Sound Proof (Save Me #5) (5 page)

“All leaving will teach them is that giving up is always an acceptable decision.”

I throw my hands up in the air and turn away, blowing out a frustrated breath. “I’m not doing this right now! I refuse to stand here and expect you to support me on this, because I know it will never happen. Shouldn’t you be on my side? I’m your daughter.”

I start down the stairs, getting ready to yell for the girls, but my father grips my arm and spins me back around to face him.

“What are you going to do?” he signs. I can tell he’s not angry like my mother is, but concerned about what I’m actually going to do.

“I’m going to take my girls and go find a place to live.”

He brushes the hair away from my face as my mother walks away from us both, shaking her head the whole way. I know I expected her to be mad, but watching her walk away from me hurts more than I thought it would. “Leave the girls here for now,” he says. “Go take care of what you need to and then come get them.”

My father looks at the empty doorway my mother just disappeared through, then back at me. Leaning in, he presses his lips against my temple and walks away. His hand hangs loosely by his side, fingers telling me he loves me as he walks away.

“Hey, Dad,” I speak up. He stops but doesn’t turn around. “I love you, too.”

I throw my hands into the air, almost losing grip of my sticks. “Time out, time out!” I yell.

“You gettin’ old on me, or what?” Jason jokes.

After sliding my sticks into my back pocket, I grab a bottle of water and down it as fast as I can. “Fuck you, asshole,” I pant. “You can sit in a chair and only use your hands.” I scrub the sweat off my face and neck with a towel. “I have to use my entire fuckin’ body.”

“I’d make a joke about being good enough with only my hands, but Vanessa likes other parts of me better.” Setting his bass down, he winks at me.

“Damn, I’m glad we don’t live on the same bus anymore.”

Jason reaches down, adjusting a setting on his amp. “Dude, you’re just fucking jealous. When’s the last time you got laid anyway?”

I chuck my empty bottle at his head. “None of your damn business,” I grumble.

“That long, huh.” He tries to cover up his laughter, but fails. Miserably. Asshole. “Speaking of sex, why in the fuck am I sitting here hanging out with you? I have a wife at home who’s a hell of a lot more fun to play with than you, and a kid who’s with his grandparents. I’m going to do every possible dirty thing to my wife I can think of while we’re alone.”

He grabs his stuff, lovingly flips me off and leaves me alone in my living room. I pull my sticks back out and count myself back into the song we were playing. I pound out the beat with both feet, both hitting against a bass.

I get so into the music, falling into the beat like I always do on stage, that I don’t realize when I’m not alone anymore. I don’t notice it until I open my eyes see her sitting directly in front of my kit on the floor. Payton’s blonde hair billows around her face, covering her bare shoulders. Her head falls forward, hands settling on the wood beneath her.

I don’t know why she’s here. I’m still not sure what the reason behind her not going to New York with Willow is, but what I do know, is that Payton came to me. Whatever happened today, brought her to me. That means something, even if she doesn’t realize it yet.

I can’t take my eyes off her; her head bobs along to the beat I’m creating as I go. When she finally raises her head, and her eyes connect with mine, they’re filled with tears and she drops her head back down the second she sees me looking at her. I drop my sticks instantly, letting them land on the snare and jump off the stool and rush to her.

The sudden stop of the beat startles her, but she jumps even more when I drop down on the floor beside her. Payton sobs, dropping her head into her hands. I can’t help myself, I draw her into me and drag her with me until my back hits against the couch.

“Shit, tears. I can’t do tears,” I mutter even though she can’t hear me.

Her hands fist into the front of my shirt and she clings to me, pulling herself closer. My fingers sweep up and down her back as I try to calm her down. Once she finally calms down enough to breathe correctly, she pushes away from me a little and brushes the tears off her face.

I tap her leg, getting her attention. “Will you please tell me what happened? Because these tears are breaking my heart.”

The movement with her hands catches my attention, but she’s not signing anything. The fingers on her right hand, are messing with her ring finger on her left hand. Her
empty
ring finger. As much as the missing ring pleases me, it kills me to see her like this and knowing that he made her cry pisses me off.

“What the hell happened?” I repeat.

“We were a few hours out when I realized that I forgot some files I needed for my meeting at the office, so we turned around. Max was fucking my assistant. On. My. Desk.”

I ball my fists by my side, determined to stay here, to be here for Payton and not walk out to go beat the shit out of that son-of-a-bitch.

“Willow was with me. She was there when I screamed at him that I wanted a divorce. She knows, the whole office knows,” Payton whispers. “The girls are going to hate me.”

Her face drops back to her hands. I wrap my arm over her shoulder, pulling her against my side. I grab the pad of paper off the table next to me and toss it on her lap after I write down my question.

What are you going to do now
?

She barks out an empty laugh, shaking her head and throws her arms in the air. “That seems to be the question of the day, but I don’t know! I left the girls with my parents for the rest of the day, my mother is
so
mad at me for what I’m doing, and I rented the first place I could find. But I don’t have anything to furnish it. The girls don’t have their stuff, and I’m not going back to the house to get anything.”

She looks back at me, waiting for me to say something. Except my mother always taught me, if I didn’t have anything nice to say, to say nothing at all. Right now, I don’t think she would appreciate me telling her how much I’ve been waiting for her to realize her husband is an idiot. So I settle on the only thing I can think of that doesn’t sound like I would like to kill the fucker for hurting her.

“If you don’t go back and get your stuff, you’re letting him win. Don’t give him power over you for another minute, Payton.” I brush a tear off her cheek and push her hair out of her eyes. “Stand up, be strong, and don’t let him win.”

“How the hell am I supposed to move our shit alone?”

Before she has a chance to say anything else, I have my phone out and a text sent to Jason, Jameson and Evan asking them to help me move her out. All three of them agree to meet me there with their trucks even though Jason was headed home to do dirty things to Vanessa. I grab her hand and pull her outside, letting her slide into the seat of her car before climbing into my own and following her to their house.

Max is standing outside waiting when we pull into the driveway, so she must have let him know we were coming, which isn’t something I would have done. His glare lands on me the second I step out of my car. He hates me. I know it, but I don’t care because the feelings are mutual.

“I don’t want your ass on my property!” he yells, pointing at me. I step up onto the porch and laugh.

“It doesn’t matter what you want, Max. You fucked this up. You pushed her away. Not me.”

I’m just about to step through the door when his words cause me to stop. “Maybe if you had stayed out of my marriage, my wife wouldn’t be leaving me right now. I know all about you.”

Luckily Payton is already inside with Evan and Jameson. Jason stands behind me, trying to get me to leave it alone, but I can’t. He needs to know the truth.

“Contrary to what you may believe, just because you’re a big shot lawyer, you don’t know everything. I’ve never laid a hand on Payton in an inappropriate fashion. I’m not the one that
accidentally
fell with my dick out, straight into her assistant’s twat.” I step closer to him and feel Jason at my back, waiting for the second I snap and he has to pull be back. “I’m not the man who fucked up your marriage, I’m the friend your wife ran to when
you
fucked it up. And honestly, I couldn’t be happier about that.”

“You’re a sick fucker to be happy that someone’s marriage is falling apart,” he grinds out.

I laugh again and step away from him, proud that I have yet to hit him. “I’m happy she’s getting away from you. She deserves better than a lying, cheating, asshole who doesn’t treat her the way she should be treated.”

His fake sounding laugh grates on my nerves as he crosses his arms across his chest. “And you think that’s you? You think you deserve her?”

Payton stands at the bottom of the stairs inside, helping Evan and Jameson bag stuff up as quickly as they can. She cocks her head at me and smiles sadly.

I turn back to Max and shake my head. “I’ve never once said that, Max. All I said, was she deserves better than you. If that ends up being me down the road, that’s great.” I shrug and step into the house. “The point is, she deserves better than you and now she knows it.”

I don’t give him another ounce of my energy while we’re there. Instead, I focus solely on what Payton is telling me she needs to take and hauling it out to her new place.

All I want to do is kick off these damn heels, cuddle with my girls, and forget today ever happened. I don’t see that happening though, since I have a car full of groceries, dinner to be made, and a house to clean and kids to take care of, so I take a few minutes to breathe after pulling into the driveway. AJ’s truck is pulled up close to the porch and I can’t even begin to wonder how much harder these past few weeks would have been if it hadn’t been for him.

I thought that talking with Max after court today would be a good idea. That maybe I would see things clearer and have a better idea of why he went outside our marriage, or I’d be so mad I would tell him to shove everything we’ve ever been through up his ass. Neither one happened. When I finally got him alone, he did nothing but apologize over and over again. He begged me to come home because the past few weeks have been horrible, telling me he would change and that he should have talked to me instead of doing what he did. He talked circles around me until I was so confused that I said the first thing that I could make come out of my mouth.

That I was leaving with both girls for a while.

At first he was still, not saying anything. Then it was like he broke. In all the years we were together I have never seen him cry, but I couldn’t back down. I wouldn’t. The only thing I could think of was getting out of there before he wore me down. That’s why I realized that the only way I could get through this and be the strong person that the girls need, that I need, would be to get away for a while. Being close to him after all we’ve been through before I moved on would be too hard.

Now I just have to tell AJ…

I finally step up into the house, and for the first time in weeks, it’s not a disaster. In fact, I don’t think it’s been this clean, or smelled this good, since we moved in. I make my way to the kitchen but stop as soon as I get to the doorway and try not to make any noise. For the first time since we moved, both girls are up and at the table together. Crayons are spread out in front of Sage, and textbooks surround Willow.

My eyes are drawn to where AJ is dancing in front of the stove while stirring something. I stand there and just watch the three of them before I have to break the silence. I’m afraid if I watch them together too much, I’ll begin to like it too much. He’s a friend, nothing more, and I need to remember that. I refuse to use him to get past feeling lost without Max.

“What’s going on here?” I ask when I finally find my voice and walk over to AJ.

He startles and drops the spatula into the pot as he stops the movement in his hips. He turns so I can see his mouth while he fishes it out with a spoon and resumes stirring. “Supper,” he says with a smile.

I chuckle and pat him on the back before making my way over to the girls and sit down after kissing them both. Willow’s the first one to speak up. She signs without taking her eyes away from whatever she’s doing. “How was court?”

I reach over and squeeze her arm lightly. “Court was court, and I have groceries to bring in. I’ll be back.” As I stand up, AJ grips my shoulders and pushes me back down into the seat. He sets a plate down in front of me and crouches down beside me.

“Stay. Eat. I’ve got the groceries.”

I sit, flabbergasted, staring at him like he has two heads because never in the entire time I was married, did I have someone help me like this. As much as I loved being with Max, he was always busy. I do as he says, though, and I eat dinner and chat with my daughters. Between court, the office, cleaning, and taking care of everything else, this never really happens. He’s not making it easy to tell him I’m leaving.

After finishing dinner and helping to clear the table, I tell the girls to head up to their rooms for a bit. I know by the way Willow looks at me that she knows something is going on. Thankfully, Sage doesn’t catch on and runs off without question. After staring at my hands for a few minutes, AJ finally reaches over and tips my face up so I am looking at him. Immediately, tears spring to my eyes.