“Fuck you,” I snarl before getting into the SUV.
“Don’t drive mad!” he calls out, but I ignore him, backing out of my spot as Bennett also appears at the front door, just wearing his pants.
Then I throw the car into drive and roar out of the parking lot.
Arthur
That was all extremely bad. Which is the understatement of the century.
I stand in the parking lot naked, holding my pants in one hand as Jack speeds away in his car, tires screeching.
Damn it. I should have listened to Bennett about telling Jack. Now we’ve lost our chance to come clean on our own terms, and instead, he had to find us like that.
“Arthur!” Bennett calls from the door. I turn around and hustle back inside, trying to get my hooves into the pant legs. He’s throwing on his shirt. “We have to go home and meet him.”
“Home?” I scoff. “I doubt he’s going home.”
Either he’ll find his way to the gym where he can beat up a punching bag, or possibly head out to the lake so he can scream at the sky.
I wonder if we might never see him again. After Marilee, I wouldn’t put it past him to simply disappear on us. He’s been betrayed once before by someone he loved, by someone who committed to him, and here we are, doing it again.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Bennett grabs his mane and pulls his hair. Bree appears in the hallway, putting on her own shirt. “I can’t believe he found us like that. Damn it!”
She says nothing as she joins us. Now she’s caught up in this, too. The way Jack treated her, he’s already made her the enemy. He’s going to blame this poor woman as much as he blames us, when she did nothing wrong.
My heart feels pulled in a hundred directions at once. I turn to her, put my hands on her shoulders, and bump her forehead with mine.
“I’ll figure this out,” I say with far more confidence than I feel. She just sighs, shakes her head, and draws away. This is probably a perfectly fine time for Bree to say I told you so, but she doesn’t, which is kind of her.
Then I put an arm around Bennett’s shoulders as he yanks out his phone and frantically types a text message to Jack.
“He’s going to think there’s something wrong with him,” Bennett’s saying, tears tracking down his furry cheeks. “I need him to know that we love him.”
I put my hand on the phone to stop him from sending. “Maybe we should go home,” I say. “Wait there for when he comes back.”
We both turn to Bree.
“Sorry,” is all I can say.
“Go find him,” she answers, and ushers us out the door.
The whole drive home, Bennett grips the wheel tight. I replay the memory over and over of the door bursting open and Jack walking in on us. The expression on his face… I’ve never seen anything like it. As if he’d been cleaved right through the chest.
I keep my breathing even until we reach the house. The lights are all off inside, and Jack’s SUV is gone.
Fuck, I hope he comes back. I hope he comes back.
Bennett and I silently make quesadillas, then sit at the table, neither of us eating them.
“I’m going to call him,” Bennett says. I don’t try to stop him as he brings out his phone and dials Jack. But it just rings and rings, as I expected.
“Honey,” Bennett starts his voice message, “please come home and talk to us. Please give us a chance to explain ourselves. We love you so, so much.”
It sounds pathetic, even to my ears. And I’m probably a pretty pathetic satyr right now.
When Bennett sets down the phone, he drops his head into his hands and his shoulders shake. I don’t have the energy to comfort him, and besides, what comfort could I offer?
We outright lied to Jack. We hid this from him, and now I have to face that fact. Nothing could be worse when it comes to our husband, not really, than lying. It was Marilee who first lied to him, who told him she loved him and would be with him forever, when she really wanted someone else. Once they were engaged and she’d gotten what she needed from him… they were both gone.
