But I can’t do this. I can’t listen to his explanations, his denials, his excuses. I can’t watch him turn into the same man as all my exes, a liar and a cheat.
The babies have woken up, startled by my shouts, no doubt. They howl from their room, and those cries echo the pain in my heart. I push past him, storm out of the kitchen and scoop them up. Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m packing them into their stroller.
“Manila, please, talk to me. What’s going on? Where is this coming from?”
“I think you can figure that out yourself,” I snap.
His eyes go cold. “If you won’t let me in, I can’t help you.”
“I don’t need your help,” I spit. “I don’t need anybody’s help. I can do this on my own—I always have.”
It barely takes me ten minutes to pack the essentials. I’ve gotten used to this, over the years. I’m practiced at running. I push the stroller out of the apartment, the babies’ travel bag over my shoulder. The rest of it, the clothes he bought me, the toys he bought them, we can do without all of that. We don’t need his charity, any more than we needed him to support us.
We can do just fine on our own.
Anger replaces sorrow for the moment. Just for long enough to get me through this, and I’m grateful for it.
He tries to stop me one last time at the elevator bank. Curls his hand around my wrist and looks into my eyes, pleading. “Talk to me about this, please! What happened?”
“I fell for you,” I say. “That’s what happened.”
Then the elevator arrives. He’s still standing there, eyes wide, mouth open in shock, when I step into it and let the doors swing shut behind me.
11
Three missed calls. All since I got home last night. I stare at my cracked cell phone screen from the discomfort of my tiny, lumpy bed. It used to be fine, until I spent a few weeks sleeping on the comfortable, heavenly bed in Cassius’s room.
My apartment used to feel warm enough, too, until I found myself missing the familiar sensation of his arm around my waist, his body snuggled up against mine.
I squint through the morning gloom across the single bedroom at the twins’ crib. They’re still sleeping soundly, unaware that everything has changed. Unaware of my pain.
But that’s good. This is the only way I can protect them from feeling the same kind of pain.
The phone buzzes again in my hand. Him. Again. I tap Ignore, send it straight to voicemail, then hold down the power button until the phone shuts off. I can’t deal with this right now.
Eventually, I’ll need to. I’ll have to decide if I can face him again. Take the job—only the job, not the life I once dared to think might come with it.
Or if it’s too much, if I can’t handle seeing him… then I need to start applying elsewhere. Polish up that résumé. Get back into the hunt. The hunt that was going abysmally before he agreed to take me on.
Ugh.
Luca fusses quietly, and I slip out of bed. Pad across the room to scoop him up. I pick up Lucie too, then head back to my own bed. I curl up around them, feeling their warm, comforting weight in my arms. Gazing into their bright baby blue eyes, starting to go gray as they age. They’re changing every day, my little darlings, becoming more and more aware of the world around them. I want nothing more than to shelter them from it forever. To keep them from ever feeling the hurt I do right now.
I curl around them and close my eyes. I’ll feed them in a minute. I just want to hold them right now, cuddle them. Luca curls his fingers in my hair, Lucie hangs on to my fingers for dear life, and we cling like that to each other, three lost peas alone in this crappy pod of an apartment.
I don’t remember falling asleep.
I don’t realize I have until the knocking startles me awake. The door. I groan and untangle myself from the kids. Luca cries as soon as I let him go, which sets off Lucie. I try to hush them, even as I hop around the room pulling on a pair of pants over the panties I slept in.
The knocking continues, louder and louder. Crap. Is it my landlord? I’m not behind on rent again. Am I?
Finally, I yank a shirt over my head and pad across the dingy floor to the door. I fling it open, not bothering to peer out through the peephole first.
Mistake.
Cassius stands in my doorway. Framed against the dim apartment hallway, a dingy light illuminating his crisply pressed white work shirt and suit pants, he looks as out of place as a fairy tale prince in a bad cop show.
Meanwhile, I look like a monster, having just rolled out of bed, my hair sticking up on end, eyes red from crying myself to sleep, cheeks puffy from the same. I move to close the door on him, instinctivly, but he blocks it with his foot.
“Please, Manila. Let me come in.”
Just that simple phrase, just my name on his lips, makes my insides melt. I’ve never been able to resist him. Not even now. Not even knowing what he did.
So I step back and open the door wider. Let him into my hovel of an apartment.
To his credit, he doesn’t make a face when I lead him into the bedroom. He takes a seat on the single chair across from the bed, a rocking chair where I cradle Lucie to sleep on fussy nights.
I perch on the bed, one hand resting protectively on each of my babies. “What do you want?” I say, and my voice comes out harsher than I meant it to, choked with sleep deprivation and grief.
“I want you to come to work,” he says simply.
I laugh. Sharp and bitter. “You don’t need me. You never did.”
He doesn’t respond. Just watches me, intense and quiet.
“You saw an opportunity in me,” I guess. “Someone you could take advantage of. You knew I was in a bad position, you knew I had nobody else, so if you helped me, I’d be dependent on you. You could hide me and shame me into silence when your real woman came calling, if she ever found out.”
Now, he reacts. His eyebrows hit his forehead. “What are you talking about?”
I look at my lap. I can’t meet his eyes for this. Can’t watch the lies form in his eyes. “I found the folder,” I say as I rub Luca’s stomach gently. Slow, concentric circles. Focus on him, on my baby. Not on this man who gutted me. “The one from A New Chance. For you and…” I shake my head. I can’t say her name. Can’t make this real.
Before I even finish, Cassius is beside me on the bed, his hand on my shoulder. “Manila.” He’s laughing. Actually laughing.
How could he, at a time like this?
But he cups my face in his hand and turns me to face him, and I see genuine warmth and amusement in his eyes. “You’re wrong, Manila. It’s not what you think.”
I pull away from him, tears springing to my eyes again. I can’t watch him laugh at me. Mock me for trusting him. “If I’m wrong, then explain it to me. Tell me why you lied, why you pretended to care about me, about the twins. Why did you lie and pretend you wanted more babies—you already have children with her, don’t you? You have a family with a woman I’ve never even heard of.”
“Yes you have,” he whispers.