Page 50 of Tomorrow Belongs to Us
I hope not. I feel sticky between my legs and I'm so hot and horny and all I want is for him to reciprocate, but instead he says he wants to take me to dinner and wants to get to know me again. He says he wants to take it slow.
I don’t understand. He might as well be speaking a foreign language.
Then the doorbell rings and Lance looks like he's seen a ghost. “Fuck,” he mutters under his breath. Now I get worried. An unease makes the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. “Were you expecting someone?” I assumed he'd be alone.
“No.” But he doesn’t look too happy as he opens the door. A woman stands on the other side and beside her is a young girl clutching what looks like a dog-eared rabbit.
“Daddy,” she cries.
Daddy?
My insides plummet.
Daddy?
“Surprise!” says the woman.
The news punches me in the face and I stumble back a few steps.
He's married?
And has a wife?
And a child?
I feel like the contents of my stomach have poured out into a puddle around my ankles.
“Who's that?” The little girl points at me.
“Don't point, Cassie,” Lance's voice softens as he bends down and kisses the girl on her cheek.
The woman walks in, glides in, more like, as if she's a mannequin on wheels. She’s thin, tall, spikey. A skeleton draped in clothes. Her face twists as her hard gaze travels slowly across my face and body. She is evaluating me. Trying to figure out what has happened.
He. Is. Married.
He's off limits. Just like he was before.
How is it that we’re making the same mistakes again? Though in my defense, I didn't know this time around.
We're both adults he told me. The lying creep.
I grab my jacket and fight the urge to sprint out of the door but I need to find my shoes. Panic constricts my chest. Where the heck are they? I have to be cool, act as if we are just friends, as if nothing happened here.
“I'm Vivian.” His wife sails right past Lance, who looks angry. Furious.
If anyone has a right to be angry it's me, and his wife.
The little girl holds his hand and she looks up at me with her great big eyes. Lance's eyes. She has her mother's hair and her father's eyes. She is a product of their fucking.
She is also adorable. Frustration shoots through me now that I see this man with new eyes.
He is a father and a husband.
“So nice to meet you.” His wife holds out her hand. “Did he not tell you?” She comes right up close to me, invading my personal space, but I hold my own and stay rooted where I am. Then she leans in and takes a sniff near my neck. Her icy look freezing every nerve and muscle in my body.
“Tell me?” I ask, confused and frantic and suffering a brain fog of epic proportions. I clutch my bag tighter, determined to leave. I hear Lance and his daughter talking. This is a surprise, he says to her, then tells her he wasn't expecting her.
“That he has a family,” his wife states in a flat voice. Words fail me. My voice fails me. Rage bubbles beneath my calm surface and I am filled with hatred for Lance.
