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I should be the one asking her this since I still don’t fully understand why she left to begin with. She got pregnant. That much is a given, but why didn’t she tell me? She took away my voice the same way she took both herself and our son away.
Poof! Gone. All of it.
I choke down my anxiety, continuing to play along because, if I’m being honest, I don’t want to leave yet. I’m enjoying the unexpectedness of the evening more than I should.
Then,out of everything, she has to go ahead and do the one thing that nearly undoes me. Throwing me off again, right here on the spot. She smiles, a full-on megawatt smile, as she inhales a bite, but it isn’t the pure glee or the soft moans as she chews that almost disengages me.
It’s the dimple on her cheek that has me almost diving across the table. I’m so fucking pathetic for this dimple that it could be the one thing to make me collapse.
Not everyone has the luxury of receiving its beauty and I’ve always felt privileged anytime it graced my sight.
Crippled, I’m paralyzed to my spot as she takes another forkful and then another. Her questions momentarily stumped in favor of her meal, which is fine with me, seeing as I’m not sure I could conjugate a working sentence.
She’s so fucking stunning, sitting here across from me.
Always.
I have to correct myself; she’salwaysbeen breathtaking. Hailey steals the air right from my lungs, and every time, I hand it over willingly.
How can she seem so at ease while I’m struggling to breathe?
“You know…” I start once her plates empty, finally finding my voice again. “If you ever need help withthat, I’m available.”
The muscles in her cheeks still, and in the same breath, her shoulders stiffen. We both know thethatI’m referring to. Not once in the time we were together had she ever complained about me not being able to satisfy her.
But honestly, most women don’t.
Slowly her fork drops back down to the table. Her swallow is a single thick gulp like she hadn’t even bothered to chew the slice of chicken, just consuming it whole.
Hailey won’t look at me.
The lights from the pendant chandelier above us suddenly feel too bright. The quiet of the room is too loud.
“I thought I was the one who got to ask the questions?” Her words are a crack of a sound.
“So ask.” Even I notice the scratchiness in my voice as I say this, and I despise it.
“Did you let yourself in?” Her sockets roll to the ceiling, correcting herself when a throaty sound leaves my windpipe. “I mean inside the house. We both already know what happened with my room.”
“You know there was nothing there I haven’t already seen before, right?” I state, trying to lighten the stifling air in the room, but it has the opposite effect. Her eyes shoot up, completely nuclear, and I swear if her stare wasn’t lasered in on me right now, I’d have a fork down my windpipe.
On the bright side, I at least have her focus again.
I cough into my hand. “Your dad let me in on his way out.”
One moment I’m basking in the sunlight that is her attention…her smile, the next? A frigid wasteland built of spite and aggression.
“Why were you here at all?”
“I wanted to come over and say good night to Aiden.” My frown deepens. “But he was already asleep by the time I arrived.”
Shuffling, her hips shift in her seat. Rattled, I’ve made her nervous.
“You wanted to say good night?”
My teeth grate. It’s what I said, didn’t I?
Don’t ask me why but the way she repeats herself like she doesn’t understand my answer unsettles something in me.
