Page 23 of Rescue Me (Forget the Past 1)

Martin frowns, but simply moves to cup my lower back. At the light pressure, I move toward the table, so used to following his directions. When I pick up my pace, trying to get away from his touch, he keeps in step with me.

Arriving at the table, I stare down at the woman, at a complete loss for what to say to her.

“Paige! My dear girl. It has been far too long.”

“Mrs. Blanche. Good to see you,” I mumble, just one step above an irritated mutter. Not that I’m angry withher.

“Oh now. We can’t keep doing this whole ‘Mrs. Blanche’ nonsense. Not when we’re going to be family. Hopefully soon, now that you’re both home.” Martin’s mom stands from her chair and encircles me in a tight hug.

All the while I stare, dumbfounded, at her son.

Family? She still thinks we’re going to be family?

Martin wears a broad smile, even as he refuses to meet my eyes. Instead, he moves to pull back the third chair at the table.

I let Mrs. Blanche guide me to sit in it, as I struggle to figure out where the miscommunication occurred.

Then Martin leans over to press another one of his unfortunately pleasant kisses on my cheek and clarity crashes into me with the force of a tree branch knocked loose in a hurricane.

He hasn’t told her.

It’s been a month, and he hasn’t told his parents, at least not his mom, that he shit on any possibility of the two of us spending the rest of our lives together.

How has he kept it to himself?

My parents found out the night it happened. My dad, normally an even-tempered man, was only kept from accosting Martin by my mother hiding all the car keys. The feat was difficult, due to the large number of cars at our house, but she did it, all the while raging about stupid, selfish boys.

And yet Martin has gone all these weeks without letting on?

I can’t fathom how he managed the feat until I start paying attention to Mrs. Blanche’s energetic chatter.

“I think it is so sweet how the two of you have decided to live apart until the wedding. You know how Martin’s father and I felt about the pair of you living together in New York. But we kept it to ourselves because who wants to be the villain in a love story as romantic as yours?” Her blue eyes, the same robin’s egg shade as her son’s, go liquid with adoration.

It’s all I can do not to grab the fork next to my plate and plunge it into the thigh of the true villain, the man sitting beside me pretending as if everything is right in the world.

And I curse myself because I should have seen something like this coming.

You don’t spend eight years with a man and not learn how his mind works. This is typical Martin. He’s not the kind of guy to explore all sides of an issue. He’s not one for debate and discussion. Martin is intelligent and therefore trusts his decisions and views to be the right ones. Then he just makes following his preferred course of action the easiest road for everyone around him.

On nights we planned to eat take out, he’d pick up the meals on his way home from work before I even suggested a restaurant.

When I brought up using my vacation time to visit my friend Charlie at his new place in Germany, Martin informed me he had already booked us a trip to Hawaii that would use up the rest of my days off.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to buy or rent a place when we moved back to NOLA. He wanted to buy, so he did.

All of these decisions frustrated me, but it was hard to justify my anger when he was purchasing things for me. So, I got used to it.

That was Martin. The man I loved.

But now he’s Martin, the man who decided to sleep with another woman. And now he’s trying to make staying with him, marrying him, the path of least resistance.

His conflict resolution tactics have never instilled this level of rage in me before.

He knows exactly how I feel about his mother. She’s a little old fashioned and can be formal at times, but I still love the woman.

Now I have to make a choice.

Do I keep my mouth shut and keep that lovely smile on her face, or do I break her heart?

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