AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Sly watched the woman he loved race from the house, the look of betrayal and agony on her face tearing at him so viciously, it shredded his lungs; he couldn’t catch his breath.
Panic, unlike anything he had ever known before, bled him dry until all he could feel was the thundering of his heart and the tightening of his chest. He raised a shaking hand to his face and swore.
After Sally had broken in his arms, revealing all the shit her father had done to her mother—the abuse and the cheating—Sly had understood right down to his marrow why Sally had reacted the way she had about sleeping with him that first night. She thought he’d been unfaithful to his wife, using her to scratch an itch. Since then, he’d gone out of his way to show her just how much he wanted her and only her. And within a fucking moment, he’d blown it all to shit!
He’d looked his woman in the eyes and sent her home while another woman had a personal, intimate history with got to stay.
Like throwing another woman in her face.Just like her fucking piece of shit father.
He’d chosen his ex-wife—his past—over his future. Over Sallina.
Fuck! I made a mistake.
A terrible fucking mistake. And there wasn’t anything he could do about it until he dealt with the woman even now slinking up to him, her overly made-up face pinched into a pout he knew was all about making her lips look plump than feeling any real emotion.
“What the hell are you doing here, Loni?” he demanded, the rage in his voice making the windows vibrate.
Shrinking back at his anger, Loni’s expression changed right before his eyes, from hurt waif to arrogant self-righteousness.
“Don’t talk to me like that just because your Mexican house slut acted above her station and got herself canned,” Loni sniffed petulantly, as though she’d been the one wronged.
But Sallina had been the one wronged. Horrifically. Fuck! Would he ever do anything right by her?
He had to. She was everything to him. Nothing in his life mattered without her.
Biting back a curse, he narrowed his gaze on the woman who’d, once again, fucked with his life. “Sallina isn’t a slut, nor is she the hired help—she is my girlfriend.” Or she was until five minutes ago.
Shit!
“You can’t be serious, Sly! That woman is so obviously below you. It doesn’t take a detective to see that she’s a gold-digging whore.”
He gasped at her words, slapped hard by her tone. Not once in his long life of knowing her had he heard her speak like that. Taken aback, the meaning of her words slowly registered. Once they did—
“Call her a whore one more time, and I can guarantee you will not like the consequences.”
Rolling her eyes, Loni huffed, her bottom lip out. “Oh, come on, Sly. You can’t mean that. We mean more to each other than that—I’m your wife! She’s only trying to get her greedy little claws into you so she can take you for every dime in the bank.”
He snorted. “And she doesn’t need my money. Sally’s grandfather is Louis Dupree, CEO of Dupree Diamonds.” A truth he’d learned with a simple Google search, after which he’d apologized to her for even assuming she lived above her means. Yup. He apologized to her all night, with every part of his body. Over and over again.
Loni gasped, her eyes going wide. “What!”
“Her family is worth twice what I am, and she still prefers Big Macs over foie gras.”
Loni, seeming to recover from being slapped with more truth than she was expecting, huffed.
“She’s still trying to get in between a husband and wife—”
“You were my wife, Loni. We’re divorced—a divorce you asked for.” A divorce he’d tripped over his own feet to push through as fast as legally possible.
“I didn’t mean it! I didn’t want the divorce, Sly. I only said I did because I wanted you to see how much you were missing when you were out working 90 hours a week. I wanted your attention, your affection. I wanted to start a family with you—but it was like you were pushing me farther and farther away. I’d hoped that once you were faced with the end of our marriage, you would come to your senses and beg me to stay.”
“You want about it the wrong way, Loni. If you wanted my attention, my affection, you should have asked for it. I would have given it to you—I wanted to give it to you because I’d made a commitment to you.” No matter how foolish that choice had been. The foundation of their marriage had been built on things they should have worked through in therapy rather than the bedroom.
Hindsight was a bitch.
Loni pursed her lips, her eyes glistening with unshed tears.
Shit. He hated it when she cried. Certainly, she knew how to use tears to manipulate and crank up the guilt a hundred-fold, but there were times when her tears were real. Like when the memories of better times long ago came back to haunt them.
