Page 150 of Waiting For A Girl Like You
Fuck, he really must have been out of it.
SiSi made no move to help as he attempted to gain his bearings. “Let me know when you’re ready,” she said. “I want your head clear when I say what I have to say.”
They had hardly spoken in all these years. Occasionally, she would watch as he and Jamison talked on the porch, but if there was something he needed to know about the kids, about life, she usually sent the message through Hillary so he could show up when needed.
Or show up when wanted. Half the time, he knew they didn’t want him around.
“If you’re here to tell me I’m a horrible person, and that I suck at being a father, you can go ahead and get it out of your system,” he snapped. “A clear head isn’t needed to hear things I already know.”
“Don’t you take that tone with me, Benjamin.” Pushing off the chair, she sailed across the room to stand before him. “I go first.”
“What?”
“I. Go. First.” She spoke the words through clenched teeth, vibrating with every punctuated hiss of breath that escaped her. Pointing a finger directly in his face, she bent at the waist to meet his gaze and hammer the point home. “You don’t get to be with them before me. I go first. They were mine before they were ever yours, and I get to go to them first.”
“SiSi—”
“And don’t call me that! Don’t you dare call me that! The woman you knew as SiSi is gone,” she screamed. “She died out on the bayou, right next to her husband. She died on the ballroom floor as her best friend took her final breath. She died watching those children she helped raise gather around their sister as she left this world, and then she died once more when they were ripped from her arms to be tossed into the unknown.”
He tried to reach for her when she burst into angry tears, but his efforts were swatted away. “And she died on that September day when cancer won and ate her dear friend whole.”
Tears blurred his vision. “I’m sorry.”
With her pain on full display, Simone prowled around the room, pacing as she worked through her rage. “My name is Simone, and Simone is a new breed of woman. She cares for her family. She loves them and lives each day to see that they get the most out of life.” Her red lips twisted into a disgusted sneer. “She’s not some weak coward of a man who hides from what he’s done. I don’t hide from my mistakes.”
“I don’t hide.”
That had her halting to a screeching stop. “Bull—fucking—shit.”
Her roar ricocheted off the walls, making him flinch.
“They don’t want me, Simone. The kids don’t want me around. I’m broken, and seeing me as this pathetic mess is a reminder of what we went through.”
“Your absence is a reminder. Your absence shows them they were never worth anything,” she shot back. “Laura Jean is gone, and now you just can’t be bothered to deal with them. That’s what they think.”
“If they think that, it’s because you planted the idea in their heads.”
He saw it coming. Unlike the day he sent Toby and CeCe away, he saw this slap coming a mile away. Launching herself at him, she struck with a powerfully precise hit, and he took it, the strike being the first thing he’d felt in years.
“I would never do anything like that.” She moved to slap him again, but he caught her wrist, stopping the blow before it connected with his cheek. “Your damnation is your own doing.”
She was right, of course. This tiny woman who knew how to put him in his place was always right. “I want to get better.”
The simple declaration had her anger deflating. “Then make yourself better.”
“I can’t.”
How could he explain? Simone was a force; the world bent to her will. If she wanted to make herself carry on, she would. If she wanted to get her head on straight, she would. She was strong—a certifiable superwoman—while he was exactly as she claimed. A coward.
“I went to someone. A family therapist. Josie made me.”
Simone’s eyes narrowed into slits. “You don’t like them.”
“Not really.” He released her wrist. “The doctor is good with relationships and family things, but not loss. At least, not the depth of this loss.”
“Then we’ll find someone new.”
We.
