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I squint through the morning gloom across the single bedroom at the twins’ crib. They’re still sleeping soundly, unaware that everything has changed. Unaware of my pain.
But that’s good. This is the only way I can protect them from feeling the same kind of pain.
The phone buzzes again in my hand. Him. Again. I tap Ignore, send it straight to voicemail, then hold down the power button until the phone shuts off. I can’t deal with this right now.
Eventually, I’ll need to. I’ll have to decide if I can face him again. Take the job—only the job, not the life I once dared to think might come with it.
Or if it’s too much, if I can’t handle seeing him… then I need to start applying elsewhere. Polish up that résumé. Get back into the hunt. The hunt that was going abysmally before he agreed to take me on.
Ugh.
Luca fusses quietly, and I slip out of bed. Pad across the room to scoop him up. I pick up Lucie too, then head back to my own bed. I curl up around them, feeling their warm, comforting weight in my arms. Gazing into their bright baby blue eyes, starting to go gray as they age. They’re changing every day, my little darlings, becoming more and more aware of the world around them. I want nothing more than to shelter them from it forever. To keep them from ever feeling the hurt I do right now.
I curl around them and close my eyes. I’ll feed them in a minute. I just want to hold them right now, cuddle them. Luca curls his fingers in my hair, Lucie hangs on to my fingers for dear life, and we cling like that to each other, three lost peas alone in this crappy pod of an apartment.
I don’t remember falling asleep.
I don’t realize I have until the knocking startles me awake. The door. I groan and untangle myself from the kids. Luca cries as soon as I let him go, which sets off Lucie. I try to hush them, even as I hop around the room pulling on a pair of pants over the panties I slept in.
The knocking continues, louder and louder. Crap. Is it my landlord? I’m not behind on rent again. Am I?
Finally, I yank a shirt over my head and pad across the dingy floor to the door. I fling it open, not bothering to peer out through the peephole first.
Mistake.
Cassius stands in my doorway. Framed against the dim apartment hallway, a dingy light illuminating his crisply pressed white work shirt and suit pants, he looks as out of place as a fairy tale prince in a bad cop show.
Meanwhile, I look like a monster, having just rolled out of bed, my hair sticking up on end, eyes red from crying myself to sleep, cheeks puffy from the same. I move to close the door on him, instinctivly, but he blocks it with his foot.
“Please, Manila. Let me come in.”
Just that simple phrase, just my name on his lips, makes my insides melt. I’ve never been able to resist him. Not even now. Not even knowing what he did.
So I step back and open the door wider. Let him into my hovel of an apartment.
To his credit, he doesn’t make a face when I lead him into the bedroom. He takes a seat on the single chair across from the bed, a rocking chair where I cradle Lucie to sleep on fussy nights.
I perch on the bed, one hand resting protectively on each of my babies. “What do you want?” I say, and my voice comes out harsher than I meant it to, choked with sleep deprivation and grief.
“I want you to come to work,” he says simply.
I laugh. Sharp and bitter. “You don’t need me. You never did.”
He doesn’t respond. Just watches me, intense and quiet.
“You saw an opportunity in me,” I guess. “Someone you could take advantage of. You knew I was in a bad position, you knew I had nobody else, so if you helped me, I’d be dependent on you. You could hide me and shame me into silence when your real woman came calling, if she ever found out.”
Now, he reacts. His eyebrows hit his forehead. “What are you talking about?”
I look at my lap. I can’t meet his eyes for this. Can’t watch the lies form in his eyes. “I found the folder,” I say as I rub Luca’s stomach gently. Slow, concentric circles. Focus on him, on my baby. Not on this man who gutted me. “The one from A New Chance. For you and…” I shake my head. I can’t say her name. Can’t make this real.
Before I even finish, Cassius is beside me on the bed, his hand on my shoulder. “Manila.” He’s laughing. Actually laughing.
