Page 45 of London Inked Boys: The Complete Trilogy
I fold my arms across my chest. “Isn’t it?”
Mike’s gaze darts away from mine, and I know he’s lying.
“Anyway, funnily enough,” he continues, “I thought you wouldn’t be bothered if I brought him home early. I thought you might actually be missing your son, but obviously you had other things on your mind.”
I shake my head. “That isn’t fair, Mike. Of course I miss him when you have him. But you’re supposed to have him every other weekend, and considering you only picked him up yesterday morning, and now you’re dropping him back less than twenty-four hours later, I don’t think I should be the one being questioned about whether or not I miss our child. I’m the one with him most of the time. I’m the one raising him.”
Mike huffs out a breath of frustration. “I’ll have him one evening during the week instead. Like I said, I have to work.”
“That isn’t how this is supposed to go. You’re supposed to stick to your days.”
“Why, so you can have sex with men half your age?”
“Oh, for goodness sake.” I lower my voice in a hiss. “We didn’t even have sex, okay. Not that it’s any of your business. And he’s only a couple of years younger than me. How young was Michelle, or was it Kimmie? Twenty-three, twenty-four? A good fifteen years younger than you are.”
I’d confessed my age to Kane a we’d lain in bed together, and had been relieved when he’d told me he was twenty-seven rather than the twenty-one or twenty-two that I’d feared.
“It’s different for a guy. We’re naturally attracted to younger women. I don’t know what the hell that thug sees in you. Maybe he thinks you’ve got money.”
My hands ball into fists, impotent anger burning through my core. “God, you are such a?—”
“Stop fighting!” Dylan suddenly appears behind Mike and then pushes past him, getting between us and trying to separate us with his hands. “I hate it when you fight.”
I bite back my hatred of my husband for my son’s sake. I’m sorry he’s stuck in the middle of this whole mess. I wish Mike would wait until Dylan was out of earshot before he started giving me grief, but he never seemed to care that Dylan could hear every word, and I don’t want my son thinking it’s okay for him to speak to me that way. A part of me wishes I’d never met Mike, but then we would never have had Dylan, and that little boy is my world. There were plenty of times over the past few years where I’d have just given up if it wasn’t for him, but I hate that he’s always going to be caught in the middle. Mike’s still Dylan’s father, no matter how much of an arsehole he is towards me.
“Sorry, baby.” I reach for my son and pull him to me, his face pressed against my stomach. “Mummy and Daddy were justtalking. We’re done now.” I shoot Mike a warning glare. “Aren’t we?”
Mike nods. “Yeah, course we are.”
The right words leave his mouth, but I know he’s thinking ‘for the moment.’ You don’t live with someone for almost ten years without knowing exactly what’s going through their minds.
I turn my attention to my son and ruffle his blond curls. “What did you have for breakfast? Are you still hungry?”
Dylan pouts. “We didn’t have anything yet.”
I bite down on my urge to start a brand-new fight with Mike about not feeding Dylan, but I manage to keep it to myself.
“What?” Mike says, sensing what I want to say, just as I’d done with him. “We needed to get out early. It’s not as though he’s going to starve by waiting an hour.”
I take a deep breath and steer Dylan past his father. “Let’s get you downstairs and find some breakfast.”
“Fine,” Mike says. “I have to go anyway.” He drops a kiss on Dylan’s head and then heads to the door without saying another word to me.
The door shuts behind him, and I sigh, but then plaster a smile on my face for Dylan’s sake. I follow the boy into the kitchen and set about pulling bowls out of cupboards and pouring out cereal and milk.
My thoughts go to Kane and the expression on his face when he looked between me and Dylan and realised the boy was mine. I should have told him. But it’s one thing having an arsehole of an ex, and a whole other thing having a child. I come with baggage, and I hoped, just for one night, I could be the girl I’d been before—young and carefree. The sort of girl who lets gorgeous, tattooed men finger her in the back of a taxi. It had been stupid of me to bring Kane back to the house, but Dylan wasn’t supposed to have been coming home yet. Mike likes to dostuff like this, though, just to keep me on my toes. God, I hate him.
I need to focus on Dylan now. I doubt I’ll ever hear from Kane again, and I don’t blame him. While I’d not exactly lied, I’d omitted a very important truth. If the situations had been reversed, I’d have been seriously pissed off.
I’ve messed up my one chance of being happy again.
10
KANE
Fucking hell.
I certainly hadn’t expected the morning to take that turn.
