The house was
tense. Finley picked up on it, and started spending a lot of time out with
Zana. Marcus and I barely spoke, and when we did, it was about the kids. I’d
tried to talk to him about us, but he would shut me down every time. Nothing I
could say would make this better for him. I’d betrayed him in the worst
possible way. I’d fought against my attraction to Mulo, and he showed a will
power I didn’t know he possessed in keeping me from crossing that line. We got
close, too close many times and no explanation was going to help Marcus deal
with that. Each day that went by, I felt the wall between us grow. I thought
being without him was lonely, but I realized I hadn’t truly experienced
loneliness until now. To be so estranged that it seemed like I truly didn’t
exist to him made me feel more isolated than I ever have.
“Marcus, how
much longer will we go on like this?” I asked once we got the babies down for
the night.
Most nights he
ignored me when I spoke, at least tonight he stopped as if he were considering
answering my question.
“I didn’t sleep
with him Marcus. He wouldn’t let me go there because he knew how much I loved
you and he knew what that would do to me to betray you that way,” I continued
trying to capitalize on the moment.
Silence. I
thought he was going to just walk away like normal, but he didn’t.
“You expect me
to believe that you spent all that time with him and you didn’t once have sex
with him? On top of that, he was the one to say no? Don’t insult me by lying
Amari, it won’t help anything.”
Out of the
corner of my eye, I saw Finley close the door to her room. This was not a
conversation to have in the hallway especially if things got heated. He stepped
forward quickly, grabbing onto my arm and pulled me into our room. I moved away
from him as he closed the door. The look on his face was the same one from the
night I returned home and I knew that he was still just as angry now as he was
then.
“I’m not lying
to you Marcus. I won’t say we didn’t come close, because we did.” I backed up
more when I saw Marcus’ jaw clench and his hands ball into fists at my
admission. “As much as it pains me to say we did…but…we never…I swear we
didn’t.”
“But you wanted
to.”
“It was out of
my control. You’ve been through it. I was struggling Marcus. I nearly killed 3
people, I couldn’t handle the plasma options, so there was only him. Feeding
from him made things worse. It was out of my control.”
“You could have
come home Amari! You had other options, yet you chose to stay there, with him
so don’t talk to me about things being out of your control. It sounds like an
excuse to me.”
