Discovering Dalton (Manchester Menage Collection #2) (4 page)

“More?” Liam leaned against the wall to another bar, the crowds working their way past them barely registering on their radar. They lived most of their lives in a bubble which only had enough room for the two of them. No matter where, or who, they were with, it never changed. “More what?”

“More in general. Love for one thing. Don’t you want to know what it feels like to be loved?” Troy did, he was desperate to be the most important thing in someone’s world. He’d never had that, well, not counting Terry and Alice, but that wasn’t the type of love he was looking for.

“So, you don’t feel loved?” Liam's hazel, honey coloured eyes met his and Troy groaned.

“You know what I'm talking about. I want to find someone who I can have what we have but more. I want to be loved, Liam. I want to be important. I want to be the first thought when someone wakes and the last thing before they go to bed. I want to be important to someone.”

Liam shook his head, closing his eyes and taking a deep breath. “You're important. Not just to me, but to all your friends. They all love you, and yes, I know that’s not the type of love you want, but it all counts. Anyone who doesn’t see just how amazing you are doesn’t deserve one millisecond of your time.” Liam curled his hand around the back of Troy's neck and looked into his eyes. “Not one man you’ve brought through our door has been worthy of your time or your body, Troy. Not one. Maybe it’s time you loved yourself instead of waiting for someone else to do it for you. You only see worth in you through someone else. You don’t have to use others to validate how great you are, just believe it yourself.”

Troy brushed Liam’s hand off him and began walking again, dragging his feet on the pavement as he worked through the wave of heat running through him. He hated and loved Liam at times because, no matter how much Troy wanted to wave off his words and forget about them, he couldn’t because they were true. He didn’t love himself. He liked aspects about himself, but not love.

He felt like he needed someone beside him who he looked up to, someone who he believed when they told him how talented he was, what a great sense of humour he had, how they loved his big heart. Even when he was told how good he was in bed it made Troy feel elated. Every positive word made him bloom. Alone, he’d none of that. Well, not counting Liam, but he was always with Troy, always trying to get him to believe in himself more.

Despite everything, Liam never gave up on him like all the other men. He was always there through all the shit stuff and the good. Liam was the one constant in his life which Troy sometimes took for granted, but he’d be lost without him.

“I believe in you, Troy, even when you don’t. That won't change.” Liam wrapped his arm around Troy’s waist and smiled down at him. “And no matter what, I won't ever stop loving you.”

“You're just a big softy at heart, aren’t you?” Troy leaned into him, tapping their heads together lightly. “Thanks. I don’t know what I'd do without you.”

“I dread to think.” Liam brushed a soft kiss on his forehead, then grabbed Troy’s neck in his calloused hand, and before Troy knew what had happened, they were at another bar, the music deafening him and the queue for the booze making him sigh. “Just one.”

“Just one, Liam. One!”

Chapter
4

D
alton made it back home at around eight. He was arriving home later and later, probably an attempt to keep away from the house and the disagreements he and Kelly were bound to have. So far it had been almost six months since he found out she was seeing someone behind his back.

Three months went by before he uttered a word out loud to anyone, and then when he did, it just slipped out to Milo. Of course, Milo pushed him to confront the situation head on, but right then Dalton hadn't been in the right frame of mind to talk about his failings. He already felt so low and the weight he gained while he internalised his anger and pain only made things worse.

When he’d lost the weight he put on after finding out, he’d sat down and thought hard about where to go with his marriage. He’d been watching Kelly closely recently, and his gut feeling was the affair she’d begun with one of her co-workers had now ended. Her late nights, secretive calls and texts had finished, as had all the ‘overtime’ she’d been claiming to work.

She must really consider Dalton a fool if she thought a trained police officer could fall for her lies and dodgy accounts of where she’d been.

Once Dalton caught a whiff of a lie, it only enticed him to look further into her claims, easily spotting when she lied. He didn’t have to follow her, but he did, just to see it with his own eyes. He needed to see the man she was fucking behind his back, to compare himself to the new bloke and see what he was offering her that Dalton seemingly didn’t.

The truth was, the new guy wasn’t a Greek god. He was just a normal bloke like him. Dalton would even have been slimmer than him at the time, although that soon changed. The fact she’d chosen him and it wasn’t because of his looks, it made Dalton look deeper within himself to see what the problem was.

He’d grown tired of creeping around his own home, so he shut the door a little too loudly, and then kicked off his shoes in the entrance hallway before walking into the kitchen and putting his gym clothes on a quick rinse cycle. He was just putting the kettle on when he heard Kelly behind him. He glanced over his shoulder and smiled at her as she leaned against the doorframe in her PJs. “Hey. You all ready for bed?”

“It’s eight.” She curled her hand around the belt of her dressing gown as she shifted from one foot to the other.

Dalton bit his lip, knowing she was ready to sit down at last and talk. He’d tried before, but only received lies about being tired, or been brushed off for the bath or the latest book she was reading. Anything basically to not talk to him. About the house and his chores, yeah, she could talk all night, but about what was going on between them, he had no chance. Tonight, he could tell by her hesitation and how nervous she was that she was about to divulge something important.

“Eight’s not really late, Kelly. We used to stay up till three in the morning and still get up for work the next day.”

“That was when we were nineteen, not thirty. Things change.”

“No need to tell me, I know.” Dalton and Kelly met when they were at school. He was shy, she was loud. They hit it off and became friends but nothing more until they left for college. They shared the same bus into town every morning and began dating not long after. It felt natural and easy. They’d been together ever since. “Do you want a cup of tea?”

“Yeah, okay.” Kelly sat down at the kitchen table, looking at her hands twisting around each other nervously.

Dalton sighed as he stirred in her sugar. “You okay? You seem down.” She’d been down like this for the last three weeks—that was when the ‘overtime’ stopped, i.e. her relationship with Richard, her ‘friend’ from work.

“I'm just tired.”

For fuck’s sake, Kelly! Just be truthful and tell me.

“Look.” Dalton placed her cup in front of her and sat down, taking her hand in one of his. Yes, he hated what she’d done, but he didn’t hate her. “You're not okay. Just tell me and we can sort it out together. I've been trying to get you to talk to me for months. Please, just talk to me, Kelly.”

She fell silent for a long moment, then he saw a tear slip from her eye, landing on their joined hands. She quickly wiped her face and looked away, not even able to make eye contact with him. “I… I… I'm not happy.” She blurted the last bit out hurriedly in a big whoosh of air. “I haven’t been for a long time, but the last six months have been the worst.” She continued rushing out her words, seeming to be afraid if she stopped she wouldn’t find the strength to continue. “I love you, Dalton, but our marriage… it’s not been a real marriage in a long time. Over three years.”

Dalton stared at their hands and wondered what the tipping point was three years ago. Nothing sprang to mind.

“You don’t know, do you? You don’t even know what I'm talking about. That’s how important it is to you. See! This is what I'm talking about, Dalton.” She removed her hand from his and brushed back her blonde hair. “Do you even know how long we’ve been living like best friends?”

“We’ve always been best friends.”

“No, we were friends, then we became lovers. The two are very different. Right now, and for the past three years, we’ve been flatmates, Dalton. Nothing but friends who share a house. I mean, I know you're not the most sexual person, and we’ve always had an issue with me wanting it more than you, but really, three years?”

“Three years?” Dalton sat back in shock. “It’s not been that long.”

“Yes, it has!” she shouted as she stood up from him. “I enjoy sex, everyone does, and I get some people want it more than others, but I don’t class myself as a nympho. You just don’t need it like I do. Is it me?” She looked at her feet and Dalton felt the need to reach out to her.

“No.” Well, okay, yes. It was what she’d done which was the issue, not her in general. She was pretty, good figure, sunny personality which always brightened up the room. “You're lovely. There's nothing wrong with you. Yes, the past six months have been difficult—”

“Three years, Dalton. Three years.”

“Okay, okay, but what I meant was the past six months have been worse and not just down to the lack of sex.”
Say it, she won't.
“I don’t know what to say. Is this why you're so upset? The sex? Is that so important to you that you're…” Dalton paused, he didn’t feel like it was right to just slip in the words ‘fucking someone else.’ “You're so unhappy?”

“It’s not just the sex.” She sat back down and took a long drink of her tea. “You don’t want me.” She slapped her hand on the table when Dalton tried to step in and deny it. “You don’t. I was your first. Maybe it’s just not working out the way we thought it would do. We’re still young enough to move on and find someone else, Dalton. You could find someone you want to be with.”

“I want you. I married
you
.”

“Dalton…” She paused, tapping her fingernails on the table. “You masturbate, okay. I didn’t want to be this personal, but you do. You want sex, you just choose not to have it with me. You think I don’t know you like to watch porn and jerk off when I go to bed? I do. Okay, at first it pissed me off, then I just got past the whole thing, but when our sex life started to lull even more and nothing changed, hell, what am I supposed to think, Dalton?”

“I don’t really watch a lot of it.” Dalton felt his face burn up and he had to step away and grab a glass of water. Okay, yes, he watched porn occasionally on the internet. It wasn’t a big deal and he did it like once or twice a month at most. And always when he was alone, or so he thought. He felt guilty. Guilty for jacking off while she’d been fucking Richie boy at the office. “Sorting myself out occasionally isn’t like I'm having an affair or anything, Kelly.”

She threw the cup at him, tea spilling across the room and the cup smashing beside his foot on the tiles. “I knew it! You knew I was messing around and did nothing. You knew I was seeing someone and yet you couldn’t be fucking arsed to even confront me. You did nothing. You just let it happen. Most men would have acted, Dalton. They would have found the guy and beat the shit out of him. You didn’t even care enough to say anything to me. You could have shouted at me, told me to stop, sorted out this shit. You didn’t do anything. You really don’t care, do you? I mean nothing to you. You were quite happy to let me fuck someone else rather than be with me yourself.”

Dalton was struck dumb for a moment. So, this was all his fault then? His fault she fucked around? It was never
her
fault, just
his
. “Are you blaming me for you fucking someone at work? Sure, I could have acted out, hunted him down, beat him up—probably got fired for it. I could have shouted at you, left, but I didn’t. I was too hurt to do anything, Kelly, and all I kept thinking about was what did he have which I didn’t. Obviously now I know it was just his cock you wanted.” He knelt down, picking up the pieces of broken china. “You could have talked to me, Kelly. We’ve always been able to talk. You didn’t have to find someone else to make a point.” He stood up, placing the broken cup in the bin before turning to her. “Are you leaving me?”

“Leaving you?” She laughed through her tears. “Dalton… I’ve been shagging someone else for five months. Five whole months. You should be chucking me out on my arse.”

“Is it over?”

She nodded slowly.

“And you're sad about that, right?” He could see she was. “Is it more than sex?”

Again, another quiet nod.

“Does he love you?”

Another nod.

“Right. And you love him?”

She sighed, looking away from him, but nodding.

“Okay.” Dalton felt his heart miss a beat and he held on to the kitchen sink. “Did it end because he wants you to leave me?”

“I didn’t though. I'm still here.”

“And by being here, do you intend to try and work things out between us?”

“I don’t know if they can be, Dalton.”

“We could try.” Dalton moved to her, her sobs getting louder as he ran his hand down her arm. “We’ve been together ten years. We can work things out if we try.”

“Dalton…” She looked into his eyes, a barely there smile on her lips. “Love, I don’t think we can. And I think, if you're really honest with yourself, you’d know why.”

Dalton just stood still, going through the muddle of his mind, not even knowing if he wanted to try and understand what she was talking about. “I don’t know where to go with this right now.”

She nodded, leaning up and kissing his cheek. “I'm sleeping in the spare room tonight.”

“No-no, honestly, let me do that.” Dalton was already on his way out of the room. “Just promise me we’ll talk more before you go anywhere. We owe each other that much, at least.”

“Why do you think I'm still here, Dalton?”

He didn’t stop. He ran up the stairs, finding the spare room and closing the door hurriedly behind him before falling against it. He didn’t expect to feel so bad. He thought it would all be her, but like most times when an argument with a woman was involved, somehow it was his fault, he just hadn't seen it before.

Her words confused him. He’d no idea it had been so long since they had sex. He’d never needed much, and masturbation was something he’d always done. He’d not thought about how she felt when he did it. It wasn’t like he was turning her down or anything, it was just his hand and the porn on TV.

What the hell did she mean, if he was truthful with himself he would see there was no point in continuing?

Women were the most confusing creatures at times. Why didn’t they just say what they meant instead of talking in riddles and expecting men to be able to keep up?

Dalton lay back on the bed and closed his eyes, not even finding the energy to undress. He just let the darkness and the silence wash over him while he tried to come to terms with his life and find a solution with Kelly.