Chapter 19
Carey
"WHY HAVEN'T YOU put a baby in her yet! What is it can't you perform?"
Being humiliated by father was bad enough. Him doing it in front of my wife was a second layer of embarrassment. I could feel the little boy in me come to the surface. A boy who took all he said without retaliating. A boy who wanted to please him, even though he hated him. "I can perform just fine."
"Then it's your problem, then?" He turned to Thalia, who wilted like a flower in a dark room. Subconsciously, I put my arm around her. She shook her head as she twisted her fingers."It's not that at all, Mr Hawthorne, it's just that…"
"You know that's the reason you are here at all. It's the fucking reason I even bought you at all!"
"Hey! You don't talk to my wife like that!"
My father flinched. The room went quiet. It was the first time I've ever spoken to him like that. I've ever rose my voice at him. He frowned. He was dumbfounded for a moment, but he quickly found his footing. "Does she know she's married to you? Do you?"
I could feel anger slowly bubbling inside me. "What we do in our private time is none of your business. If you want a child, you will get a child. But we will do that in our own time. Right now, she's grieving. Her mother, I don't know if you know, she was taking care of her, died recently!"
"Was she now? Was she mourning while she was getting arrested for shoplifting. Is that part of the grieving process?"
I felt Thalia stiffen in my arm. I squeezed her waist and raised my chin.
Thalia's voice was shaky when she spoke. "I made a mistake. I-I'm sorry."
How he knew was a mystery. Was he watching us? Leave it to my father to be overly invested in everything I do. And now, seemingly, everything my wife does.
"A mistake." His voice was cool. Too cool. "A fucking misdemeanor is not a mistake! You can't afford to have an arrest record!"
"I fixed it. She has no record. The charges were dropped."
"Control her. And put a fucking baby in her!"
We left the house soon after that. I couldn't be in the same space with him without thinking of punching him in the face. Thalia was drained when we got back home. She was still fidgeting with her fingers and looked like she wanted to say something.
"I am sorry."
"You've already apologized."
"If you want us to try to have a child--"
I scoffed. "There's no way in hell I am bringing a child into this marriage."
"Right. Of course, you're right."
She couldn't look more paler. I felt a gut punch to the stomach. My father had berated her. My mother had taunted her and now I was adding my own salt to the wound. But why should I feel sorry for her. She only wants a child just so she could get a bonus from my father. Her displays of vulnerability easily swayed me, clearly.
As I began making my way to my bedroom she called out in a tiny voice,"Have you ever thought about it?"
I stopped and turned to face her. I nodded. "A child with an honest woman. There's nothing I would love more. A child with you on the other hand…"
She flinched. "What if…What if," she took a deep breath. "If you want a child, you can have one."
"Out of wedlock. Yeah, that would be a scandal my father would love."
"We can raise the child as our own. It doesn't have to be mine. It could be anyone else's. Even Gemma."
That made me pause. "Why the fuck would Gemma and I have a child together?"
"Isn't she your girlfriend or mistress?"
I had no idea what to say to that.Where was she getting this from? It had to be from Darcy. Gemma and I were friends. We dated once, but that was a long time ago.
"What Gemma and I are is none of your business. But please, feel free to indulge in your own business."
She winced.
I stalked out of the room before I changed my mind and showed her that Gemma was not the woman who occupied my mind twenty-four seven. Before I showed her I wasn't being wholly truthful when I said I wouldn't want a child with her.
Thalia and I went back to our previous state of mutually cohabiting, but barely talking. Sometimes we would spend days or weeks without speaking to each other. She was always up and about doing her own thing. What that was I had no idea. It not like I didn't want to know. I wanted to know everything about her, but I would always stop myself whenever I felt the need to look deeper into her. If I did that then that would foster a connection with her. A connection I wouldn't be able to easily break.
Every now and then, I would think about her words. Her permission for me to have a child with someone else. She couldn't be that desperate to want to please me. The funny thing is, as much as I didn't want a child with her, thinking of her heavy with my child got me harder than anything else.Now whenever I saw her, that's all I thought about.
It was months after that conversation and I was still getting distracted by the replay. Like today when Barry caught me daydreaming during a debrief.
"If you want to reschedule the meeting for a later date, we can do that." I looked up at my partner. Barry and I worked together on a lot of cases. We were the best criminal attorneys in the firm and often were saddled with the same cases. He brought the experience of a middle-aged man with twenty years under his belt while I brought youth and a fresh perspective.
"I am sorry. I've been zoned out recently."
"What? Late night dinners with politicians got you drained?"
I shouldn't have told Barry about my plan to run for DA. Ever since then, he has found every opportunity to throw a jab at me. "No. This case got me drained. Our client won't talk even though I am ninety nine percent sure he did it. It would ease the stress if he just came out and said it you know."
Barry closed the casefile in his hand with dramatic flourish. "You know, I have a knack of telling when people are lying."
"Maybe you should use it on our client."
"You're lying to me. What's bothering you?"
"If I want therapy Barry, I will go to the office therapist, not you."
"Yeah, but she will only tell you what you need to do in order to get back to work. Not actually fix you, like I would.Is it the wife?" He peered at me and his tone went from joking to serious in a flash.
"What are you trying to say Barry?"
Barry shook his head and reopened the file. "Forget I said anything."
"Now I'm curious."
"Seriously. It's nothing. It's all rumors anyway."
"I don't have a knack of knowing a liar, but I'm sure as fuck you're lying to me right now."
Barry sighed and massaged his forehead. "It's gossip, that I am sure is all a pack of bullshit anyways, but…"
"But?" The anticipation of his next words was making me impatient. Barry was avoiding my gaze as he brushed invisible dust off the case file.
"My wife's friend went to New York fashion week. She's a designer and it doesn't matter. Anyway, she saw your wife there."
"Okay?" Thalia has been interested in fashion recently and, from the few snippets I caught whenever she was on the phone with Darcy, she was thinking of starting a line of shoes. She has been doing a lot of fashion related stuff recently.
"She was there with another man."
"And?"
"And." Barry brushed off more invisible dust off the file. "Now this is from a friend of a friend thing. It's technically hearsay, so I would take it with a grain of salt if I were you."
"Barry are going to get to the point or not. "
"Okay fuck it," he muttered under his breath. "The friend saw your wife kissing another man."
The room went cold. As though a giant iceberg had dropped onto the desk. Barry had a guilty look on his face as though he was the one who had been caught cheating. Come to think of it, wasn't fashion week a few weeks ago. "Barry, how long have you known this?"
Barry leaned back into his chair as though withdrawing himself from the conflict. "Listen. I have been looking for a way to tell you. I didn't know if you knew."
"I didn't know until now. Until you told me."
"Hey. It could be all a misunderstanding. She might have been mistaken. I mean that's happened plenty of times. It's all gossip, like I said."
"Who was she kissing?"
"A model, the friend said." "Male," he added, as though that would make it better.
We had agreed to see other people. I shouldn't be mad. I shouldn't even be bothered. But still, she should have known not to get caught. A model. I wondered what he looked like this man she was with. Was she having an affair with him? Or was it a one-time thing. Have they fucked already. An image of Thalia and a faceless, well-built man tangled in bed writhing and thrusting, played on loop in my head. It all made sense if I were to be honest. Thalia was a sexual woman. She was very responsive and active during that blissful period of ours. We had sex so many times during that time, I was sure my dick was going to fall off.It should be me she is having sex with. I felt my chest constrict and my face heat up as jealousy engulfed me. Wild, irrational jealousy.
"Hearsay," Barry repeated. "Don't take my word for it, talk to your wife. I'm sure there's an innocent explanation to all of this."