Tainted Love: contemporary womens fiction love story and family saga (Behind Closed Doors Book 1) (9 page)

Did I care he was having an affair? I told myself I didn't. It was his way of dealing with everything that had happened, and he'd see sense and finish it soon. But as time passed, there was no end in sight. I ended up reminding myself while his mystery woman kept him happy, I was free from harm. The kids seemed so much happier, we weren't arguing, and even you mentioned how nice things seemed to be at home. I told myself it was fine but it wasn't. How could he do that to me? He left me completely and utterly alone.

Of course it crossed my mind to seek comfort elsewhere. Well, if it was good enough for him? But I didn’t want anyone else. I wanted my husband! I wanted him to tell me that he didn’t blame me for...Dylan’s death. I wanted him to tell me that we’d get through this, because I no longer believed we would.

I wanted the picture perfect family everyone else saw because behind that pretty picture, my husband had replaced me. This woman, the redhead, was doing my job. Cal resented me so much he’d found someone else, and now he preferred her. I was losing him, and knowing the truth broke my heart.

I didn’t know how or why it happened at the time but the day the affair ended I knew about it. Oh boy, did Cal let me know! It was our fifteenth wedding anniversary. There was no card that morning when he left for work and I certainly didn’t expect one when he came home. I’d left him one on his bedside table when he was in the shower. He didn’t open it.

It was a miserable June day. It suited my mood, really. I should have been enjoying my lovely new kitchen as I was preparing lunch, but I wasn’t. I should have been enjoying everything about our house. Cal had given a non-committal nod to everything I’d asked for in the last twelve months, including a hot tub in our bathroom. I supposed he’d been keeping me distracted, but I wasn’t. It wasn’t fulfilling; I was just keeping my mind off where and with whom my husband was.

So there I was, standing at the island of our newly remodeled oak kitchen with sparkling black granite work surfaces, chopping salad and preparing sandwiches for lunch, when Georgia and Caleb called and said they were going out.

"What? Together?" That was odd. At fourteen and twelve, they never did anything together anymore. In fact, the further away from each other, the better!

"Cinema with Melissa," Georgia said.

"Arcade with James," Caleb added.

"What about —" The door slammed shut and I looked at the array of food items I'd been prepping for lunch. I sighed. Well, they’d be starving when they got home, and I had nothing else to do. I continued to make lunch to put it the fridge for when they returned.

It wasn't long before I sensed him behind me, heard the whisper of his breath, and caught the scent of his cologne. The aroma I'd become accustomed to was absent. No jasmine. What did that mean? Hadn’t he seen her today?

"You know…” I tried to keep things light between us. I always tried to keep things light between us, because the alternative was just too hard to bear. “You really shouldn't sneak up on a woman who's holding a paring knife."

A feather light touch hovered at my waist. I thought I’d imagined it, but every nerve went into overdrive. I was hyperaware of just how close he was to me. Then his hand fully slipped around my waist and pulled me against him. My heart skipped. His lips nuzzled into the side of my neck and the rest of me flew skywards. I swear I never thought this day would ever come. And then a dozen roses, white roses, appeared in front of me. "Happy Anniversary, Fay."

“Oh, Cal!” He’d remembered I had white roses on our wedding day!

The knife clattered to the board and I spun in his arms. "She's gone?" Something flickered across his eyes. The warm circle around me began to loosen. "I mean, you've come back to me?" He smiled. There was that look again. The one telling me I was the rarest of diamonds and he was the poorest of men and lucky enough to have stumbled upon me. "Cal, that's the best present you could have ever given me."

"Oh well." He grinned, with a mischievous twinkle in his eye. "In that case I'll take this—” He lifted a small square velvet box up. “—back to the jewelers."

"Oh, no!” I laughed, trying to take it, but with Cal’s height advantage he held it out of my reach. His chest rumbled against mine as I toppled and he laughed. “I'll take that too, but...” I lowered back from the tips of my toes and met his eyes. “You know, it’s been a really long road, Cal, and I ...” I looked away. I doubted his love for me and his commitment to our marriage. I know I had every right to but still, it was really hard to say those words out loud. “I didn’t think you were ever coming back."

"Gawd, Faith!" My eyes snapped to his. "Only you could make adorable so goddamn hot!”

It was so unexpected. His lips were on mine and taking the air right from my lungs. And they were telling me that he was mine again. So I didn’t care about the other woman anymore. She was a blip. Someone who gave him something he needed when I couldn’t. He was mine! All mine! And forever!

“Now you’ve got five seconds..." he growled, "...to make a run for it, or this food hits the floor. Five..."

Oh my... wouldn’t that be nice but what about the — "You did it deliberately?"

"Four...”

"The kids were complaining they didn't have any money." He came in through the front door and they were in the living room... "You got rid of the kids when you walked in the door, didn’t you?"

His hands were already getting busy. He wasn’t going to get to zero. "Three."

“I’m insulted, um, that...” I wriggled under his touch. You know it’s not easy to be angry in this situation. “...that you were this presumptuous.”

“Screw it. I can’t wait. And for the record, this is so much better than crawling on my knees and begging for forgiveness.” One arm swept the island completely clean of everything as the other lifted me off my feet. I wrapped my arms and legs around him. Our eyes met and his breath caught.

He lowered my hips until I sat on the counter. His lips found mine, so sweet, so soft, so much emotion... he pulled away, dragging his hands down my arms until our fingers entwined. His eyes held mine. "I will, Faith... if you want me to," he whispered, "because I love you more than anything and I was stupid to do this to you."

I shook my head. No. I didn’t need an apology.

He cupped my cheeks in his hands and kissed me. He made me feel like I was flying. I was so far past cloud nine. Hell, I was way past cloud nine hundred and ninety-nine. This was the only thing I’d wanted for months. It was the only thing I’d wanted to hear for months. I had my husband back. I didn’t need anything else.

It had been well over a year since we’d been even amicable to one another. I think my body would have preferred the island in the kitchen. But somehow amongst those temperatures of rising kisses I was swept off my feet and taken to bed... for a really long time.

#

You know, this was the first and only time we were ever caught by the children. I thought he’d be angrier, or at least as angry as I was embarrassed. I mean, I knew it would happen eventually, but still prayed it never did.

I mean you... you always seemed to have ESP for this kind of behavior. You’d knock before you came in and you didn’t come in our room without permission. But Caleb, he just wandered right in.

“Mom, I’m starving. What’s for dinner?”

We shuffled and I scrambled, but Cal wrapped his arm around my waist and said, “No, you and me are staying right here.” He placed a kiss on my lips. “Tell Georgia to order takeout, there’s money in my wallet.”

“Georgia, can we have pizza?” Caleb called out the door.

“What? Really? Dad, are you feeling okay?” Came Georgia’s voice.

As you can imagine, I wanted to just bury my head under my duvet as our bedroom became even more crowded. Georgia took one look at me, then her Dad, and screeched “OH MY GOD! Oh my god ohmigodohmigodohmigod.” She grabbed Caleb’s arm and forced him to face her. ”What are you doing in here?! When they’re doing that?! It’s disgusting!”

“What?” Oh poor little man, he really was that innocent at one time. “Why? What are they doing?”

“They’re… um…” Her face glowed in an instant, an amusing shade of crimson. It was hard not to find it funny, even though I was cringing with empathy for her. “They’re having, em… theyremakingbabies!”

It was just one word, but Caleb understood it and he freaked! “Ugh! That’s gross!”

“And you’re watching!”

“No!” His hands went to his ears. His eyelids scrunched shut and his entire body pulled together as though it could block out everything around him. “I wasn’t!” Caleb ran from the room screaming, “I wasn’t! I didn’t know!”

Georgia looked at us one more time and shuddered. “Urgh!” She walked away, muttering, “I’ll need therapy after this.”

“Don’t order anything for us, Georgia!” Cal shouted after her. “We’re busy, and we will be; all night long.”

“AW, DAD!” The bedroom door slammed shut.

“That was so much fun!” His laughter vibrated against me. “And it was worth every ear piercing decibel. Now…” The mischief in his smile warmed me through, and stirred just a little bit of wickedness within me, too. “I’ve traumatized the children enough never to come back in here, at least not tonight, anyway. Don’t we have a new hot tub?”

Chapter Nineteen

March 1994

The next time Cal lost his temper… there isn’t a word to describe or explain it. I mean, things were the best they'd ever been — in our marriage, at the practice, and in school. Our life could not have been better, but the entire neighborhood could hear him roar: I’d done this to him on purpose.

And when he started throwing things? Well, I knew I had to calm him down somehow for Caleb and Georgia’s sake. They were terrified. He’d lost it. He couldn’t see what it was he was tossing or where it was going. I hadn’t spoken; I’d simply touched his shoulder.

“You stupid fucking bitch! How could you do this?” I don’t think he realized what he did or how hard he did it but he shook me off he threw me across the room.

I knew at that point I had to get the kids out of there but Caleb wouldn’t leave me, and I'd never forgive myself if he hurt one of them. I stood on the front porch pleading with them to go but they shook their heads.

"Georgia, please," I begged. "Take Caleb, go watch a movie or play in the arcade. I promise I'll be fine." Caleb shook his head again and started to protest. "Dad's just really angry.”

“Why?” Georgia asked. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.” She glared at me and Caleb turned to her. I was about to have World War III out here as well as inside. “It was an accident,” I said, grabbing Caleb’s attention. It was certainly a shock, and I think maybe he thought we were too old for something like this to happen. Still, I hadn't expected him to take the news so badly. “We need to talk this through and we need to be alone to do it, alright? He's never hurt me before. He's not going to start fifteen years into our marriage."

How had I managed to calm their worries? I was terrified to step back into the house, knowing all those times Cal had hurt me when he’d been in less of a rage than he was now. I could have stayed outside all day. But we needed to sort this out and we needed to do it before the children came home.

So I watched and I waited. I held on to the terrified expressions on their young faces. I let that draw out my anger and it translated my fear and fired me up inside until they were well out of sight. Then I went inside.

“Don't you ever do that to me in front of the children again!”

“Get rid of it!”

What? How could he say that? He knew I wanted a bigger family. How could he play me like this? Tell me yes then no then yes and now no again. “‘It’ is a life you and I have created during what has been the best year of our marriage.”

“If this is how you speak to me after I've treated you with nothing but respect—”

Nothing but respect? I gaped at him. He was the one who had an affair! You know, just because our relationship had improved, the fact he cheated didn’t go away, and it hurt as much then as on the day I realized he was doing it.

“—then maybe I should start treating you like the dog you are!”

What? What a bastard! How dare he speak to me like that? I put up with a lot of crap from him in the last fifteen years and had I complained? No. Well, I was about to give him a taste of his own medicine.

“You can treat me however you want behind the closed door of our bedroom, Calvin, but never in front of our children. I don't want Georgia and Caleb to see you like this. Don't you remember telling me you weren't this man? You weren't your dad?” His eyes narrowed and his pupils darkened with the mention of his father. “Don't you want to protect them from that too?”

He grabbed a fist full of my hair. His nails scraped at my scalp as he dragged me through the house. I tripped on steps on the stairs as he took them two at a time. I didn’t dare speak. I didn’t dare make a sound as his knuckles forced me head first along the hall. I held back the yelp fighting to be let go when he shoved me through our bedroom door.

Oh God! This is what I asked for. The privacy of our bedroom. What was he going to do to me?

“Now.” He threw me to the ground. The carpet burned against my bare legs as I skidded and crashed into the closet. Pain sliced through my back like a knife blade. “I do what you want,” the bedroom door slammed shut, “you do what I want.” He towered over me. “Do we understand each other?”

I didn’t trust my voice to speak. I tried to stop every muscle from trembling, cowering at his feet. The fear of what he’d do next shook in my bottom lip, triggered tears at the corners of my eyes. My mouth was desert dry. I couldn’t swallow. He was going to hurt me. It was going to be worse than it had ever been before. I nodded and closed my eyes. I waited for it.

“Good.”

The door opened and slammed shut again.

It was a few moments before I realized it wasn’t a trick. He’d actually left the room. And my heavy sobs started to gulp at the air. We’d been making love before the doctor called two hours ago. We’d been so happy. I didn’t understand this. He said it wouldn't end his world like it had before. How could he do this to me? He said more children would make him happy. How could he say so many horrible things? Why couldn’t we talk about this?