mouth, but I know he’s thinking ‘for the moment.’ You don’t live with someone for almost ten years without knowing exactly what’s going through their minds.
I turn my attention to my son and ruffle his blond curls. “What did you have for breakfast? Are you still hungry?”
Dylan pouts. “We didn’t have anything yet.”
I bite down on my urge to start a brand-new fight with Mike about not feeding Dylan, but I manage to keep it to myself.
“What?” Mike says, sensing what I want to say, just as I’d done with him. “We needed to get out early. It’s not as though he’s going to starve by waiting an hour.”
I take a deep breath and steer Dylan past his father. “Let’s get you downstairs and find some breakfast.”
“Fine,” Mike says. “I have to go anyway.” He drops a kiss on Dylan’s head and then heads to the door without saying another word to me.
The door shuts behind him, and I sigh, but then plaster a smile on my face for Dylan’s sake. I follow the boy into the kitchen and set about pulling bowls out of cupboards and pouring out cereal and milk.
My thoughts go to Kane and the expression on his face when he looked between me and Dylan and realised the boy was mine.
I should have told him. But it’s one thing having an arsehole of an ex, and a whole other thing having a child.
I come with baggage, and I hoped, just for one night, I could be the girl I’d been before—young and carefree.
The sort of girl who lets gorgeous, tattooed men finger her in the back of a taxi.
It had been stupid of me to bring Kane back to the house, but Dylan wasn’t supposed to have been coming home yet.
Mike likes to do stuff like this, though, just to keep me on my toes. God, I hate him.
I need to focus on Dylan now. I doubt I’ll ever hear from Kane again, and I don’t blame him. While I’d not exactly lied, I’d omitted a very important truth. If the situations had been reversed, I’d have been seriously pissed off.
I’ve messed up my one chance of being happy again.