Page 87 of Heartless

Meadow has always felt intimidated by my wealth which is why she hates for me to do anything for her, and why she insists on paying half of all the bills. She hates that I take her money and place it into a special account that only she can withdraw from.

I would give it all up if that meant that she would come back into my life. Everything that I’ve inherited, amassed, and created means nothing without her.

22 – MEADOW

“I was losing Onyx. I could feel it in my bones, but I was powerless to stop it. It’s like I didn’t have the strength, desire, or energy to fight for us. So, I took the initiative to do what I felt needed to be done.”

“More accurately, you pushed him away.”

“Yes. We became a couple that I didn’t recognize, and I don’t know how we got there.”

“Every relationship needs boundaries, MJ. You two didn’t have the appropriate boundaries set. Don’t get me wrong, I love that you’re a confident and secure sister and didn’t constantly need reassurance from her man that she’s the only one. But I also don’t think that you should have encouraged him to flirt with other women.”

Pulling back, I stare into my iPad at her as if she’s lost her mind. “I didn’t encourage him, Mak.”

She, along with everyone else, has been calling and texting me. I finally answered her call today. When I heard the twins and Caleb in the background, I told her to FaceTime me so that we could get some auntie and baby time in.

Now that she’s put them down for a nap, the conversation is growing deeper.

“You do every time you don’t tell him that you don’t like it. You encourage him every time you make jokes out of it, look the other way, or play into it. Onyx doesn’t know that you don’treally like him flirting because you haven’t told him that,” Mak says.

“That doesn’t excuse what he’s done.”

“It doesn’t, Meadow. But how is he to know that his behavior is unacceptable if you continue to condone it and even reward him for bad behaviors? He flirts with a woman at the bar, and you reward him by giving him a blowjob on the way home. A woman slips her number to him, and you screw him in the backseat of the car in the parking lot before you head home. None of that tells him that you have a problem with that.”

“No, it’s telling him that I have all that he needs. He doesn’t need another woman to take care of those needs. I should be sufficient.”

“No, what it’s telling him is that you’re turned on when you see other women flirting with him and him flirting back. And if you’re not careful, the next step would be him suggesting a threesome which he may have done with that Sharla girl if you’d given him a chance to.”

“That’s happened.”

Lifting an eyebrow, she asks, “You’ve had a threesome? With Sharla?”

“No. He’s suggested it. That was before Sharla came around, though.”

“You can’t be mad. He might have thought that you were down with it.”

“He said that at the time. I wasn’t sure why he thought that.”

“Did you ask?”

“No, I didn’t. I was too busy being mad and cursing him out.”

Mak chuckles.

“I had to leave for my own sanity. We’re in two different places right now, and I don’t know how to find my way back to Onyx. Not without figuring out who I am and what I want first. This hurts, Mak.”

Grabbing my iPad, I step off the back deck and make my way down the path leading to the beach. I step over the rickety wooden slats and pass the signs indicating “Kiawah Beach This Way.”

On the reverse side of those signs, it says, “Leaving Kiawah Beach.”

“I know it does. This is your marriage, Meadow. You know that Shep and I had our share of problems. Most people can’t understand how we could have been separated for six years and be back together the way we are now. I will tell you that was the most challenging time of our lives, but it was necessary. I don’t think that if we’d stayed together, our marriage would be as strong and as beautiful as it is now. In fact, I doubt we’d be together at all.”

“I took the coward’s way out.”

“What do you mean?”

“I wrote him a Dear John letter. Before the letter, I begged him to leave me alone and just go away. He got upset every time I said that and told me that I’d better quit threatening him.”

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