Total pages in book: 102
Estimated words: 100225 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 100225 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 501(@200wpm)___ 401(@250wpm)___ 334(@300wpm)
“Dom is going to be a father. I’m sure he’ll step up to the plate wonderfully with Gabby. The last thing he needs is me confusing things and adding pressure to him.”
“Bull hockey,” she scoffs.
“Bull hockey?”
“I’m trying to clean up my language around Little D and Tamsin,” she responds with a grin. “I’m pretty sure I can clean up mine. I’m not so sure about Dragon’s.”
“Are you going back to him?” I ask.
“Yes, I just need to get up my nerve to call the idiot. I know the asshole loves me. I love him too. I’m not even hurt about King. I’m more hurt that he’s known for a while about King and didn’t think he should tell me or even invite King to our home so the three of us could discuss everything. I even asked him if he thought it was a possibility King was related to him. He denied it and made me feel foolish for asking. Dragon has always had a really bad habit of trying to hide situations he’s afraid will hurt me or make me mad enough to leave. It’s a trait that I thought Dom had inherited. That’s what led to the mess with Gabby and T, I’m sure of it. Still, he seems to have finally got his head out of his ass with all this mess and you leaving. That makes me glad.”
“Do you know King’s mother?” I ask, wondering how she’s going to deal with that. I think that’s the one thing holding me back the most. I’m not sure I can deal with Gabby being a fixture in our lives every day. I’m adult enough to see their child as an innocent party, but watching Dom interacting with Gabby and the child as a family unit may destroy me in time.
“I think I do. There was a woman who kept trying to get Dragon alone at the club years ago. Dragon met with her a couple of times at a club. I walked in on them kissing and it nearly caused us to get divorced. I think Dom was six or seven at the time. Sadly, he was the only one old enough to know something was wrong. He heard us fighting, too. That’s something I will always regret. I should have shielded him better. At the time, I was too lost in my own pain.”
“Wow,” I whisper. “Dragon loves you so much. I couldn’t imagine him ever kissing another woman.”
“To this day, he swears he was caught off guard by her and didn’t have time to push her away before I walked in on them. Maybe he’s telling the truth. Part of me believes it is. Still, the woman approached him that first night of the party and Carrie let me know, I made him promise to make sure it didn’t happen again. The fact that it did, and he let it—despite his promise—was betrayal enough.”
“I understand. It would be for me, too.”
“Men are different creatures than women, Thea.”
“Is this one of those Mars and Venus kind of talks?” I laugh.
Nicole grins. “Sort of. When you’re dealing with alpha males, they see things in black or white. They see betraying the woman they love as having sex with someone else. In Dragon’s eyes nothing he did crossed the line. It wasn’t my place to tell him what he could and couldn’t do as long as he didn’t cheat. The kissing thing—which is what he referred to it as—he said that was all her, and he was going to put a stop to it. To him it was clear cut and nothing I should end our relationship over.”
“Did you hit him over the head with a baseball bat?”
“Oh, believe me, honey, I wanted to. I packed the kids up and we moved to Tennessee. I came very close to staying there.”
“What changed your mind?”
“He cried.”
“Huh?”
“He followed me there and begged me to come home. He banned the woman from our clubhouse and told the president of the group we were hosting the parties for that she wasn’t allowed back. When I told him he shouldn’t bother, that it was too late to undo everything, he broke down and cried. He knew I was going to leave him, and he lost it. In his mind, I was the one throwing our family away, and he hadn’t done anything to warrant it.”
“Did you get him to see things differently?”
“Eventually,” she says.
“How?”
“Let’s just say I gave him a taste of his own medicine. The point is, that this time he truly didn’t mean to hurt me. He was scared. He still is. That can be hard for a man to accept. He loves me and he’s terrified he’s going to lose me. I think in some ways he’s been worried about that ever since the night I caught them kissing. It has led him to make decisions with our kids that I don’t entirely agree with—especially Dom. Let’s hope for your sake that Dom doesn’t take after his father.”