Page 11 of Reclaiming his Honor
The last notes of Superfreak ended, Lewis’s voice rising above the sound of people talking. “Don’t you fucking touch me, you son of a bitch!” he slurred, pushing Mac into the table he’d just spit on, and pushing himself backward just enough to lose his own balance.
Mac moved as quickly as he could, but it was too late. Lewis fell back into the cake table and the top tier collapsed. He tried to right himself by pushing on the edge of the table, and the board on top of the cake table rose up on the other side, dumping the entire cake on Lewis’s back before it hit the floor.
Ellie’s voice echoed through the stunned, quiet crowd. “Lewis!”
She came running as Mac tried to help Lewis to his feet, the younger of the two swearing in a colorful string of curses. “I don’t want your fucking help!”
Mac took a step back as Ellie arrived. She slipped in the cake frosting and he reached out to steady her. She yanked her arm away, glaring at Mac. “What the hell did you do?”
CHAPTER8
Ellie stood in front of the bathroom mirror to survey the damage. Aside from some cake frosting on her nylons and the hem of her dress, her outfit was mostly intact.
Lewis had not fared so well.
She’d helped him to his feet and settled him at an outside table, stripping him of his cake-laden jacket and ordering him a cup of coffee from a passing waiter before swinging by the head table to check in with Shonda. Her oldest daughter was handling the destruction of the wedding cake with surprising unflappability. “Hey, at least we’ll remember it for the rest of our lives.”
It wasn’t the first time Ellie had been concerned about Lewis’s drinking, though it was certainly the most public display of his growing problem she’d seen so far. She’d lived through this once. She knew the signs of alcoholism. She could see now she’d been making excuses for Lewis instead of addressing the issue head-on, and she vowed to change that and get him the help he needed.
Like you helped Mac?
The thought was sobering. It had taken her years in Al-Anon to understand she was powerless to control Mac’s drinking. It was that understanding that had finally motivated her to leave him despite her feelings for the man.
Feelings I still have.
She met her eyes in the mirror once more. “Don’t do this. Not today.” But it was too late, the truth of her thoughts resonating in her mind like the loudest note. Her heart belonged to Mac. It always had, and it always would.
But where did that leave her?
Turner had proposed, and she’d accepted. The irony that he would ask her to marry him right before Mac returned to her life with an explosivebangwas not lost on her. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. She’d been alone for so damn long. And not just alone, but actively lonely. Painfully missing Mac. Missing his love. Missing a piece of herself.
Now Turner wanted to be that missing piece, provide her with love and stability and a new opportunity for happiness, and all she could think about was the one man she couldn’t trust with her heart no matter how desperately she wanted to.
She’d watched him dance with Callie, had seen the obvious affection that passed between them and the tears they’d shed. Then she’d watched with trepidation as Mac pursued Lewis across the room, knowing it wouldn’t end well, that it couldn’t possibly. Lewis was angry. If she was being honest with herself, she wanted Mac to be the one to talk to him, wanted Mac to be the one to take issue with his drinking, wanted some help in a world where she hadn’t had any real help in years.
Turner had tried to parent her children on multiple occasions, and she’d always set him straight. Shonda, Lewis, and Callie were her children and hers alone, and parenting them was her job. But watching Mac deal with Lewis felt like a relief she’d been waiting for for far too long—toppled wedding cake and all.
The thought stuck with her through the rest of the reception, while she tended to Lewis and danced with Turner, while she helped Shonda out of her dress and into her traveling clothes, as she reluctantly held Turner’s outstretched hand and watched bride and groom drive away and head toward the airport for their honeymoon. She stood there too long staring after the limousine, her mind swirling with hopes for her daughter and questions about her own future.
Long after Turner had gone inside, when she finally turned on her heel to follow him, she came up short when she all but ran into Mac.
“You did a damn fine job raising those kids, Ellie. Lewis is still a piece of work, but then again, he always was a little too much like his old man.”
Her defenses were down, fatigue making her armor soft and pliant. “Thanks. I think.”
“I should have been there. Helping you. Keeping our family whole.”
She crossed her arms across her chest. “I won’t apologize for taking them to America.”
“No, you shouldn’t. You saved those kids. You saved them from me, and I know it.”
He took a step toward her. “I’m so, so sorry for what I put you through.”
If she’d been asked before that night if an apology could fix it, she would have said there was no way. But the sincerity she heard in his voice, coupled with the poignant moment in which he said it, made her think it was a damn good start. She smiled slightly and met his eyes for a long moment, soaking up his words. “Thank you.”
She side-stepped him, heading back toward the dwindling reception.
“I’m not giving up, Ellie May,” he called after her.
