Page 54 of Reclaim Me

Now

After Hunter admonishes me for not arming our nine-year-old with an arsenal full of yo mama jokes, we hang up the phone, and I sit in Aaron’s home office staring at the wall, wondering how I’m supposed to go sleep beside the man I just had to chastise like a child on the drive home.

Never in my life have I seen Aaron be so selfish, petulant, and cheap. He ordered a two hundred dollar bottle of wine and guzzled it down all by himself, heedless of the fact that alcohol consumption can be a trigger for some recovering addicts, and then when the bill came, he disappeared from the table to take a phone call. Hunter swooped in, refusing to let me touch it.

When I promised to pay him back for Aaron and I’s food, he dismissed it with a wave of his Black card. Seeing the ease with which he settled the bill sent a rush of pride through my veins because I remember being broke with him. I remember times when he had to decide between the mortgage on the gym or the lights in his house, when he had to work part-time at the factory with Will just to make ends meet.

Clearly, he doesn’t have those problems anymore.

He doesn’t have a lot of the problems he used to have anymore.

Which isn’t to say that he’s perfect, because he’s human and, most importantly, a man, but he’s something different than the man I knew before. And it’s not because he’s changed all that much—he’s still grumpy and too serious about most things—but because he’s not drowning under the weight of guilt, shame, and insecurity. He’s settled, confident in who he is and what he can be to the people he cares about, and it’s so fucking sexy I don’t know what to do with myself.

I blow out a breath and pick up my phone, dialing the number of the only person who can talk some sense into me right now: Dee. She answers on the second ring, and it’s not until I hear the grogginess in her voice that I remember that ten o’clock is well past her self-imposed bedtime.

“What do you want, Rachel?”

I grimace. “I need some advice, Deanna.”

“Yes, you should call Soledad back and see if the building is still available. If Aaron can do what he wants with his money, you can do what you want with yours.”

“Well, damn, how long have you had that bullet loaded in the clip?” I ask, laughing at her unprompted advice.

“A while,” she says through a yawn. “Please tell me I’ve fulfilled my best friend duties so I can go back to sleep.”

“Not quite. I wasn’t calling about the ballet school.” Which is just another thing on the long list of nonsense I’ve had to deal with lately. “I wanted to talk about the dinner I just had with Riley, Hunter, and Aaron.”

The line goes quiet, and I know she’s fully processed that sentence when she gasps and says, “I’m up.”

I fill her in on everything from the science fair to the phone call I just ended with Hunter, and by the time I’m done, she’s in her kitchen sipping on the glass of wine she fixed when I told her that I did not pull Hunter to the side and give him some pussy as a reward for being such a good daddy. Her words, not mine.

“Why is Aaron being such a little bitch? Was he always that way?”

My feet are perched on the end of Aaron’s desk while I lean back in his chair with the phone cradled between my shoulder and ear, trying to recall an instance in our seven-year history where Aaron showed me that he had this level of petty spitefulness inside him. I can’t recall one.

“I don’t think so. I mean, if he was, I don’t think we’d still be together.” Dee hums her disagreement, and my brows pull together, forming a tight line of confusion. “You think we would?”

Dee sighs. “I mean, you’re with him now, aren’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but things are different now, we have?—”

“You and Aaron don’t have anything now that y’all didn’t have before. You don’t have a child, you’re not married, and your name isn’t even on the deed to the house, so the only thing holding y’all together is you. The question is, why?”

“Because I love him.”

It’s a weak defense. Next to the picture of the bleak reality my best friend has just painted with her words, it feels like nothing. Less than nothing.

“I know you love him, Rae, but do you feel loved by him? Supported by him? I mean, integrating your estranged ex into your kid’s life is hard as hell, and what has Aaron been doing to make it easier on you? On Ri? Has he even checked in with her? Reassured her that he’ll still be there to love and support her even though Hunter is in the picture now?”

I bite my lip to stay the tears burning at the back of my eyes. “I don’t think so.”

“He didn’t,” Dee says with conviction.

“How do you know?”

“Because I asked Riley what Aaron thought of her dad, and she said they haven’t talked about him at all.”

“Oh.” My voice is small, tinged with shame. “I didn’t know that.”

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