Chapter 131: Misery Loves Company

Two days. It’d been two days since Amari had dropped off the kids and gotten upset after seeing Jenelle. She took off and hadn’t returned my calls, hell she wouldn’t even take calls from the kids. She sent some vague ass message to them about needing time for herself, that she was fine, and that one of the kids needed to take care of the dogs. She left no way to reach her in case of an emergency, she just took off.

The ceramic tiles in the shower cracked under the impact of my punch. How could she just take off like that? How could I make her take off like that? Things were to the point that I didn’t even know what I was doing anymore.

Shutting off the water, I stepped out of the shower, not feeling any more relaxed than when I got in. Since finding out she’d taken off, there’d only been one thought in my head about where she’d gone. It’s all I could think about and each time that I called her and got voicemail those feelings of jealousy and hatred that I’d been trying to move past took a stronger foothold.  No matter how I’ve tried, based on her past actions, I’d been unable to make myself believe her when she said I was who she wanted. 

Something in the back of my mind kept nagging at me that Amari’s settling, that she was  putting forth this effort out of guilt more than love. That thought had me rethinking my answer to her question last time we talked. While I did love Amari and admittedly a part of me always would, was I hanging on for the wrong reasons? My actions were pushing her away. I was now doing the same thing she’d done, sabotaging things whether it was consciously or unconsciously, it was happening.

I was an ass for not talking to her for weeks, but I didn’t know what to say. I’d used my wife in the worst possible way and to hear she let me because of my past attitude towards her stripped away everything I was trying to reclaim. I was left with feelings of shame, completely embarrassed that I could have stooped so low. Like she’d said, I was supposed to be better than him.

The doorbell rang bringing my thoughts back to the present. I needed to get my day started. Jenelle was already here and I heard her footsteps as she walked across the hardwoods to answer the door. Voices. A male voice. His voice. My mind had to be playing tricks on me because there was no way that he would be at my house. Hell, how would he even know where I lived? As soon as the question popped into my head, the answer followed. He had to have gotten the information from Amari. 

The sight before me was the last thing I expected. That son of a bitch was holding my daughter, giving her a bottle like it was the most natural thing in the world for him.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

The smug bastard smiled at me. “With all the kids you’ve made, I’d have thought this would be fairly obvious. Your very sexy…assistant here had her hands full so I offered to help.”

“I…I’m sorry Marcus, he said he was a friend,” Jenelle stated, clearly picking up on the tension that quickly filled the room.

“Friend? There’s a lot of things I’d call you, but friend wouldn’t be one of them,” I responded keeping my eyes fixed on Mulo. “Jenelle, please take Gwen and Gracie upstairs and stay up there with all of them until he leaves. Which should be shortly,” I added.

She nodded before walking over to gather Gwen from him. Mulo’s eyes followed Jenelle as she walked up the stairs. “I can see why you hired her. The sexy nanny thing, a lot of men have that fantasy. You even have the built in excuse of having actual kids for her to also take care of. A win/win.”

Jenelle cast a quick glance over her shoulder and smiled. I ignored his implication, it was the same one Amari hinted at when she was here. She instantly assumed I was sleeping with Jenelle. It was the excuse she needed to go running back to him guilt free this time and she seemingly wasted no time in doing so. I sent her running straight to him.

Continue Reading: "Chapter 131: Misery Loves Company"

Chapter 130: Destination Unknown

It’d been close to three weeks since I’d talked to Marcus. When he came to pick up Zana and Finley for their move he’d only given me a courteous hello. We talked a little about getting them settled. We’d decided that only one of us would go this time since it’d be a drive instead of flying in order to get their stuff cross country. When he got back, I’d expected him to come pick up the quads for his visit, but he sent me a text asking if I was okay to keep them for another week. I didn’t know what to make of things. I’d thought that night we’d made some headway, that we’d gotten over that wall and could be on the path to working things out finally, but now I didn’t have any clue where things stood.

As I rounded the corner of his street, I wondered if we’d finally have some sort of conversation about us or if he would just take them then ask me to leave. He’d moved clear across town in his attempt to get as far away from me as possible. The townhouse he rented was in a nice area. There was a park across the street which was good since he had virtually no yard. I didn’t know what his long term plans were, for a short while the fact that he didn’t go and buy a place was my comfort during the lonely nights right after he’d moved.

I didn’t want to acknowledge the real reason; he was eager to go and renting was a hell of a lot faster than buying. In the months following, we’d not discussed his long term plans, so for all I knew he could be house hunting now, looking to put down permanent roots in a home he wasn’t going to share with me.

Pulling into his driveway sent my nerves into overdrive. Taking a deep breath, I steadied my nerves before sending him a text so he’d know I was here, then got out to start unbuckling carseats. Marcus used to be the person that would make all these feelings of uncertainty and fear go away. Now he caused them any time I was faced with being around him.

  

“You’re early,” I heard him say from behind. He walked around to the other side of the car and started getting Graham free from his seat.

He was freshly showered. The faint scent of his soap lingered in the air. I could see droplets of water still on his skin as if he’d dressed in a hurry.

“Oh, sorry. It’s not that early and you haven’t seen them in weeks, so…”

“No, it’s fine.”

Continue Reading: "Chapter 130: Destination Unknown"