children fills me with a crushing despair, so heavy that I can’t bear it and my own weight. I sit on the small dark leather trunk at the foot of my bed, drop my face into my hands and I search my disordered mind for a way to stop this. To keep them safe, with me and ignorant of their parents’ failings.
“Time is ticking, Regan,” Marcel taunts.
I lift my head to glare at him. “We haven’t lived together for five years. A quiet, straight forward divorce would have barely made a ripple. Their lives wouldn’t have changed at all. But this…you are taking them to Paris in the middle of the school year?”
He snorts a derisive laugh. “They’re lives will not be disrupted. I will continue residing in Paris and will make more frequent trips to see them. And when school is over, they will come to me.”
Incredulity slackens my jaw and widens my eyes. I gaze over at him. “Don’t be ridiculous. the children can’t stay here alone.”
“Hanna is moving in.”
I shoot to my feet, my fear and despair burned away by a surge of primordial rage.
“You wouldn’t.” I growl.
He swallows thickly, his eyes dart away from my brimstone gaze. He tugs the cuffs of his shirt, collects himself and looks back at me, the challenge back in his beady eyes. “The children know her and like her. You are the only one who had a problem with her.”
“Because she was our nanny and you got her pregnant.” I scream, incandescent anger propelling me toward him.
He takes a step away from me. “Lower your voice,” he hisses.
“I will not. I’ve never cared where you have dallied. I still don’t. But if you do this--I will see you in hell.” His eyes dart past my shoulder again, this time, his tongue darts nervously over his thin lips.
I swivel in the direction of his gaze. There’s nothing there but the huge gold leaf framed mirror that hangs over my fireplace.
“What the hell are you looking at?” I demand, searching the wall for whatever keeps drawing his attention.
“Anything but you.” He means the words to sting, but his cadence is stilted. His unease, in a moment where he holds all the cards, plucks at my suspicion.
I erase any trace of it from my voice and my expression and turn back to him with a narrow-eyed glare and scornful scowl on my face. “Why? Because I’m not eighteen and under your employ?”
His haughty, self-righteous stance is back. But I don’t miss the flash of worry in his eyes. Or the way his throat bobs behind his starched collar.
“You must stop this delusion about Hanna.”
“Is the baby she popped out with your fucking eyes a delusion?” I ask incredulous that he’s still denying it.
“You have no proof. Whereas, I have this picture.” He waves his phone in my face, and his sneer turns taunting. “You’re nothing but a common slut and soon, the whole world will know.”
I bristle. “Well, they already know that you are the king of sluts, so they’ll just think you finally rubbed off on me.”
He flinches as if I slapped him and then his face flushes scarlet and he bares his teeth in a feral snarl before he rushes toward me. With more speed and strength than I thought him capable of, he shoves me. I land flat on my back. The rug cushions the impact of my fall, but I lay there, dazed and disoriented. He drops to his knees beside me and grips my cheeks, squeezing so tightly that I can’t move my lips.
“Is he the reason you asked me for a divorce?” Spittle sprays my face and shock at the violence of his touch stuns me silent and still.
“Fucking answer me.” He tightens his hold on me and my teeth cut into the inside of my cheek. The salty metallic taste of my own blood is an elixir – neutralizing my fear and feeding my fury.
I gaze into the wrathful face of the man I wasted too much of my life on. The last ember of goodwill I feel for him, dies. Whatever he sees in my expression startles him – his eyes widen and his grip on my face slackens. I yank his hand away, press my palms to his chest and shove him off me. He lands in a sprawl beside me.
I pull myself up with as much dignity as I can muster and wait for him to do the same. And then I step