Mr. Imperfect

chapter 56



What was taking Mike so long? He should have been back more than an hour ago, and time was definitely a-wasting. Rori had hurried her dinner with Jean and her mom with him in mind. Well, with a naked him in mind.

Which brought her back to her original question: What the hell was taking him so long? And why wasn’t Mike texting her back?

Rori tried not to jumped to the clichéd conclusion that Mike was bleeding out in an alley somewhere following a mugging gone bad. That, at least, would be an excuse. The more minutes passed, the more annoyed Rori became, until she was just about ready to text him to forget about replying at all. It was then she heard keys jingling outside her door.

Finally!

Undoing the deadbolts, Rori swung the door open to let him in. “Took your time, didn’t you?” she teased before catching the expression on his face. Definitely not a smile. And he didn’t have the look of a man ready to sweep a woman off her feet.

Confused, Rori was about to ask him what was wrong when she spotted the folder in his hand. The same folder her mom had brought to dinner and asked to keep overnight. It had seemed an odd request at the time, but it all made perfect sense now.

For a moment they simply looked at each other.

“Your stepfather wanted to make sure I saw this tonight,” Mike said, his tone distant as he held the folder out her direction.

“Of course he did,” Rori snapped taking the folder. Emotions washed over her, too intense and too many to name, except for the embarrassment. She’d never meant for Mike to see her marriage contract. He wouldn’t understand it. He couldn’t. She’d met his family and knew what he expected from a marriage—a house in the suburbs… a trampoline in the backyard. Family parties for any reason whatsoever, where the children were allowed to attend in clothes that could easily lend to playing in the dirt.

Nothing in their backgrounds was remotely similar, which was just one of the reasons any serious relationship between her and Mike would be a disaster. There was no way around it. Physical chemistry could and would only take them so far, but now it would take them nowhere at all. A solid point to Jean and her mom. They’d nipped this situation right in the bud.

Mike would want nothing to do with her after tonight. Frustrated, Rori started off to her room.

“That’s it?” Mike said from behind her. “You’re just going to walk away? We’re not going to discuss this?”

She spun back to face him, furious that he had fallen into her parents’ trap so easily. “Discuss what, Mike?”

“That!” he said, gesturing to the folder in her hands. “How you could possibly choose that over us!”

Us. The word seemed to echo around the room, infuriating her even more with its implied intimacy. “Us, Mike? And tell me, how long would the combination of you and me last, in your mind?”

“As long as we make it last,” he shot back, earning a laugh from her.

“I see. And prior to me, what has your longest relationship been?”

The question clearly caught him off guard. “That’s not the point—”

“No, that’s exactly the point here, Mike. Because why in the world should I assume that you and I will last even a day longer than your longest prior relationship?”

“Because—”

“We have so much in common?” she answered for him. “Because my parents clearly disapprove of you, and will devote their vast resources to driving a wedge between us whenever possible? Or maybe it’s because we both want the same things?”

“You can’t want that,” he replied. “No person could want a marriage like the one you outlined in there. A husband who can cheat so long as he practices safe sex? Children who are genetically tested to prove paternity before the father provides any financial support? Who the hell wants that, Rori?”

She took a calming breath before answering. It didn’t work. She was still pissed. “There is a large chasm between what people want, and what is realistic. Unrealistic expectations is one of the reasons more than half of all marriages end in divorce, Mike. I don’t plan on getting divorced.”

“Yeah? Me neither,” he retorted. “And I won’t need an open marriage to accomplish that.”

That got a laugh out of her. A bitter one. “You would cheat, Mike. At least be honest about that. You would tire of your wife from time to time, and need to shake things up a bit. Why not acknowledge and plan for that from the get-go?”

He closed the distance between them so quickly that Rori didn’t have time to back away. “In thirty-five years, not once has my father cheated on my mother. That’s the world I come from, Rori. Marriage means fidelity. My wife won’t be sleeping with anyone else, and neither will I.”

“And naïve beliefs like that is just one of the reasons you’ll be part of the fifty percent that bails on your wife, Mike,” she said, voice much tighter than she wanted it to be. There was absolutely no reason to start crying. None at all. “Because you associate fidelity with marriage, so when you find someone new to want exclusively, you’ll want to marry her, too. It’s called serial monogamy. My dad’s really good at it.”

“So now I’m your dad?”

She hated that when she squared off against him she could feel the heat of his body. That simple sensation had her body pushing in, wanting more. But she had to stay focused. “If the shoe fits.”

He blinked in obvious shock. “Are you being serious?”

In that moment, Rori realized one of the reasons she preferred dating normal sized men. Being eye-to-eye with someone during an argument was a definite advantage. Being eye-to-chest wasn’t. Especially a chest like Mike’s that begged to be touched. Worshipped, even.

“Well, let’s look at the evidence, shall we? It took you all of five minutes to have the full attention of my dad’s current woman—”

“Are you kidding?” he said over her. “You asked me to do that. There’s no way—”

“Maybe you weren’t interested in her,” Rori snapped, her voice louder than she wanted it to be. “But somewhere along the line you’re going to meet a woman who is interesting to you, Mike. Because, let’s face it, you’re the kind of man women are very interested in.”

“But according to your contract, you don’t care if I sleep around, right? You seem to all but encourage it. Have children with your husband, but f*ck buddies on the side? Or, in Anton’s case, a mistress in every port? That’s really what you want?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snapped, her voice close to cracking for some stupid reason. “No one wants that. But it’s realistic if I want a man who isn’t going to abandon his children so they can grow up with a steady father figure.”

“Even if that father’s a total a*shole? Like Jean? He’s a gem,” Mike said, so close that Rori couldn’t understand how they weren’t touching. God, she needed to feel him. One touch and she knew the tension between them would take a new direction. A direction they both wanted—maybe even needed.

But first she felt obligated to defend her stepfather.

“I wouldn’t be where I am without Jean. He may have not been as hands-on as your father, but he’s always had my back.”

“Uh-huh,” Mike drawled. “Like when he made it his business to give me this folder and offer me a directing job to disappear and not come back?”

Rori’s knee jerk reaction was to deny Mike’s claim and say that Jean would never do that. But after a moment’s thought she realized that was exactly what Jean would do in this situation—what he had done.

“He’s just doing what he thinks is best.”

Mike’s jaw dropped and he stepped away. “You’re defending him?”

Rori stood her ground, letting Mike build the distance between them. “Not defending him, no. He was out of line. It’s my place to deal with you, not his.”

The moment the words left her mouth, Rori knew she couldn’t said anything much worse.

“Deal with me?” Mike echoed.

“Not the best choice of words. Mike, I—”

“No, they’re the perfect choice of words if you actually mean them. Is that how you see me?” He took several steps away this time, until he was far away so that they couldn’t have touched if they tried. “As someone who needs to be managed until you decide to make a clean break?”

Speaking of a clean break, Rori’s chest wasn’t feeling quite right. A hot, sharp pain was building in the center of it. She would have sworn something felt broken, but nothing had touched her. “Mike,” she breathed.

“Yes or no, Rori. Did you plan on just having fun with me while I was here before cutting things off to marry your perfect husband?”

“Please. He’s not perfect.”

“And you’re not answering the question. Yes or no, Rori. When I see you tomorrow night, are you going to be on your way to being another man’s fiancée?”

She wasn’t ready to answer this question. Not to her mom, not to Anton, and definitely not to Mike. A few months ago, sure. It would have been a no brainer. She’d had her life all planned out. But now? When she opened her mouth to say what she must, nothing came out.

Even worse, Mike saw her obvious hesitation and came to the right conclusion as to what her answer was. The realization seemed to hit him like a punch to the stomach.

In that moment Rori hated her stepfather. Why had Jean intervened? Why hadn’t he just let her thing with Mike run its course? To let them have their moment and let them organically drift apart over a few months. Things would have been so much better that way. So many fewer ‘what ifs’ and a much shorter list of regrets. Rori understood that marriages weren’t necessarily about falling in love, but that didn’t mean that she didn’t want what she and Mike shared for as long as she could have it.

Why couldn’t her parents have just minded their own business? She should be having a blinding orgasm right now, not showing the best man she’d ever met the door. Because that’s what she had to do. There was nowhere else to go for them.

“Why not me?” Mike asked, striding towards her and gripping her arms with his hands. “And don’t tell me it comes down to money. If it’s as simple as that, then just give me a little time. I’ll make it happen. I’ll get rich. Then I’ll sign your stupid contract, and you can marry me.”

“Absolutely not!” Rori said, thinking more about the terms of the contract than the marriage part. The mere thought of Mike directing movies and bedding women on a casting couch was enough to make her want to slap him right then and there.

He let go of her arms as if they suddenly became too hot to touch.

“Wow,” he said, backing toward the door. “Your stepfather was actually right. I am glad he found me before I showed up here tonight and made a total ass of myself—before I made love to you and convinced myself that you wouldn’t be with me if you didn’t love me back.”

His words wrapped around Rori like a warm blanket that quickly turned cold. He’d all but said he loved her, but it didn’t matter because at this point he would never believe her if she said it back.

“Well, then,” she said, trying to go for stoic. “I’m glad that one of us is glad for how tonight turned out.”

Mike shook head and moved the rest of the way to the door. “You’re unbelievable, you know that? And you’re right. I don’t understand your world—nor do I want to. Maybe that makes me a simpleton, but I’ll take your sneers as a compliment from now on.” He yanked the door open. “Because simple guys like me spend their whole lives looking for the type of connection you and I have, and then we fight to hold onto until the day we die. But if I can find this level of connection with you, then I can sure as hell find it with someone else whose sole aspiration isn’t to become a breeding mare to some papered stud with a f*cking title in front of his name.” He gave her one last disgusted look. “Have a nice life, Rori. It was certainly educational knowing you.”

Rori didn’t flinch when her door slammed shut behind him. She was too stunned—too furious. More than anything she wanted words to throw back at him, even if she had to stoop so low as to open her door and scream them down the hall like a mad woman. The problem was, she was speechless.

He was wrong, of course. She didn’t care about titles. She cared about equality and equity in a relationship. And if there was one thing she and Mike definitely were not, it was equal. Their definition of a party wasn’t even on the same page, so how could they ever see eye to eye on what a marriage was? If she listened to him, her heart should be the deciding factor on who she chose to be the father of her children.

Yeah. Right. Like that approach was really working all that well for Western society. A one-in-two chance of divorce, and an eight-out-of-ten chance of infidelity? Based on those odds, Mike could take his rash promises and blow them up someone else’s skirt.

Like any other man, Mike’s love would have faded away, taking him with it.

The heat of her tears streamed down Rori’s cheek before she realized they had made it past her defensive lines. She let them fall, sliding down the wall behind her as she stared at the door Mike had just disappeared through. It was all for the best. It had to be.

Her parents had been right. It would be easier this way. Easier if he hated her. And definitely for the best that she hadn’t made love to him. Because that’s what it would have been. Not simple lust or even a fun time between friends. She would have loved him, and she would have told him she loved him.

And what a fine mess that would have turned into.

It was already a mess, but at least Mike would get a job out of the deal. Rori could thank Jean for that much. Mike would get his big break. Even if she never saw him again, Rori could be happy for that.

“F*ck,” she breathed as the pain of it all hit her full force. Then, hugging her knees up against her chest, Rori sat on the floor of her apartment and let herself sob.