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Zeke walked into the kitchen, dressed in the same clothes from last night, his hair still slightly damp, his chin and jaw covered in dark stubble. Monday through Friday he shaved religiously. He was a cop. And the short hair and clean jawline were part of the look. But on the weekends he took a break from the razor.
He looked so handsome, and so damn happy. Today could be the beginning of a new life for them. It would be so easy to do what he wanted. To go to breakfast in front of the whole town. To basically declare, Mimi and Zeke are back together again! Then they could all go back to their lives, business as usual.
Except, then nothing would have changed.
He poured himself a cup of coffee and took a long appreciative sip. “So, what about bre
akfast?”
There was no easy way to say it, so she just blurted it out. “I know about your dad.”
He froze. “What do you know about him?”
“I know that he’s been in contact with you. And that…you’ve been moody and upset and I’ve been waiting for you tell me. But you haven’t said a word to me. Not one damn word, Zeke.”
“It…he doesn’t have anything to do with us, Mimi.”
She tried to pick her jaw off the ground. “Are you kidding me? He’s your father. What do you mean he doesn’t have anything to do with us? Anything that has to do with you, has to do with me.” She gentled her voice. “We’ve been together eighteen years and in all that time you’ve never once spoken about him. You’ve barely told me about the accident, and, baby, that’s just not normal.”
He shoved a hand through his hair. “I know you think I’ve repressed some kind of deep rooted feelings that need to come out before I can complete myself as a person or some other psychological bullshit like that, but believe me, I’m perfectly fine.” His dark eyes narrowed. “Is this what the past year has been about?” He shook his head incredulously. “I thought you were secretly pissed because I spent too much time at work or some other crap like that.”
Crap like that. She took a deep breath and tried to get control of herself. This wasn’t about her. It was about him.
“Why didn’t you just tell me this a year ago?” he continued. “Why didn’t you just say, ‘Hey, Zeke, did your asshole dad call you?’ Because guess what? I would have said, ‘Yeah, he did.’ Case closed and we could have saved ourselves a whole lot of money in marital counseling.”
“Because I didn’t know a year ago. I only found out a couple of months ago and I wanted you to tell me,” she said.
“Okay, so now you know.”
“Imagine how I felt when one day out of the blue you came home and it was like someone else had gotten inside your body. You were so…moody. And then you started running at night and I got worried. And I kept asking you what was wrong and you said that nothing was wrong. But I knew it wasn’t nothing. And I thought maybe you were having trouble at work or…I even thought maybe there was someone else.”
He looked at her like he couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “I would never cheat on you, Mimi.”
“I know,” she said. “But I couldn’t imagine what was wrong, and at all those counseling sessions you never opened up and I didn’t know what to do.”
“So what? You spied on me? Went through my phone?”
“No. I was taking out the trash and I saw this.” She pulled the letter from her pocket and handed it to him. It was from his father, Sam Grant, and dated two months ago.
Zeke stared down at the letter. “I take it you’ve read this, then?”
She nodded.
He ripped it into tiny pieces and tossed it into the kitchen trash.
“That doesn’t change anything,” Mimi said.
“Maybe not, but it feels good doing it.”
“Zeke, he says in the letter that he’s been trying to get in touch with you for over a year.”
“Yeah, he’s a persistent SOB, all right. I’m getting a restraining order.”
“A restraining order? On your own father? I read the letter, remember? He just wants to talk to you. To get to know you and Allie.”
At the mention of Allie, his eyes hardened. “You haven’t told her about this, have you?”
“No, of course not. That’s your call, but don’t you think she deserves to know that her father is trying to get in touch with her?”
