I hear the bitch I’m mauling speak, but I ignore her. There’s nothing wrong except for the fact that she’s not my old lady. She’s not the woman I’d spent four successful hours not thinking about before Grady brought her up. She’s not the woman who once told me I’d make a great president. She’s not my fucking body and soul, so I ignore her because she’s nothing more than a warm wet hole I can drown in for a little while to numb my self-loathing.
My hand wraps around the door knob, but I stop. It doesn’t happen often, but sometimes I just don’t feel like having sex. With one hand, the nameless whore grabs at my dick, and the easy fuck jumps right up. Well, there goes the whole being good thing. Her other hand covers mine on the doorknob and we tumble into the room. She giggles, and if I didn’t already feel like an old-ass pervy fuck, I sure do now, and then she turns on the light. I’ve barely adjusted to the light in the room when a throat clears from the other end.
My heart stops immediately.
My lungs won’t work.
“Oh shit.” The words leave my mouth before I even realize I’ve said anything. I’m still processing what I’m seeing.
Amber Wallace.
My old lady.
My entire fucking world is in our bed. An angry scowl drags her brows together and has her mouth pinched up in the corner. Her reddish-brown hair is up in a messy bun that’s half fallen off her head, and her green eyes are trained on me like I’m something disgusting she stepped in. I don’t deserve that look, and it pisses me off. I don’t deserve the goddamn gift of having her here—even if she is pissed—and I sure as fuck don’t deserve to have her anger. I threw all that shit away a long time ago.
In a matter of moments, the last twenty years of my life flash before me. Everything from my bullshit teenage angst to the first time we kissed to the last time I had her naked and writhing underneath me. I work to fight the instinct to rush to her, claim her, and never let her go. I can’t go down this road again. I’m not Fort Bragg’s number two. I’m their president, and that means I have to keep my shit straight no matter how much I want to spend the next two weeks repenting for my sins, both of us naked and greedy for one another.
Amber’s arms are pulled up above her head, locked around the metal headboard with a pair of cuffs. She wiggles her wrists and grins at me, never breaking eye contact. She says, “Honey, I’m home,” like she means it. But I know her better than to assume she’s really back. Not that it matters, because she never really left me. She’s always been here—in my heart—right where the crazy bitch belongs.
CHAPTER 4
Wyatt’s eyes harden in an unfamiliar way, and he tilts his head to the door as he says, “Out, bitch.” His eyes don’t leave mine, but I know he’s not speaking to me. Not that it would matter if he was, since my ass is handcuffed to this fucking bed. The stupid bitch doesn’t leave. My hating on her has nothing to do with her. It’s purely about the man before me—the man staring at me with such indifference that I feel even less significant than I did back in the day when he was screwing anything with tits.
“Maybe you’re hard of hearing, but my man told you to get the fuck out.” I bark the words at her but don’t take my eyes off of Wyatt. His eyes widen but just barely, and if I hadn’t spent so many hours over the years just looking into those beautiful eyes, I wouldn’t notice it. Before I let myself absorb the change in his behavior, I turn my attention to the woman at his side. She looks so angry that I think she’s going to charge at me. Her nostrils flare, her eyes bug out, and she’s breathing heavy. She thought she was going to spend the night with the VP but is getting her ass kicked to the curb.
“And who the hell are you?” she snaps.
A slow, steady warmth fills me as my lips curl up into a smile and I say, “I’m his old lady.”
When Wyatt doesn’t correct me, her shoulders slump and she slinks out of the room. She’s barely cleared the doorway when he slams the door shut and locks it. He’s acting strange, and I don’t understand it.
We stopped being us before Zander was born, but we’ve seen each other a handful of times since then. Each time begins and ends the same way—with my man walking toward me and scooping me up in his arms. He takes my mouth and palms my ass and tells the entire world that his old lady is home. And then he drinks a bottle of whiskey, fucks me until I pass out, and when I wake up, he’s higher than a kite. He doesn’t talk to me until he’s good and wasted and can’t remember anything. He always asks about Baby Z and I always tell him about our son and with tears in my eyes I tell him I want him to know our boy. And then he does a couple of lines, downs more booze, and promises me that we’re going to be a family.
And it’s over when we start fighting because he starts making unreasonable demands that don’t make any sense. And no matter how much I want my son to have his father, Wyatt ends up detoxing out of town in a cabin somewhere, and I always hope he’s going to reach out once he’s clean and sober, but he never does.