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“I was thinking about you, too,” he said instead of what he really wanted to say. Thinking of the mountain of regret marrying her produced.
“Oh really?” she said with the same sultry dip in her voice that used to drive him wild.
Now, all he felt was the burn of stomach acid mixed with a gallon of tequila, unpleasant and sickening.
“Like I said, it’s almost my birthday.”
Big fucking whoop.
“Yeah.”
“Mm-hmm, and I was thinking of taking a little trip to celebrate. Maybe to a few hours south. Forty-six is a special one, after all.”
And here it came, the inevitable attempt at getting back with him. Why she bothered, he’d never understand. They were disastrous together. Even being in the same city was too close for him. Trina had moved to Pensacola some odd years ago, and she could keep her crazy ass right there.
“So whaddya say? Wanna show a girl a fun birthday for old-time’s sake?”
“No.” He wasn’t going to soften that blow with false hemming and hawing or fluffy words. “I don’t want you within two hundred miles of me.”
“Ty,” she whined. “Why are you being mean?”
“Why did you take birth control on the down-low while telling me you wanted to get pregnant?”
“What?” she whispered, barely audible.
Tyler grunted. “Why did you pretend to want a baby for our entire fucking marriage? Why did you put on a big fake show every month when it didn’t happen?”
He sucked back another giant mouthful of tequila. The burn didn’t hit as much anymore. Maybe he’d destroyed all the receptors in his esophagus with the past hour of intense boozing.
“Ty, baby—”
“Don’t you fucking dare.” She was damn lucky he couldn’t reach through the phone and strangle her. Never once, even on their worst days, even during screaming matches where she berated him for not making enough money, for cheating on her—which he never fucking did—or for not making her happy, he never once, not one single time, thought of laying a hand on her.
But now, he wasn’t certain he could keep from throttling her if she appeared in front of him.
“Tyler,” she said, keeping the whine in her voice. “I can explain.”
“You can explain.”
“Yes, ba… Ty. I can. We were young. It was a crazy time. You were a new business owner, and we were fighting all the time. I—”
“All great fucking reasons to say, ‘Hey, Ty, I don’t think this is a good time to try for a baby.’ But is that what you said? Fuck no. You told me you wanted one. More than anything. You fucking begged for a kid. We tried for fucking years. All the way up until the end. Do you have any idea how shitty I felt all the fucking time when each month passed, and you weren’t pregnant?”
Old and bad memories resurfaced. Trina crying when she got her period. Trina throwing her heels at him as she screamed that it had to be his fault. He wasn’t man enough to knock her up.
All fucking lies.
“Turns out the joke was on me, huh? Turns out I did get you pregnant, and you got rid of it without a fucking word. Damn you, Trina.”
“I changed my mind,” she said in a small, vulnerable voice that would have tugged at his heartstrings once upon a time.
Not anymore.
“We were still young, Ty. Do you know what having a baby does to a woman’s body? I was beautiful back then. I wasn’t ready to—”
“You have got to be kidding me. You’re justifying years of lies and bullshit all because you didn’t want your tits to sag and your snatch to stretch?”
“Hey!” she shrieked, no longer pulling the wounded act. “Don’t fucking talk to me like that.” Her voice dropped to a seductive octave. “I did it for you too. We wouldn’t have been happy with a baby. Remember how it was with us? How much fun we had? We were so hot and spontaneous. A baby would have ruined that.”
