Although I believed him when he said he was done with us, it didn’t make me feel any safer. I slowly turned around and looked at Sophia and Ben. She was holding onto his hand, my boy leaning up against her leg. In her other hand was the briefcase full of money. She held onto that just as tightly.
Our eyes met, perhaps really, truly, for the first time today. Man, even with her in the shade of the porch, I could see her eyes blazing, full of fire, and not the type I wanted to go up in. Fuck it, there was no avoiding it. I’d avoided this for way too long.
After everything – everything – I’d gone through, it was ridiculous that I’d feel the slightest bit scared of my ex-wife. But I was. I could admit it. I’d admit to anything at this point. I was afraid of what she was going to make me feel, of what she couldn’t wait to make me feel.
Meanwhile, Ellie was in a car with Javier. Was she afraid too? Was she afraid of what Javier could possibly make her feel? Or, was that fear exclusively mine?
I brushed it out of my thoughts like a loose strand of hair and walked up the stairs to them, my fingers flicking past one another, trying to disperse the nervous energy that was building up.
I stopped in front of Sophia, on the last step so I was at her level. She was petite, not so much in shape, only height. She was always a foot smaller than me though her hips and thighs had weight to them, something that lured me in all those years ago.
“I’m sorry,” I said thickly, my eyes on hers, and meaning it.
I never thought she’d let go of the briefcase. And when she did, it landed on the porch with a bang that echoed in the overhang and the next thing that happened was her open palm meeting my face. She hit me fast, a quick draw, one side of my cheekbone, then the other with the back of her hand, catching the corner of my lip. It stung like hell and I sucked in my breath. Because getting angry would do me no good – getting angry was the reason she was my ex-wife.
“I deserved that,” I said quietly, avoiding her eyes.
“Shut up!’ she cried out, spittle falling out of her mouth. Ben, bless his innocent heart, whimpered and hugged his mother tighter, refusing to cry. “You shut up. You asshole! You …”
She trailed off and just when I thought all of this was too much for her, she hit me again. Then she burst into tears, her head hung down, briefcase at her feet. I couldn’t help but look at Ben, my son, who was looking up at me like I was not only a bad man, the bad man that made his mother cry, but a total stranger. I was a stranger to both of them and it didn’t matter how many letters I wrote. We were all lost to each other.
“Hey,” I said softly and wrapped my arms around her. She stiffened but let me hold her. I stretched one hand down and placed it on Ben’s head and we stood there for a good few minutes, a family by blood not heart, while she continued to cry.
“I don’t even know where to begin,” she said, her voice muffled into my tear-soaked chest.
“I did a stupid thing,” I told her, figuring it was better to attempt it or not.
“I know,” she said, the edge returning to her voice. She raised her head, her face inches from mine. I remembered how hard it used to be for me to not kiss her and how easy it was now. The bruises around her eye and cheek where someone – Javier? – had hit her were blooming. It made me feel sick all over again.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered and she pulled out of my grasp. “I had the best intentions for Ben in mind throughout all of it. I wanted to escape this life, the life your … brothers … put me in.”
She wiped hard at her tears like they burned. “You put yourself in that life. You—”
“I hit you,” I said and even she looked a bit shocked at the way I admitted it after all this time. I placed my hands on her shoulders and held her firmly, lowering my head, eyeing her closely. “I hit you. There’s no excuse. I’m done excusing myself. I hit you and I hate myself for it and I hate that it ruined what we had. A family. I can never take it back and I have to live with it. I’m sorry, Sophia. Really, truly for what I did to you.”
She sniffed, seeming to take it in. I didn’t expect her to forgive me and I didn’t even care if she did. As I said to Ellie once, I didn’t regret the consequences of my actions but I did regret the action. And I had been making excuses for it all this time, blaming Sophia for something that was entirely my fault. My temper, my anger, my old friend rage – I wanted to finally kick it to the curb. I wanted to own it, destroy it. Wasn’t that what second chances were about?
I crouched down and pulled up the briefcase. I put it in her hand. “I didn’t earn this money. I didn’t ask for it. I hate what it stands for. If it can give us a second chance, then maybe it’s not all for nothing.”
“Who said I wanted a second chance with you?” she said. She was right. I never assumed she would.