Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
“Has something happened?”
Adrian turned at the sound of Laila’s shaky tone, her expression slack and denoting worry. He’d thought she’d stayed in the bathroom. Far away from him and the news he’d just received. But there she stood. Asking a question that was everything he didn’t need right now.
“Not exactly.” An ache formed in his chest because he couldn’t bring himself to lie to her anymore, which meant the rare and incredible exchange they’d just shared was about to burst like an overripe piece of fruit.
Her brows wrinkled together, and she drew closer. The ache within him intensified. Time was up. When all he wanted to do was protect her from the pain that came with knowing the truth.
“Well, that sounds totally reassuring.” Her voice rose with an attempt at humor, her ensuing small chuckle not all that unconvincing.
She stopped behind the fabric couch across from hims and leaned a palm into the back cushion, still wearing her alluring red sundress from the day. “Is it another work secret you can’t tell me about?”
Her unrelenting stare bore into him and the heaviness in that look pulled his lips into a frown, meanwhile he glanced over to the giant glass sliding doors leading out to the back porch. Where they’d only tonight enjoyed a happy ‘family’ dinner.
So much for happy families…
Whitney had literally embraced him and filled him with his first taste of belonging outside of his own family. Then he and Laila made love with a level of honest intensity he’d never experienced before.
Wanting to maintain the peace, but aware he couldn’t keep her from inevitable hurt, he released a sigh and gave her the benefit of his direct stare again. “It’s not a work secret. It’s about you and Whitney.”
Her lips parted, before a more hardened air added tension to her face. “What did we do?”
“Nothing. You both did absolutely nothing wrong.” He rushed toward her, set on putting out yet another fire, her stiff delivery hinting a suspicion he planned to cut and run. In one swift motion he took her hand and ran a thumb along her knuckles, making certain to hold her gaze. “I have news for you, but before I do that, you should know I’m not going anywhere, okay? Neither is my promise to protect you and Whitney.”
“Has something happened in town? My parents? Ally?” Her voice turned impossibly small and husky, while the shadows forming under her eyes said his promise only added to her concerns.
“Nothing like that.” Set on unleashing the truth, he tugged her closer and cupped her face in his hands, making her look at him. “It’s about Mike. I’ve received confirmation on his whereabouts and movements over the last few years. You’re not going to like what I have to share.”
As if to shore-up her defenses, her lips formed a firm line and she pulled away, unbound hand coming to rest on her chest. For the longest time, she merely stared down at the patch of carpet between them, a million possibilities no doubt running through her mind, along with the dilemma of whether she wanted to know in the first place.
“Okay. Fine.” She snapped her focus back to him and gave a firm nod. “Just tell me.”
“Mike is still in Minnesota.” That wasn’t the worst bit, and he battled a desire to avert his gaze for the rest of it. Although looking away might give her the space to process the upcoming news, he wanted her to know he was here for her, even if a deeper part of him wanted to flinch from sharing the truth. “He lives closer to the city these days. He changed his surname—presumably to remain hidden—but still goes by Michael. Last month marked three years since he’s been married to a woman named Nina Clark.”
She jerked her chin back at that last bit of news, only to school a more neutral expression. “Oh…He moved on fast.”
His stomach sank because she didn’t know the half of it. “Laila. He also has two children. A boy and a girl.”
“Oh. Okay.” She gave a jerky set of small nods, her shoulders slumping, her cheeks baring a flush, while water came to glisten along the lower edge of her eyes.
A weighty silence passed, and she blinked at him a while before she eventually spoke again. “Is that everything?”
Laila’s blood turned cold in her veins, all because Adrian shook his head, the muscles at the edge of his jaw seeming to take on extra strain. As though he braced to deliver the worst news of all. “No, Laila. It’s not.”
As if Mike living in secret wedded bliss, with two children he hasn’t abandoned, isn’t bad enough?
Her vision blurred and the world seemed to spin all around her. Too many emotions rushed in at once. Her lungs felt void of air, so she sucked in a new breath, Adrian’s lack of reply perhaps more pain-inducing than whatever he had to share.
“I’m not going to like what you have to say next, am I?” Though she held his stare and rolled her shoulders back in a show of stoicism, he dipped his gaze down to the ground and nodded, the cabin’s darkness intensifying the gloomy shadows about his face.
“You mean, worse than him building a life with another woman?” A derisive laugh shot past her lips, but the lump in her throat turned that laugh into a twisted sob. “Was I really so hard to lov—”
She pressed her lips shut, feeling far too exposed now to want to talk about love with Ramos. Or perhaps a part of her feared what he might answer.
His gaze lifted but gave little of his own feelings away. “I’m sorry.”
“Just, don’t say anything yet, okay? Give me a minute.” She swiped at the fresh tears spilling down her cheeks and followed his lead at averting her gaze again.
She’d always figured Mike couldn’t hurt her more than he already had, but here she was again, her agony unleashed and at the mercy of whatever other horrible secret he’d kept from her.
Wishing to break her emotional stalemate, she blew out a hard breath and began to pace a small area just ahead of Ramos, shaking her one usable hand in the air in front of her, as if that might release all the bitter feelings pinging around inside.
“What could be worse?” She muttered to herself but loud enough for him to hear, too. “He left without a word. Abandoned his daughter. Time and time again I’ve had to explain to Whitney why her dad went away, when all I could offer was a softened version of ‘I don’t know.’ What could possibly be worse?”
Her tone verging on demanding, she snapped her focus back to Ramos.
His tight frown shifted from shock to concern, his cheeks hollow as he strode closer and caught hold of her arm. “Maybe we should stop here for tonight.”
His voice was soft and soothing, yet she felt anything but soothed. Though her rising anger wasn’t directed at him, she wrenched herself away, and deflected the internal sting from his compassion. “I need to know. I need to know now. I won’t stop worrying until I do.”
“Laila...” Her name was a low and gentle warning, but she shook her head, making it clear she wouldn’t back down. His gaze shifted to the large sliding door leading to the outside world, just like he had moments before, perhaps a clue he wanted to be anywhere but here.
She couldn’t blame him. Even when he cupped her face again and held on tight, releasing a sigh. “I had a hunch and was waiting on access to the birth certificate for Mike’s eldest child.” He paused, his gaze surveying her face, his tight brow yet another damning clue. “Laila, that child was born just six months after Whitney.”
A sharp hiss of breath burst past her teeth, and she snatched herself from his hold in a stumbling step back. This news on Mike’s eldest child meant he’d cheated on Laila while she was pregnant with Whitney, with no clear answer on how far back his infidelity really went.
Did she even want to know?
“I...”
I want to be sick…
Her mind flicked through memory after memory. The open look of shock on Mike’s face when she’d told him she was pregnant. Of how he’d initially been almost too invested in her pregnancy, only to stop caring once Whitney was born. Every little moment came back to her in a whole new light. One where he was less an overwhelmed new father and more a conflicted man hiding a gut-wrenching secret.
For so long she’d figured Mike’s laziness came from not wanting to be a dad. She hadn’t truly suspected cheating… Or that he’d just wanted to be part of somebody else’s family.
And the imaginary world she’d built in her mind about him in his absence—forever assuming he’d ruin every relationship succeeding the one with her—that he’d never truly commit to someone. That he’d waste his life away. Alone.
She scuffed her bare feet over the rough carpet and backed away, as though Ramos were Mike and she were a younger Laila, gifted a chance to make better decisions on how her life would go.
“How?” The question fell from her, again, as if she were speaking to Mike.
“Nina Clark worked with Mike.” Adrian’s hands curled into tight fists at his sides, as though he wanted to come get her and tell her everything would be alright. But the dark circles under his eyes told her nothing was alright. “The affair got him fired from his old job. The one he had when Whit was born.”
A pitchy squeak slipped from her lips, and she clapped a hand over her mouth only to feel a wet new swell of tears washing over her cheeks.
How embarrassing!
All those times she’d scrambled to find money. To do anything to keep that man in her life. And although Mike worked a little out of town, no one from his old job had reached out to tell her. They’d left her to do the exhausting dance of trying to keep her family together, never really knowing the truth of what went wrong.
“Are you okay, Laila?”
She shook her head and stared at Whitney’s closed bedroom door, heart a pain-filled mess beneath her ribcage, wanting nothing but to escape everything about this moment.
“I need her.” She blinked at that door and reminded herself of something she’d always sought to keep in mind. That it wasn’t fair to expect a child to carry a parent’s burdens. So, as always, she shifted her perspective, lifted her posture, and packed everything away. Especially her torrid emotions. “I need to go to her.”
All the hurt. All the betrayal. Every urge to lash out and be angry at the world. Everything got locked away behind an impenetrable wall she’d been building since the day she’d learned she would be a mother. That’s what good mothers did, didn’t they? They held every moment together. Especially the more painful ones.
“I’ll sleep next to Whitney tonight.” Her voice came out perhaps a little too calm. Too cold. She strode for Whitney’s door, refusing to ask for permission to go to her child. Not Mike’s. Not Adrian’s. Hers. That child, the one constant that would never leave her. Her reason for not falling apart completely.
“I’ll see you in the morning.”