Page 44 of Dirty Rotten Cheating Husband

His arm was on the back of my chair, not touching me, but I could feel the heat between us, the skin on my body tingling at his proximity.

“I crave seeing you pregnant with my baby. I can’t get the picture out of my head. You with a cute baby bump, me rubbing your feet in the evening, feeding you ice cream and pickles or whatever the fuck you want, Clementine. I want a family with you.”

My heart was hammering in my chest and Liam warbled slightly drunkenly into the microphone.

“This one goes out to my girl, Clementineeeeeee. It’s called A Ring Don’t Mean A Thing, and it’s all about how society is trying to pressure us into marriage when, like, you can have the sweetest time without it.”

Grayson was frowning. “What a jackass,” he said. “Do you want to leave? We don’t have to stay.”

“No, let’s wait until the set is over,” I said.

I didn’t want to make myself even more conspicuous by leaving with him right in the middle of the song.

When his set was mercifully over, Liam came and drunkenly squashed in beside me at the table as Grayson took our mugs back to the counter.

“Forgot to tell you, Clem. I looked up some YouTube clips of your dad’s trial. Damn, that shit was crazy! They edited your name out, but I was like, damn, I know that girl! One of those clips got like 50,000 views. Pretty sick. You didn’t tell me that agent, like, faked being your husband. Bro, they should make that shit into a movie. Shit was wild.”

“I’m glad it amused you, but I don’t want to talk about it,” I shot at him.

“Shit, Clem,” Liam said, taking another big drink of his beer. “Let it go. It was a long time ago.”

I felt a rush of raw, dark anger.

“It’s not something you forget,” I said, feeling for a moment like I was choking as the memories of that nightmarish trial suffused me.

Grayson’s cold, unemotional voice as he answered the defense lawyer’s questions.

Those words fell on me like heavy lead, burned like I was fae and they were iron.

They meant everything that had made me feel safe and loved had all been a lie.

And here Grayson was, telling me it wasn’t actually a lie. That really he had cared for me despite betraying me and publicly humiliating me.

I couldn’t risk trusting him. Another betrayal like that might shatter me beyond repair.

“I mean, your dad is kind of a crook,” Liam said, and I felt a cold prickling heat breaking over me.

Is that what everyone secretly thought?

That I was overreacting to be upset? That it wasn’t that big of a deal?

Maybe even that I had deserved to be humiliated because of who my father was?

I wanted to sink into the ground, and I felt hot tears prickling the corners of my eyes.

Humiliating

But I felt movement beside me.

“Shut the fuck up,” Grayson said. “it was a big deal, it was my fault, and she’s right to be pissed at me.”

It was like being doused in cold water. I didn’t dare look at him for fear of what my face would show.

Instead, I turned to Liam.

“We’re through.”

Liam’s jaw dropped as he ran his hand through his shaggy brown hair.

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