“I don’t know if I can ever be strong about this, Landry,” I whimper.
It took me a while, but I sat down and figured out the date. The party wasn’t hard, I remembered what football team ours had been playing that day. I Googled the game. It’s been too long. It’s been too fucking long. There’s no way that I can even bring up the rape, it wouldn’t matter.
I only have Landry and his men, their abilities to hold on to as my hope.
Only this.
“Do you need me to call your mom, get her down here?”
My entire body freezes and I lift my head, turning to look up at him. I can’t hide the shock on my face from his suggestion. He chuckles, shaking his head a couple of times.
“Helen is a good woman. She can stay with us, be that extra support you need. I don’t mind.”
I shake my head, lifting my hand, I cup his bearded cheek. “I have you, and I’m going to call her. If it goes to any kind of trial or court stuff, maybe I’ll have her come for that, but everything else. I have you.”
He lifts his hand, wrapping his fingers around my wrist and squeezes gently. “You do, honey. You have me. All of me.”
LANDRY
I’m not sure if the dinner was a disaster or not. I do know that something transpired between Lucinda and Tennessee, but I’m not sure what. I don’t ask either. It isn’t my place. I’m just glad that they have found a common ground together. I’m also relieved that it wasn’t any of them who told Susan about my relationship with Tennessee.
Tennessee curls into me in her sleep and I can’t help but wrap my arms around her, feeling her soft body lying next to mine. I haven’t been able to sleep much lately, the unknown is driving me crazy. So is the fucking stress of this all.
My phone dances on the nightstand and I squint to see the time on my alarm clock. Two in the morning. Reaching for the phone, the unknown name on the caller ID causes me to pause. Instead of sliding out of bed and possibly disturbing Tennessee, I glide my thumb over the screen and answer in a whisper.
“So you’ve found out my little plan?”
It’s Susan. She can disguise her number, but that slurred voice will haunt me forever. I don’t respond. There’s no sense in it. She can argue all day long, but I will just win in court and that’s the only argument that counts.
“What do you want?” I ask on a sigh.
There is a moment of silence, and I assume that she’s just getting ready to scream at me or gathering her information to say whatever the fuck she’s going to say. Which I hope she does soon because I’d like to at least attempt to sleep tonight.
“You’ve embarrassed me,” she announces.
I almost laugh—almost. I could tell her about the million times she’s embarrassed me. About the dozens of friends who have enlightened me about her in-my-face affairs. The tennis pros, golf pros, and whoever else she’s fucked. Men half my age. Men that I was acquaintances with. She never cared, she flaunted them all around our friends and never gave a single shit if it embarrassed me.
The first dozen times, I admit, it pissed me off. I confronted her, we fought, and a few times we even tried to make it work between us, but it never lasted long. She would always get bored, or whatever her reason was, and find another man to play with.
After that, most might call me weak, might say that I wasn’t man enough because I didn’t divorce her. I didn’t do anything out of spite. I just quietly let her do her thing while I did my own.
Maybe that was my biggest mistake? I didn’t demand that she be mine. But what is the use of demanding something that another person clearly doesn’t want? It was a lost cause to me and I stayed for my kids, at least that’s what I told myself, but in all honesty, I stayed because it was just easier.
Not anymore though.
“I’m not pointing fingers and I’m not going to sit around and say which one of us is worse. I will, however, say that what you’ve done in regards to an innocent child is vile.”
“Your whore, she’s only there for the money. Helen is trash, always has been. They have nothing, Landry. They have