Chapter 22 – Mortician #2
“I took Kendall on a day trip as her friend. She needed…” Fuck. Me died on his fucking lips because it would sound so fucking wrong and play right into Johnnie’s fucking hands.
“She needed you, right, Lucas? Kendall needed you so you jumped to her rescue.”
“Bailey,” Mortician growled. “To me, it seem like you just throwing shit at me because you don’t want to be married to me anymore. You know how much Kendall and Meggie mean to me. I’m not sleeping with either one of them.”
“Then why was last night the first time in weeks you fucked me? Johnnie was more tender to me than you’ve been in months.”
“You fucked Johnnie?”
“No! I didn’t want to because I love you. Even after he told me…a-a-and he said I’d never measure up…”
Mortician felt as if he was in the fucking Twilight Zone. What the fuck had happened to his wife? He’d repeatedly asked himself that question. After not finding that answer a few weeks ago, he’d moved to the club. It only increased the divide between them.
“Bailey, I fucking love you. You so fucking gorgeous, you take my breath away every fucking time I look at you. No one, nothing, compares to you. No woman alive can ever take your fucking place in my heart, my life, or my bed. But we go around and around about the same fucking shit. You wearing me the fuck out. What the fuck do you want from me?”
“A new baby,” she said, an answer he should’ve expected because she’d become obsessed with another pregnancy. “I want another daughter. A better daughter—”
“There’s no better daughter than our girl, baby,” he told her, all the fight gone from him. “Harley need you. She need me. Don’t turn your back on her or try to replace her. Whether we have a new baby, another daughter, don’t take away the fact that Harley ours too.”
Bailey’s tear-filled eyes touched upon his chin, his lips, and his nose before meeting his gaze. “She apologized to me,” she started in a reasonable tone.
Wary, Mortician nodded.
“For disrespecting me. Not for turning into a miserable fucking slut.”
Mortician stared at her, a fucking stranger who looked like Bailey.
“Your daughter,” she spat, thrusting an accusatory finger at him. “A black daughter by a black man in a white club. Aren’t you fucking ashamed of her? I am. I’m the only black—”
“What the fuck is my mama-in-law?” Mortician growled. “The child of fucking Shrek? She black!”
“I am, too!”
“Congratulations for finally deciding that, but who gives a fuck? You fucking haven’t all the fucking years I knew you.
All of a sudden, motherfucking fuckhead, miserable Lowman Jr., say some shit to you and you go off the motherfucking deep end?
Sounding like a fucking raving lunatic bitch?
Fuck you, Bailey. I should fuck Kendall,” he snarled.
“Johnnie made you feel wanted? Fuck you and him. Kendall did the same for me. At least she got fucking sense. You’ve lost your motherfucking mind.
I never slept with Kendall. I never slept with Symphony.
I never fucking wanted to sleep with Symphony. I—”
Her gasp interrupted him.
“Fuck, what now? What the fuck did I say this fucking time?”
“Do you want to sleep with Kendall?” she demanded.
Scrubbing a hand over his face, Mortician thought over what he’d said.
He was so fucking angry with Bailey, he just didn’t give a fuck, so he said, “Kendall the only woman who could make me betray you. Take that for what the fuck it’s worth.
It don’t have nothing to do with her fucking color or her fucking hair or nothing but her.
That’s what the fuck you wanted to hear?
I fucking said it, so fuck you. Fuck you and Johnnie, Bailey. Fuck you.”
Glaring at her, he shoved back from the table and got to his feet.
“I love you, Lucas—”
Mortician could only take so much bullshit and he kicked the chair.
“You a motherfucking liar. You don’t fucking love me.
You sound like you hate my fucking ass. And let me tell you this, the way you feel about my daughter makes me never want to look at your motherfucking ass again.
In fucking life. Harley didn’t ask to come here.
We fucked up, you fucking bitch. Us. Not her.
It was up to us to try to steer her from the fucking path she was taking and—”
She jumped to her feet and raced around to him, shoving him and catching him off guard. He stumbled back. “Go ahead, motherfucker! Blame me for what that bitch did. Blame me for Harley fucking Nardo and Ryan.”
“Fuck you. I do fucking blame you, bitch. I do. It’s all your motherfucking fault, Bailey.
All of it. She wasn’t a fucking slut or a bitch then.
She was the excuse you needed for your bad fucking behavior.
To shit on me and let her shit on me, too.
” He stepped away from her, storming to the other side of the room.
“This is what the fuck I mean. This rehashing shit. You looking for another response? Maybe I might feel differently? Yeah, I fucking hate you. How’s that?
That’s different, right, baby? I hate the fucking sight of you. ”
Did he? He didn’t know. He was just so hurt and devastated because of what Bailey was handing down to him and to Harley. He could blame Johnnie, but that motherfucker planted a seed, he didn’t grow that fucking tree that sprouted such derision and resentment. That was all Bailey.
“You hate me?”
Her broken sob floated across the room where he stood looking out of the window, not seeing anything, and almost brought Mortician to his knees.
But, fuck, they never resolved a motherfucking thing.
Bailey would tell him stories about couples who rehashed the same bullshit over and over.
She didn’t do couples’ therapy—if she did she would’ve needed to hand over her fucking license—but she had colleagues in the field.
Even therapists got frustrated when a couple was stuck on the same motherfucking thing.
“You hate me?” she asked again, sounding so fucking pitiful.
He turned. She was a short distance away, on the other side of the couch, her head hung and her shoulders slumped, her thick, dark hair curtaining her.
“I love you,” she told him in that same tone.
“If you hated my fucking ass, I guess you’d fucking murder me.” She was destroying him emotionally.
“You want to sleep with Kendall?”
Fuck, he hadn’t meant those words. He was just so fucking frustrated. “No, Bailey. She’s like a sister to me.” Who he’d kissed a few days ago. Or she’d kissed him. They’d kissed each other. He glanced away, wishing he could regret that kiss.
“I thought you’d call her your best friend.”
“Kendall my friend, Prez my best friend.”
“What’s Meggie?”
Sighing, Mortician eyed her, not trusting her not to have another goddamn breakdown. He remained quiet and shrugged.
“She’s perfect, right? Perfect wife. Perfect life.
Perfect children. Perfect strength. I’m not jealous of Kendall, but I am of Meggie.
No matter what she goes through, she always stands tall.
Stays strong. She never ever breaks. Why?
How can she move forward? Forgive Outlaw?
Overcome almost losing her son and her daughter in the span of weeks? ”
“Why don’t you ask her? I don’t have the fucking answer.”
She swiped at her tears. “You do,” she said, her green-brown eyes blazing. “It’s because of Outlaw and because of you.”
“And her,” Mortician told her. “Meggie find it in herself to adapt and to adjust and to overcome. Me and Prez can only guide her. We can’t make her accept more bullshit than a fucking pasture sees in a goddamn year.”
Instead of responding, she asked, “how do you feel about me?”
Exhausted, Mortician walked to the sofa and sat. “Do it fucking matter? The bigger question is how the fuck you feel about me?”
“I love—”
“Don’t. Just fucking don’t. A woman who love her husband don’t put him through what the fuck you keep handing me. The same fucking shit ten goddamn times over and never a fucking resolution.”
She picked up a seashell and threw it at him. A snow globe. A crystal anchor. Each piece she threw at him represented fucking money. He was going to have to pay for her motherfucking damages because he’d been the fucking jackass who wanted to take her away.
When she cleared a table of fragile objects, he jumped to his feet and caught her before she cost him even more fucking money.
“If you break another motherfucking thing in this motherfucker, you paying for it,” he snapped, gripping her arms.
“You’re worried about your fucking money?”
“When you wasting that motherfucker unnecessarily, fuck yeah. Do you fucking know how much this costing me?”
“We’re discussing our future and you’re worried about money?” she asked again.
He glared at her. “When we started discussing our future, Bailey? You fucking stuck on stupid. Stuck in the fucking past and on shit we keep motherfucking talking about. Not a motherfucking thing I say getting through your thick fucking skull. Not that I love you or that I want us to be a fucking family again or that you need fucking help. You’ve lost your motherfucking mind and I don’t have a magic fucking wand to fucking fix you. ”
She jerked away from him. “Now you think I’m crazy.”
“As a fucking loon. No sane bitch doing what the fuck you’ve been doing and saying all the bullshit you been fucking spouting. You can’t see what the fuck you got for the fucking baby you want.”
“The babies I lost!”
“Those lost babies not your fucking fault. They not my fault or Harley fault or Meggie fault or CJ fault. They just weren’t fucking meant to be.”
“You didn’t even know. You didn’t care enough to notice I was pregnant.”
“Did you fucking know you were pregnant every fucking time before you miscarried? How the fuck you blaming any of us, including yourself, for fucking pregnancies that weren’t viable?”
“Those babies were inside of me. My body, which was defective. No, not only defective but mid.”
Fuck, why had he been such a stupid motherfucker?
Johnnie tipped Bailey over the edge because she’d been standing on the precipice of self-hate, blaming herself for the miscarriages.
She was already at her lowest and he’d come and targeted her looks and her place in the club, which further eroded her confidence.
Unable to bear her sobs, he pulled her into his arms and hugged her. She stood on her tiptoes and embraced him.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, sobbing. “Don’t hate me. Please, Lucas? I love you. I don’t know where we’re going from here, but…but…make love to me now. Please don’t deny me.”
He should have. As usual, nothing had been resolved between them. It had just been a rehashed screaming match. But Bailey was so vulnerable and he felt so fucking guilty for losing his temper with her.
However, instead of giving her those expensive fucking diamonds, he would sell them to cover the damages to the rental and the expense of a wasted fucking trip.