Page 13 of Secret Twins for the Orc

“I was going to say jaded.” She quirks her lips in a lopsided smile, and I shove my hands against my cheeks again and slump over the bar.

“My life here is over before it began.”

“Honestly, I don’t think he’s going to fire you just like that.” She pauses, her eyes narrowing slightly in thought. “Probably. But he’s always been more than fair to his employees. He looks out for them. If they have personal issues, he’s been known to go out of his way to accommodate and help. I’ve heard all sorts of good things from his staff, even if his social skills are somewhat lacking.”

“He hates me,” I say without inflection, fiddling with the stem of my now empty glass. “You should have seen the way he looked at me. It was like I’d murdered his dog right in front of him, or something.”

She winces, opening her mouth to speak, before her eyes narrow once more and she slams her lips shut.

My own eyes narrow in response. “What?”

“Nothing, nothing.” She grabs my glass and stands. “Would you like another?”

“No, hold on, you were going to say something.” I reach across the bar and rest my hand over her wrist. “My future is on the line here. Tell me, please?”

She chews on her bottom lip, and then leans in close.

“Okay, you didn’t hear this from me, but…”

“Yes?” I prompt when a silence lingers between us, and then she begins to speak rather quickly, as if the story was spilling past her lips out of her control.

“So Rhokar… He used to be engaged to this gorgeous orc woman. She moved into town ten years ago and they immediately hit it off. They were together for ages, they seemed like a wonderful couple. Both of them good looking, seemingly perfect for each other. When he finally proposed to her nobody was shocked, we all expected them married and pregnant in no time, but then about five years ago she just disappeared. One day she was here, and the next, she’d cleared out of town a week before the wedding—and she didn’t leave a trace behind her. Rumor is that even Rhokar didn’t know she was going to leave.”

“Oh…” I stare at Nib’s slightly apprehensive face as she tells me this, and a whole new series of confusing emotions begin whirling through me. “Are you serious?”

“Yeah,” Nib sighs. “He didn’t really show it, he’s always been a reserved sort of orc, but I think it affected him a lot. He definitely got a lot grumpier after that. He’s been alone ever since, the whole town wonders what happened between them. I suspect he took it really hard.”

My heart clenches in my chest, and I can’t help but think about the way I must have mirrored the actions of his ex, in his eyes, when I left him the next morning without a word or explanation. A new level of meaning is suddenly superimposed over what happened between us that night.

But it was just a one-night stand, it’s not that uncommon for people to part ways and never speak again, right?

I lean back in my seat, both annoyance and guilt now warring within me.

I mean, it isn’t as if I’ve lived my life jumping from man to man on a nightly basis—far from it, in fact. But I’m heading towards my forty-second birthday, and I’ve been divorced for nearly eight years now. I’m a fully grown woman with needs that I occasionally need met, and I shouldn’t have to feel guilty or responsible for one orc’s ego regarding his past that I couldn’t have known about. I have my own issues to deal with, damn it.

I’d run from him in fear. I know it wasn’t the best way of dealing with my anxieties over commitment, and I wish I had been better about it. But his attitude suggests I’d betrayed him on the deepest level, when in reality, we hadn’t even known each other. We hadn’t owed one other anything. And yes, I regret leaving him the way I did, and I wish I’d gotten his number and had been able to contact him, but as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty.

However, the way he treated me today far outweighs my mistake two years ago. He’s acting like I’m a villain, when in reality I’m just a human who was still struggling with emotional trauma from her divorce, afraid, and battling my own demons. And now there’s the guilt about the huge secret I’m keeping from him. I know I need to tell him about his kids, but when he all but threw me out of his office today, any thoughts of confessing went flying out the window.

I must be showing my agitated thoughts on my face, because Nib starts chewing on her lip again. “Oh, man, I’ve made it worse, haven’t I? Don’t tell anyone I told you!”

I shake my head and try to let go of the negative emotions, both the angry and the guilty ones, and attempt to put things into perspective.

“No, you haven’t,” I say after a frustrated sigh. “It’s already a tangled mess. He absolutely didn’t need to be such an angry jerk today. And he definitely shouldn’t have threatened to fire me after three seconds, not to mention insult my character and dismiss my worth…”

I pull my hair suddenly out of my bun and shake it free, hoping to shake the negative emotions away.

“But,” I continue, “I understand that everyone is dealing with their own battles, and without meaning to, I may have triggered something painful for him.”

Nib shrugs slowly, her wings twitching in a nervous flutter behind her as she offers me an apologetic smile. “It does sound like it.”

“I can be an adult about this,” I say.

“That’s the spirit!”

“One of us should be, after all.”

Nib’s wings twitch again. “Sure?”

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