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Zanifa arrived, running, gasping for breath. She’d probably torn all the way over from the other side of park. She also threw her arms around Rhys, so there was a three-way hug.
Wilder began yelling at the guards, demanding that Corbin be held and that someone call the police. Which only made Corbin want to hit him again. How, how, how, he wondered, had a man like this managed to woo and marry a woman like Melanie? How had this weak, inconsequential little bully managed to charm a woman as beautiful, gentle, and talented?
The upheaval continued outside the arena, and it took fifteen minutes and a call from Queenie to bring it all to an end. The little group was escorted by two officers to the parking lot, while Wilder stood watching them go, arms folded and scowling, clearly upset at not having gotten more satisfaction.
Rhys had stopped crying, but his face was red and swollen. Corbin desperately wished there was something he could say to make things better, but for the life of him, he didn’t know what. And to make things worse, neither Rhys nor Melanie would look at him.
It was Zanifa who tried to make things better. “Madame Melanie, I think Rhys is tired. The park, I don’t think it is good for him to be here anymore. I shall take him home, oui? We will have something to eat, maybe watch a movie. Maybe he will be better then?” Then she added meaningfully, glancing from Corbin to Melanie and back, “You can take as long as you need to drive back.”
Melanie released her grip on her son for the first time, nodding wordlessly, and watched as the boy and his nanny walked across the lot to their car. Rhys stopped to give his mom a little wave, and then they drove off.
Which left them alone. Corbin sighed. He knew he’d lost control. He was in for it, but at least once they were back in his car he would be able to apologize. He dug around in his pocket for his car keys, saying, “Melanie, I know you must be mad, but take it easy on Rhys when we get back. He’s—”
“Oh, great,” she snapped. “Wonderful. You’re just the person I need to take advice from right now; one who can’t even keep his fists to himself.”
She was right about that. He’d lost control and he knew it. “I’m—”
She cut across his apology. “Not to mention the fact that the one thing a mother needs in a moment of crisis is tips on how to raise their kids from a man who’s childless!”
She might as well have kicked him in the head. She might as well have shot an arrow into his heart, so vicious was the blow, so deep the cut. The only thing that kept him from slumping into a heap was the feeling that the ground was too far away.
Her face was mottled with anger, her eyes shooting showers of sparks. This was a Melanie he hadn’t met before, and one who had, whether she knew it or not, delivered a murderous blow. He wanted to say something; knew he had to. “I—”
But he was talking to empty air. Melanie had left his side, not bothering to look back at him, and was striding across to her ex. Leaving him standing there.
Silently dying.
He struggled to recover, gaping at her, totally taken aback. How could she leave him at a time like this? When there was still so much to be said? And did she really want to talk to this man? A man who had flown across an ocean to snatch his own child?
There it was again, that territorial instinct. That feeling that a woman was making a choice—and the choice had been ‘not him’.
Rather than stand there feeling and looking foolish, Corbin walked over to his car, got in and started the engine. She’d come to him when she was ready. He hoped.
But though the wait was only a couple of minutes, it felt like eternity, and eternity is long enough for a man’s mind to drift. Drift it did, to another place and another time and another little boy who he missed terribly. Every single day.
Corbin leaned his head on the steering wheel and placed his hand over his chest, over that gaping hole in his heart.
