Unbeautifully

CHAPTER FIVE

Deuce leaned forward on his handlebars, scanning the park playground until he found what he was looking for. Standing beside Kami, near the sandbox Ivy was playing in, was Eva.

Cox was about twenty feet away, tossing a ball around with Devin and Mary Catherine, looking every inch the devoted father to both his daughter and the son he hadn’t known he’d had up until…Jesus, had it been two years already?

Deuce had never been a devoted father.

He’d been a shit father.

Never home, always losing his temper, not giving a shit about what their bitch of a mother was doing, never knowing what the fuck was going on in either Cage or Danny’s lives.

He’d promised himself it was going to be different with Ivy, with Eva. And it had been. Shit had been real good.

And then…

In his peripheral vision, Deuce saw Frankie get up on his knees and lift Eva’s hips. Frankie’s hand snaked around her waist and dipped between her thighs. Eva lost her battle. Her breath caught, her eyes rolled back, even as tears streamed down her face. Her legs quaking, she went face first into the pillow, crying out softly through her orgasm. Frankie followed her down, groaning loudly, his body jerking. Then Frankie turned to him. And grinned.

Deuce’s chest went tight. Fuck him, he couldn’t even think about it without wanting to kill someone. He’d been helpless. Him. Frankie had taken what was his, right in front of him. And laughed about it. And Eva, goddamned motherfucking Eva, had gotten off with another man’s cock inside her. Raping her. In front of him.

The whole fucking shebang made him sick to his stomach.

He couldn’t get past it.

He couldn’t forget it.

He’d stayed by Eva’s side through all her bullshit. Grieving Frankie, blaming herself, then shock had set in, followed by depression the likes of which he’d never seen before. For a while he thought she’d never shake herself out of it, and he was scared shitless because of it. Because, fuck him, he’d never loved a woman like he loved this woman, and the thought of losing her was unthinkable to him.

But he’d lost her.

She was right there. Maybe fifty feet away from him, but he’d lost her.

He’d lost her the moment she’d tried to kiss him, touch him, be with him again, and he couldn’t.

He couldn’t because he couldn’t look at her without seeing Frankie. Without wanting to throw up. Without wanting to strangle Eva because, goddamn her, she’d fucking gotten off on it.

Kami saw him first. She nudged Eva, said something, and jerked her chin in his direction.

Eva didn’t turn right away; instead she looked down at the grass and her shoulders sagged, and he felt that shit all the way to his bones. She didn’t want to see him.

It was slow going as she dragged her feet toward him. She stopped a good five feet away from him but it felt like a mile, and his chest ached fiercely because of it.

He wanted to tell her that he didn’t blame her, that he was going to get over this shit. He wanted to tell her a whole shitload of things, none of which he ever said because he honestly didn’t know if any of them were true anymore.

He knew he loved her. But he’d never told her that either.

He should tell her, he could tell her. All he had to do was open his mouth and say three little words, and maybe shit could start moving forward instead of backpedaling into the ugly cycle the two of them always seemed to get caught up in.

It was on the tip of his tongue, he was going to tell her…

But then he found himself wondering why she had so much makeup on and why her sundress was so damn short and where the fuck she’d been spending her nights. So instead of telling her he loved her, he opened up his mouth and an angry, “Where the fuck you been?” came out instead.

“Kami’s,” she said softly.

He watched her eyes, waiting for some sort of sign that she was lying. But she kept those big gray soul-suckers trained on him, didn’t so much as blink, and he knew she was telling the truth. Which, for some ungodly reason, pissed him off even more.

“You give a fuck about Danny bein’ home all alone?” he continued, wishing the words back the moment they’d spewed out of his mouth.

“Do you?” she asked, and he internally winced.

“I got shit to do,” he shot back.

She stared at him and he stared back. Fuck, she was beautiful and he wanted her. He wanted to hold her, touch her, he wanted inside her, but the second he thought it, he saw Frankie…inside her…and his stomach cramped.

“Fuck,” he muttered, scrubbing a hand over his eyes, trying to think of something to say to her, something that didn’t result in her crying and him feeling like an asshole afterward. “Listen, D’s birthday is on Saturday. You gonna be there?”

She nodded.

“You bringin’ Ivy?”

She nodded again.

And, yeah, he was out of shit to say.

“I’m out,” he muttered, sitting up straight. “Got shit to do.”

And he left. Feeling like an asshole.

• • •

Feeling a chill that had nothing at all to do with the weather, Eva walked back to Kami with her arms wrapped around herself.

Things were bad, so very bad, and she didn’t know how to fix them. She wasn’t even sure that this time they could be fixed.

Which wasn’t fair. She and Deuce had gone through hell and they deserved some peace. And she wanted that peace with him. All she’d ever wanted was him.

“Aw, Evie,” Kami whispered after taking one look at her, probably seeing on her face how heartbroken she felt. “What are you going to do?”

For a moment she said nothing, just stared down at her daughter, the spitting image of her father with her white-blonde hair, icy blue eyes, and multi-dimpled smile. She viewed Ivy as a gift, the culmination of her and Deuce’s misspent years, the phoenix rising from the ashes of their devastation, the one good that shone so brightly against all the bad, it made the bad bearable.

She shrugged. “I’m going to wait. I’m just going to wait and hope he comes back to me.”

Because he had to come back.

“He’s a proud man, Evie. Men like him, they don’t…” Kami trailed off and took a deep breath. “What if he doesn’t get over this, what will you do?”

Eva swallowed hard. He had to come back.

There just wasn’t any other option for her. She loved him too much.