Page 39 of Daddy's Little Mama Bear

"That was a lot of food," she whispered before she could stop herself. Janie closed her eyes. She couldn't believe she just said that.

"Floor, swallow me up," she whispered. "Just swallow me up and never let anyone see me again."

Warm hands cupped her cheeks and she looked at him.

"I'm not mad that you asked that. Ask me anything. I love that you don't have any filter," he said. "It lets me know what you're thinking."

"I normally have a filter. I just don't know why I'm saying it all out loud now," she replied.

"Yes, I know. Sometimes I want you to speak your mind. Let me know what you're thinking. How you're feeling. What you want. But we'll work up to that."

She continued to stare at him, not knowing what to say. He wasn't mad at her and she was still embarrassed that she had said that to him.

"And to answer your statement from before. I'm a big man who needs to eat a lot to sustain my body," he said as he pulled his hands away. "See? I've got muscle that needs to be fed." He flexed his arm.

She giggled and gave him a smile. He could flex all day and she would never get tired of it. Mac relaxed in the booth. She grabbed her cup and took a couple sips before placing it down.

"I've wanted to ask you this before, since you brought him up," Mac said. "How did you meet your ex-husband?"

Janie stared at him with wide eyes and her whole body went stiff.

CHAPTER TWELVE

JANIE

She stared at him. Janie wasn't prepared for him to ask that question. She didn't want to talk about her husband.

"It doesn't matter," she gently said. "It's in the past."

Mac placed his hand on her back and slowly started to move it up and down.

"I would love to hear how you two met, but if you aren't comfortable then we don't have to talk about it," he said. "No pressure."

He wasn't being malicious, he sounded like he was genuine. Maybe it wouldn't hurt to tell him. He had already seen them screaming at each other in the front yard. Her telling her ex-husband to leave and she was filing for a divorce.

"I met him in college when I was twenty-two. He swept me off my feet when I first met him," she started to speak.

Janie held onto her glass, rubbing the side where it was collecting water. She needed to keep her hands occupied when she talked.

"Or so I thought. We were going strong my senior year of college and even after we graduated," she said. "We dated fortwo years before we got married. By the time I was twenty-five, I got pregnant with Eleanor and had her when I was twenty-six."

"What do you mean ‘or so you thought’?" Mac asked.

"Well, I thought I was in love with him. In reality I wasn't. I just was in love with the idea of having a husband who would give me kids and care for me," Janie said. "He never liked that I went to the club once a week. He knew I wasn't cheating and didn't mind, but he didn't like it."

Mac started to rub her back even more, almost like he was trying to keep her calm. And he was. It felt nice to feel the heat from his palm on her back. Janie hadn't told many people the story of how she met her ex-husband. It wasn't something that came up.

"When I was pregnant with Eleanor, Donald didn't really want to be around me. He was normally out of the house, working, and doing other things," Janie said. "I didn't think anything of it. At first, I thought it was because he was trying to save up money for when we had Eleanor. But I was wrong."

She picked up her glass and took a sip of it.

"Donald didn't want kids. We had talked about it before, but it was always at bad times. When he was rushing off to work or when something was going on. He deflected the questions and I should have known something was going on," Janie said. "It was odd but I didn't really think anything of it. He was giving me my dream. But then four months after I had Eleanor, I started to really think and see things. Donald never picked her up, always made me do everything. I was getting in a funk and talked to my sister about it."

Janie took a deep breath in. If it hadn't been for her sister, she probably still would've been with Donald. "My sister said that wasn't right. Her husband helped out with the kids, held them, and helped her. So my sister took a couple days off, or well her husband did to watch over the kids. Joann followed myex-husband around and found out he was cheating on me. Got evidence for me."

She couldn't look at Mac. How could she have been so stupid? He was giving her the dream she had always wanted, but she had never really loved him.

"I'm so sorry," Mac gently said. "That was wrong of him."

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