Page 54 of Dirty Little Secret
And even as I thought that, my cock thumped in my shorts. Yes, that thing still wanted her. But my brain was thinking better of it.
Zandra had a ways to go before I would be giving into my body. And it had to start with her getting a new job. But the woman had to make more changes than that.
Zandra’s lifestyle might have been working just fine for her before Fox and I came back into her life, but it didn’t work for a woman with responsibilities, a woman who needed to be a role model. But things had changed now, and Zandra needed to act in a way that Fox could look up to.
A whole week had passed and so far she’d done nothing to change how she lived now that she had the chance to be a mother to the son she’d been forced to give away.
I found that to be a bad sign. A sign of things to come.
Part of me wondered if having sex with her would help her see fit to make those changes. Maybe it would give her an added incentive to start sorting things out, so we could all move forward. But then I thought that would just be manipulating her. I didn’t want to make her do what I wanted. I just wanted her to do what was right, and I wanted her to do that all on her own. But then I began to wonder if she could.
At first, when her boss had told her to dance on the bar and do the body shots, she’d stood her ground. I’d admired her in that moment, watching her stand up for herself. And then she’d gone and let those guys touch her in ways I couldn’t even think about, and a bit of that respect had vanished in a flash.
Plus, it had made me jealous as hell. It had taken everything in me not to go throw those assholes as far away from her as I could. But I didn’t want to be a Neanderthal, and I didn’t want to be with a woman who would bring that out in me.
In short, my body wanted one thing, and my brain wanted another.
And I couldn’t understand why Zandra wouldn’t step up to the plate and be the woman I expected her to be. She was the mother of my child. I guess a part of me had just assumed that she would instinctively know what I expected of her. Yet, she didn’t seem to know at all. And I didn’t want to explain it to her.
What I did want was to take her like I owned her. Keep her tucked away in my bedroom like my favorite toy. And I knew that was wrong of me, especially with everything else so up in the air.
With so many complex, mixed emotions where that woman was concerned, I had no idea where things would lead. All I knew was that she had some changes to make, and until she made them, things wouldn’t be moving forward with Fox or me.
“Done,” Fox announced when his plate and glass were empty. “Can we take that walk now?”
I downed the last of my almond milk then nodded. “Yep. Let’s go, sport.”
The food did seem to calm him down, and that made me a hell of a lot happier. We set off for our walk, which turned into a run before we got to the park. “Can I play on the swings for a few minutes, Dad?” he asked once we’d gotten to the park.
“Sure. I’ll just be here, sitting under this tree while you do that.” I watched him take off to play with the other kids and took a seat under the shade of an old oak tree.
Pulling out my phone, I went to check my social media apps to see what was up in the world. I saw that Zandra had made friend requests on all of them, so I quickly added and checked out her profiles, looking to see who her other friends were.
All I found was picture after picture of her partying and hanging out in bars. None of it made me feel better about our future. It seemed Zandra still lived her life like a girl in her early twenties, instead of a woman approaching the later years of her twenties. She was only one year younger than me, but looking at her pictures made me feel ancient in comparison.
The one thing that did stand out to me was the fact that I saw guys commenting on her pictures, flirting with her, with no flirty responses back from her. But then again, that was probably because of her loner mentality.
Zandra didn’t let people in. She never had. Who was I to think she would do that for me?
I supposed I was hoping for something she wasn’t capable of. How could she be someone she’d never been? And how could I expect so much from a person who’d grown up the way she had? Her parents had done a number on her, and I knew that. But knowing who to blame didn’t help me much.
Fox was the center of my world. He deserved more from his mother. But could I get her to understand that all on her own, without me telling her what I wanted?
Was it even fair of me?
Staring up at the many branches of the old tree, I wondered what the hell I should be doing.
Should I ask her to come over? Should I ask her to stay the night? Should I take her under my wing and show her how I want her to be? How I dreamed our family should be?
Shaking my head, I tried to rid myself of those thoughts. It wasn’t up to me to mold her into the person I thought she should be in order to be a mother to my son.
And then it hit me that I kept on calling him my son, thinking about him as my son only. He was hers too, and I kept putting that in the back, rather than in the front.
Should I let Fox and his mother make their own relationship? Should I stay the hell out of it and let them find their own thing? Can I even make myself do that?
I’d never considered myself to be controlling before. I thought of myself as a responsible man who put his child first in every situation. But could I have been hiding some things from myself?
Fox ran up, bringing me out of my thoughts. “Hey, Dad. Can you call her now and see if she’s up? I bet if you call her and tell her that she can come over, she’ll hurry up. I bet she’ll be so excited, and then she’ll get up right away.”
