AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I want our house to be full of chaos—even more than what Rox and the Gold family create.
“I know,” I tell her gently.
“And,” she whispers. “I don’t know when I will be.”
“It’s not fair for me to expect you to give it up,” I tell her, dropping my forehead against hers. “I know that now. I knew that then.” My smile is wry and self-deprecating. “But I wasn’t thinking clearly.”
Her eyes widen.
“I made a mistake,” I say. “I love you and I let all of my resentment fester and eat at me.”
And…I let the news I received just before the shooting push me over the edge.
Let it push me into making the dumbest fucking decision of my life.
“A mistake,” she whispers.
I nudge her down onto the couch, sit next to her, and because I can’t stand the distance between us, I pull her into my arms.
“A mistake?” she whispers again.
“Yeah, baby.” And I’m so drunk on the feel of holding her, of having this moment with her, so high on the night together as a family, doing nothing special but something incredibly important because we’re spending time with each other, that I miss the deadly edge to her tone.
“A fucking mistake, Stefan?”
And because this one is paired with her shoving at my chest, pushing me away from her—and doing it hard enough that it gets through my thick, dumb skull— I finally clue in. “Baby?—”
“A mistake,” She pops up to her feet in an angry, jerky movement, thrusting a hand through her ponytail, clenching the fingers tightly in her fist. “A fucking mistake.”
I try again. “Baby?—”
“Do you know what you put Roxie through?” she asks, dropping her hand but sounding like she’s grinding her teeth. “What you put methrough?” She picks up her wineglass, drains it in one long gulp. Then takes the bottle I left next to it, fills it to the brim, starts draining it again. “I thought—”She clamps her lips together, shakes her head.
“You thought what?”
Another long gulp.
“Brit.”
More wine being guzzled, enough that I snag the glass from her, set it on the table.
“Brit.”
She sighs, looks away. “I’m not a good mom,” she whispers. “I’m not home making handprint crafts, not bringing goodie bags to school for her birthday.”
“Baby—”
“And I’m not a good wife. I’m obsessed with hockey, spend too much time away from home, too much time training, too much time focused on my career instead of home with?—”
I touch her jaw. “I love that you’re so passionate about hockey, baby.”
“Only you don’t,” she whispers. “You just said you resented it?—”
“I—”
The words stopper up in my throat because…she’s not wrong.
It’s just…she’s not entirely right.
