Chapter 19 Lila
LILA
The first thing that strikes me, as I come out of my exhausted state and into the real world once more, is Matty crying.
I recognize that it’s her at once—because it’s so rare. She doesn’t cry much, not real crying, the kind she’s doing now, wailing like the world is crashing down around her and there’s nothing she can do to stop it. I lift my head from the pillow, frowning, and look to her bassinet next to the bed.
“You hungry already?” I ask her blearily, as I swing my legs out of bed and reach out to pull her into my arms. But as I begin to soothe her, another sound cuts through the quiet—a sound that makes my heart drop a mile in a single moment.
Someone is banging on the door. Hard. Not the kind of banging that Sofia would do if she had returned early and needed to speak to me about something.
Not even a landlord, looking to talk to me about upping the rent or something.
No, this insistent crash of fists against wood is something else entirely.
And as much as I hate to admit it, I know exactly what it means.
I clutch Matty to my chest, looking over to check on Ross, who seems to still be asleep—thank God. In the bed beside me, Martin stirs, frowning as he rubs a hand over his head.
“What the hell is…?” He trails off. When he looks over at me, I know he has already put the pieces together.
I recognize that banging on the door, the way it throws me back into a million memories I would rather leave behind.
It’s Thom. I’m sure of it. I can still recall the few times I was foolish enough to think I could lock myself in the bathroom at his apartment for some privacy, and how he pounded on the door until I opened it, screaming in my face for daring to shut him out for so long.
Didn’t seem to matter how many times I told him that I was entitled to my own space, he would treat it like I had been browsing dating apps as soon as I was out of his sight.
“It’s him,” I admit.
I can’t believe this is happening. These two sides of my life, clashing together, leaving me no room to escape.
It’s not like I can just go and tell Thom politely that I actually have company right now, so if he’d like to just leave and come back at a more convenient hour, that would be perfect.
No, if he knew I had a man here, he would no doubt launch himself at Martin, and that’s the last thing I want right now.
Martin’s face hardens. He grabs his shirt, throwing it on and striding toward the door.
“What are you doing?” I ask, rushing after him, still holding Matty.
“Put the twins back in their beds, and go and wait in the bedroom with them,” he tells me firmly, not taking his eyes off the door. “I’m going to deal with this.”
“No, please, you can’t—you don’t understand—”
“Lila?” Thom’s voice comes through the door. “I can hear you in there! Let me in!”
I recoil, panic clouding the corners of my vision. Martin reaches over to squeeze my hand, sensing that I’m drifting away on the spot.
“Hey,” he murmurs. “It’s okay. I’ve got this. He doesn’t scare me. Just take the babies and close the door, I’ll get rid of him.”
I hesitate. I just want this to be over.
But maybe…God, maybe, if Thom doesn’t respect me, he will respect another man stepping in and taking care of me.
He always thought I was cheating on him, and maybe this could serve as the proof he needs that I’m a good-for-nothing slut who isn’t worth pursuing any longer.
I have no idea if it will work, but at this point, I’m willing to try just about anything.
I retreat into the bedroom, soothing Matty as best I can even though my entire body is trembling.
I hate that Thom can still have this kind of effect on me, casting me into full-blown panic mode at the barest hint of his presence.
But this time, I’m not facing him alone.
This time, I have someone at my side who actually wants to help me, someone who has shown me over and over again that he’s willing to protect me and do what it takes to keep me safe.
Once I have Matty settled, I crack the bedroom door open an inch so I can see what’s going on out there.
Martin is standing next to the door as Thom yells profanities through the wood, the door flexing in the frame as he continues to rain down blows on it.
Martin takes a deep breath, and then, finally, he pulls the door open.
For a second, the two of them just stare at each other.
And I know something is not as I thought it would be. The way they’re looking at each other, it’s not just the shock of being confronted with someone they weren’t expecting to see. It’s something more. It’s something deeper.
Like they know each other.
And then, Thom speaks.
“Dad?”
The world spins, nausea spilling out of my stomach and into my throat.
What the fuck?
I wait for Martin to laugh in Thom’s face for trying to pull something like that, but he doesn’t. I can’t see him face-on from here, but I can see the way his skin has paled.
“Thomas, what the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for her!” Thom exclaims, jabbing his finger past Martin and toward me. I figure there’s no point hiding in this room anymore, not if what he has just said is true.
But it can’t be, right? There’s no way Martin can be…
There’s no way he can be Thom’s father. It just doesn’t make sense. The apartment feels as though it’s closing in on me, everything I was trying to cling on to spinning out of control faster than I can get a handle on it.
Thom goes to storm past Martin, but Martin’s arm flies out and stops him in his tracks.
“Don’t go anywhere near her,” he warns. His voice is low, but there’s something more than just anger there. Shock. Horror. Like he can’t believe this is happening.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” Thom demands again, rounding on his father, giving up on getting close to me. “What, did you come here to try and tell her that I was looking for her? Or…?”
And then he looks at me, and he seems to realize that I’m wearing nothing but a long tee that I grabbed after our hook-up last night. His eyes flick back and forth between Martin and me, calculating just what it is he’s seeing right now. And then his cheeks darken.
“What the fuck?” he exclaims, loud enough that I’m sure the entire apartment block will hear him.
Martin seems frozen to the spot, calculating what’s happening here.
And I’m doing everything I can to wrap my head around it too, because there’s no way this can actually be happening.
No way I could have wound up having kids with the father of the man who abused me for years, without knowing anything about it.
Martin didn’t even tell me he had children, let alone that he…
“You’re fucking her?” Thom spits at Martin, who snaps back into reality, turning on him once more.
“We need to go. Both of us. Now.”
“I’m not going anywhere until you give me some fucking answers!
” Thom roars, and he makes another move toward me again.
I draw back into myself, blocking the door to the bedroom as best I can.
I can hear Ross crying in there, and I know I need to tend to him, but right now, there are bigger threats to deal with than his rumbling stomach.
“Tell me the truth,” Thom demands as he turns to his father, his eyes blazing with a wild fury I don’t think I’ve seen before, not even on him. “Are you seeing each other? Sleeping together? Are you fucking her?”
Martin falls silent. But his silence is all it takes for Thom to fill in the blanks. His face twists into a smile, though there’s nothing close to actual happiness in it. His gaze finds mine once more, and he shakes his head slowly.
“I always knew you were crazy, Lila,” he snarls at me. “But this—this is low, even for you!”
Tears spring to my eyes, and Martin moves to my side, trying to stop him getting any closer to me. “Don’t talk to her like that—”
“Don’t tell me you fell for her shit too, Dad.” Thom laughs, a maniacal edge to his tone. “You can’t see the kind of person she is? A person who’d go out and seduce my father just to get back at me for—”
And then something else clicks into place in his head. His eyes widen, and he freezes to the spot.
“Don’t tell me this is the guy who fathered your babies,” he mutters.
It’s a question, but it isn’t phrased like one.
Maybe because he already knows the answer.
Maybe because he senses that neither of us are jumping to tell him that he’s wrong, he’s crazy, that neither of us would ever have let something like that happen, and that he needs to get the hell out of here before he goes around throwing accusations that he can’t take back.
But we don’t. No, neither of us say a word, because neither of us have to. The answer is clear. And whatever attempts we might have made to keep these two worlds apart from each other come crashing down in a matter of seconds.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Thom yells. “You’re kidding me, right? You did this to hurt me, Lila? You thought this would get under my skin? You ruined your life just to…just to fuck my father like some little whore?”
“Thomas,” Martin warns him, moving toward him, backing him toward the door.
Thom stands his ground, not giving an inch. “Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he sneers. “You fell for it, Dad! I thought you were meant to be smart, at least, but you fell for it too…”
He looks almost drunk with fury, and I know this isn’t going to end well. For the first time, he will feel like he has some right to be angry at me, and I’ve seen what he does even when he has no business at all being mad.
I don’t want Martin to get hurt, but I have to think of myself and the twins, keeping them safe from whatever rage he’s about to pile down on top of me—
“You get out of here, Thomas,” Martin tells him once more, his voice even. “We can talk about this later—”
“Talk?” he exclaims. “We’ve got nothing to talk about. You fucked my—”
Finally, Martin pushes him toward the door, clearly not willing to listen to another word out of his mouth.
My hand flies to my mouth, and I feel tears spring to my eyes.
I don’t know how this has happened, don’t understand how the universe could have conspired so cruelly against me to land me in the middle of this mess.
I thought I was just starting to get my feet under me, only for something like this to explode across my entire life.
Thom swings for Martin, who ducks, sending his fist slamming into the wooden doorframe. Thom lets out a howl of pain and goes to launch a kick at his father, but Martin sweeps his leg underneath him, sending him dropping to the ground.
But Thom has never been one to take a hint, even when he really needs to. And as he scrambles to his feet once more, I see the glint of metal in his hand—and I let out a scream as he runs full-force at Martin once more.