Page 31 of The Princess & the Prospect

“You weren’t even on your third drink by the time a different woman was hanging onto you like she owned your body, and you didn’t mind one bit. Again, I had front row seats for that. I also had a prospect serving me Sprite or waters and begging me to let him call someone to come get me. The pity in his eyes when he glanced from the scene you were making back to me hurt so much. I kind of wanted to die that night. I didn’t though. I stuck around, because I had nowhere else to go. I couldn’t even call a cab to take me to your house because I didn’t know where it was or have a key to get in.

“You had a few shots and some more beers before the blond girl who was here earlier started pawing at you, only this time you didn’t just tolerate it. You pawed back, you danced with her, you made out with her and you did it all in front of me.” Her third finger had gone in the air on that one. “The worst part of that was, I don’t think you were doing it to hurt me, because you didn’t even know I was there. You should have since you drove me there, but it was like on the way from the courthouse to the clubhouse you had managed to make me disappear in your mind, and by the time you walked through the club house doors I no longer existed for you.”

“When you started kissing that woman was about the time Merc came out of his office, saw what was going on, and took me home. I’m not sure how long after I left that you waited to let her suck your dick. I don’t think you would have cared if I had been there, but like I said, I also don’t think you realized I was.” She shrugged her shoulders, speculating again about my frame of mind that night. “You left me in your truck when we got there, and I guess you thought I’d stay like a good dog so you could go in and have your guilt-free fun.”

“Anna,” I hissed out her name on a ragged breath. “I promise, it wasn’t like that.”

“It doesn’t matter what it was like for you. You weren’t the one being treated worse than an unwanted dog. You were the one making me feel less than the scum beneath your shoes while you reluctantly married me. You were the one who left me in the car while you went in to get drunk. You were the one who forgot all about me. And you were the one who had other women all over you, kissing you, blowing you, and waking up with you apparently. So no telling what else happened in between.”

“Nothing else happened,” I tried to assure her.

“How would you know if you don’t even remember the blow job or anything else from that night?”

“Trust me, you don’t want the details, but I know.” How could I tell her that I still had a lipstick ringing my dick and that it would have been gone if I’d had sex? There was also the fact that the club had video of what went down. It had been erased since then, but I’d seen it so I knew what my night consisted of. Once again, I found myself wishing I could kick my own ass.

She scrunched her nose up at me then and shook her head as if to get rid of the memories, or the thoughts, I’d just put in her head. “My point was, it’s embarrassing for me. It was bad enough watching that happen, and then having someone send me a picture of the rest on the day I married you, but to have my family witness the woman coming back and knocking on the door for more?” She grabbed hold of her stomach as if it were bothering her. I wondered, and not for the first time, if all of this stress was harming our baby. That was part of the reason I asked Double-D to take her out of here.

“Are you okay? Is the baby okay?” I asked worriedly when she glanced down at her belly with a funny look on her face. Then she started laughing. What the hell?

Once she got herself under control she explained. “All day long I’ve been feeling this weird fluttering, bubbly feeling in my stomach. It gets worse when you talk.”

“I’m sorry, I’ll stop.” If you ever want to feel completely dejected just talk to a pregnant woman who is mad at you. Apparently, they don’t pull any punches.

“No,” she giggled, grinning down at her belly again. “I just realized what it is. I thought it was nerves at first, but it’s not. The baby must like to hear your voice because I’m pretty sure that’s what I’m feeling. It’s moving. I’ve been getting that feeling on and off for a couple weeks, but I didn’t realize…” She grinned up at me. “I thought it was just nerves or something else.”

I froze momentarily as I realized what she was saying. The baby was moving inside of her. Our baby. She could feel it moving. My eyes locked on to her stomach and before I knew it I was across the room and sitting on my knees at her feet. “Can I feel?”

“Probably not,” she stated as she continued smiling at her belly and mostly ignoring my presence.

“Oh.” Well, that was a kick in the balls.

“No, I meant that I don’t think you can actually feel it yet. It’s just a small fluttering inside me. I can’t feel it with my hands. That will be a little bit longer.” She must have seen the forlorn look on my face because she scooped my hands up and placed them on her belly. “You can try, but I can’t guarantee the results.”

I glanced up at her while my hands were wrapped around her small baby bump. The fact that she had just listed off the ways I’d embarrassed and humiliated her on our wedding day, and then turned around and offered me this opportunity astounded me. I hadn’t given her even half the consideration she had handed me. She was proving, once more, that the woman was really too good for me in every way.

“Remember when you called me Lise and I called you Evan?”

“Yeah,” I responded quietly wondering where she was going with that.

“You know what I loved the most about that?” I turned my head slowly from side to side indicating that I did not know. “I talked, you listened. You really and truly heard what I had to say. When you spoke, I gave that back to you in return. Aside from me using a different nickname for my name it was all beautiful truth and I think you were the first person who ever really understood me and knew what I was all about.”

“I felt the same. Everything clicked into place when we used to talk,” I admitted.

“Yeah,” she mumbled sadly. “That’s our problem.”

“What that we clicked together?” I asked, confused.

“No. Our problem is that we don’t anymore.” Not gonna lie. That sucked to hear from her. “We can’t,” she continued talking. “When you got angry with me we stopped talking and despite signing our names on paper vowing to do better we never started talking to one another again. So, no click. Just confusion, sadness,” she looked me right in the eye before adding the last. “And pain.”

I took a moment to process what she was trying to tell me. It was understandable that we stopped talking considering how betrayed I felt by her lies. They had almost cost me everything. Hell, I wasn’t even sure she was telling me she wanted to start talking. Not for the first time, I wanted to just hop on my bike and ride out because I couldn’t understand what she wanted from me. The problem was, I knew I’d regret the minute I did that because life without Anna was misery and I already knew that for a fact.

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