Total pages in book: 46
Estimated words: 43536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43536 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Now he knows what it feels like, I say inside my head. There’s no reason for me to voice that. Mace clearly realizes it because before tonight, he was still the same selfish man as before, working day and night, giving up the extra time he could have spent with Von to deal with whatever work crisis there was.
“Going to detour, Tyra. I’ll take you to the office tomorrow. I’m not sure more action is a good idea tonight.” I go to ask him where we’re going when I realize he took the exit from the freeway towards my place. I close my eyes, recline my head, and turn to look from the road in front of us to Mace’s profile. His jaw is clenched, the suit jacket is rumbled from my hands digging into it while trying to bury myself into his firm body, using him as a shelter when what I should have been doing was running the other way.
“Thank you for driving me home,” I tell him when he pulls into the apartment complex, except when we get to the first stop sign, we don’t take a right like you’d do to get to my place. Asking to be close to the pool and playground was a blessing and a curse. Von loved doing anything outdoors when he wasn’t in school, so I thought to myself that this was perfect. Yeah, right. The joke was on me when your Saturday mornings are taken over by families full of children up and at it at the ass crack of dawn. It’s having me re-think signing another lease for the same unit. Maybe the other end of the complex wouldn’t be quite as noisy. And sleeping in would be a godsend. “Uh, Mace, you turned the wrong way.” I hook my thumb in the opposite direction.
“I know where you live. I’m showing you where I live now.” Gobsmacked is the only word I can come up with. Who is this man? He’s not the ex-husband I’ve had for the past year, or my son’s father. It’s as if he listened and heard every word I’ve ever spoken in our seven years of marriage. How if we ever were to divorce, I’d have to be next door neighbors with him because not seeing Von daily would eat me up inside. How I’d never live outside of my means, and child support would solely go to our child, which it does. And then there’s us having to be friends, putting aside our differences. A hard task but one I pride myself in, and I know Mace appreciates it. Even if I wanted to be a flaming bitch a time or ten, I refrained, barely. I’d go to say something to him via text, then I’d delete the paragraph I was ready to send and instead used the thumbs-up emoji. Everyone knows what that means anyways; it’s a major fuck-you but in a nicer way. Then I’d drop him off at our old house, get annoyed that part of the problem was Mace’s mentality of ‘Keeping up with the Joneses.’ The one thing to keep me from mouthing off was looking at the mini-me version of Mace.
“Dear God, could this night turn any weirder? My ex-husband interrupts my date, not a bad thing because I wasn’t not feeling it; only did it for my amazing mother-in-law thinking she was helping. Said ex-husband finally sees the light of day, pulling his head out of his ass. Still no apology, but the night is young. And now he lives in my apartment complex.” Seriously, what in the actual fuck is going on, and why am I thinking after all this time that Mace is sincere? The man has yet to apologize. I’m a glutton for punishment, clearly.
“This is part of the process, me talking, you listening, then you’ll talk, and I’ll listen. I haven’t done enough of that, and it shows. You’ve been incredible during this entire process, and I don’t deserve any of that. As far as the date, Mom got an earful from Dad and Me. Von didn’t hear, but something tells me he’d give her more than all of us combined. You up for this, or would you rather I take you to your place and we finish this tomorrow?” The Mace I know would never ask me what I wanted when it came to making things right. He’d tell me we were talking, working things out, and then the make-up sex would commence. Too bad that won’t be on the agenda tonight—a good orgasm, a night of sleep, and tomorrow will be a new day.
“Tonight. I’m not sure I can handle day two of a rollercoaster.” Mace parks his SUV, the ridiculously expensive, ultra-luxurious Range Rover. I’ll never tell him this, but it suits him, and it’s also beyond comfortable.