Kingston whirled on her, his face incredulous. “You think that’s what I’m mad about, Aria? Seriously, Aria, that’s what you think?” he asked, his deep voice filled with anguish.
Aria shook her head, bringing her hands up to cover her face. She felt helpless. Hopeless. Lost. Her world was spinning and she felt off center like she could crash at any moment.
“Let me explain something to you,” Kingston said, stepping forward to jerk her hands from her face before he released her.
He can’t even touch me.
Aria felt weak and pressed her back to the wall.
“This is all about trust, Aria. Plain and simple. You don’t trust me. You didn’t trust me not to fuck your friend. You didn’t trust me not to leave you. You never trusted me not to cheat. And
now?
Now I find out that you didn’t even trust me to tell me that you couldn’t have kids, Aria.” Kingston threw his hands up in the air.
“My past. I didn’t want you to be ashamed of me—”
Kingston stepped close to her, bending his head so that his fiery eyes locked with hers. “Did I ever do or say anything to make you think I was better than you? That I didn’t love you for you?” he asked in hard tones. He patted his solid chest. “Tell me what the fuck I did to make you handle me like this, Aria. Huh? Huh? I didn’t love you enough. Huh? I didn’t respect you enough? Huh? What? I didn’t put you first?”
She shook her head.
Kingston laughed bitterly. “You’re damn right. I’m not perfect, but I was a damn good husband to you. But maybe I was too good? Huh? What’s your problem? You don’t know when somebody loves you?”
I
was
a damn good husband.
Aria reached out to wrap her hands around his waist. “Kingston, let me make this up to you,” she begged, her tears wetting his strong neck as she pressed her face against his warm skin.
“Get the hell off me, Aria,” he ordered, standing as still as a statue. “I’m sick of your shit. I’m serious. I’m sick of it. I. Am. Sick. Of. It. Around here smelling my drawers and rummaging though my pockets, treating me like a criminal or something in my own damn house when you are the one who can’t be trusted. Man, fuck this shit.”
She hugged him closer. “Kingston—”
The muscles in his arms flexed as he freed himself of her embrace. He pushed her back roughly.
Aria stumbled, but it was the thought of losing him that made her knees give out. “Kingston, please,” she begged, all of the Newark bravado gone from her as tears and snot ran down her face and her heart continued to shatter.
He eyed her with his own tears as he licked his lips and clenched his fists. “You know how much I wanted a baby. A family. You knew this and you didn’t say nothing. I’m a damn good man. A damn good husband. I didn’t deserve this shit, Aria,” he said fiercely, his voice low and filled with anger and pain.
The double doors suddenly opened and Aria saw him swipe at his tears with the sides of his strong hands. His mother looked back and forth at them both.
“Listen, kids, what is going on with you two?” she asked in obvious concern.
“It’s nothing, Ma,” Kingston said.
Aria pulled her knees to her chest and buried her face against her thighs as her tears racked her body.
I
was
a damn good husband.
“We’re leaving so that the two of you can finish your conversation in privacy,” Kingston’s father said sternly.
Aria felt a presence standing over her. She looked up as her father-in-law offered her his hands. She took them and he pulled her to her feet with a gentle tug. He patted her back reassuringly before he led a sputtering Olivine out of the hall.
Kingston slumped down onto the bottom step, his arms bent on his knees and his head hung low between them. Aria walked over to him, but he stood and brushed past her to follow his parents’ path. She hugged the banister close, needing some type of solid support as her world slipped out from under her.
“I’m driving my parents home.”
Aria whirled around, feeling the swelling and grittiness in her eyes from her tears as she faced him standing there not looking directly at her.
“I’m going to stay there.”
Aria cried harder, slumping down to the staircase. “Kingston, please. I’m sorry. Please—”
“I’m sorry, too, Aria, because I honestly don’t see myself coming back.”
When she looked up he was gone and her world as she knew it had gone with him.
Chapter 10
R
enee needed her friends. She needed them around her. She needed them to listen to her, advise her, just be there for her. Life was a raggedy, baldheaded, bummy bitch for her and it was too much. Just too fucking much stressing her.
Her marriage. Her career. Her son. Her sobriety.
Her fucking sanity.
She bit at the side of her nail as she eyed the bottle of tequila sitting on the center of the island. It was calling her so badly. Charming her. Winning her over.
Turning from the temptation, she took a deep sip of her cup of black coffee as she looked out the kitchen windows up the street to Aria and Kingston’s home. She picked up her cordless and dialed Aria’s cell phone number.
It rang three times and went to voice mail. “Maybe she’s not up yet,” Renee said aloud to herself, looking over her shoulder at the bottle. “Aria, call me when you get this.”
It was time to get her shit together and everything about that bottle wasn’t going to help a damn thing.
Seeing your son in the act with his lover had a way of making things clear. Liquor had had her lost to the fact that he was sexually active . . . with a man.
My son is gay? Experimenting? Bisexual?
Definitely not a virgin. That she’d seen firsthand.
Renee massaged the small bridge of her nose with her free hand, wishing she could shake the image out of her head and wishing even more that the shit had never gone down. From the corner of her eye she saw the sun glare through the window over the sink and make the clear bottle glisten.
Renee dialed Jaime. It went straight to voice mail. “Jaime, this is Renee, call me.”
She set the cordless phone on the granite counter and turned to press her ass back against it, crossing her ankles in the wide-legged linen pants she wore with brown crocodile heels and a crisp white shirt. She licked her lips as her eyes caressed the bottle. It might as well have a
DRINK ME
tag hanging from it as if she were Alice in Wonderland. That’s how badly she wanted it.
Renee stepped forward and grabbed the bottle by the neck. She pulled the cork stopper and turned the bottle upside down, sending the tequila down the drain. She let the bottle rest inside the drain and turned away, wrapping her arms around herself as she fought not to let the liquor empty down her throat instead.
But she wanted it. Craved it. Needed it.
Renee turned back to the sink and grabbed the bottle. It was empty. “Damn!” she shouted out in frustration, turning to fling the bottle against the wall. It dropped to the travertine tiled floor and shattered.
With wild eyes she spotted the drops of liquid inside the sink. Get it. She dragged her index finger through the droplets and raised it to her mouth to suckle. Her eyes closed at even the faintest taste of tequila against her tongue.
“Ma, did something crash?”
Her eyes popped open at the sound of her son’s voice from behind her. She shook her head as she moved over to began picking up the shattered pieces of glass from the floor. “Just go get ready, Aaron,” she said, her voice as weary as she felt. “Your grandma’s picking you up in a little bit.”
Come on, Renee, you’re better than that. Smarter than that. Get your house in order. Get your shit together.
Renee was squatting and let her head hang low between her knees. She wanted a drink. “Damn,” she swore, promising herself to break the ties liquor had on her.
“Ma, I can’t stay home?”
Renee looked up in surprise. She thought he’d gone upstairs like she’d told him. She said nothing. She had nothing to say to him.
“Do you hate me because I had sex in your house or because I’m gay?” he asked.
Renee looked up at her son. The sound of pain in his voice hurt her like she had walked barefoot across the shards of glass. “I don’t hate you, Aaron,” she said, a wave of embarrassment filling her as she looked away from him and focused on picking up the glass.
“Do you hate that I’m gay?” he asked, insistent.
“I can’t do this right now, Aaron,” she said sharply.
“Please.”
He walked out of the room.
“I love you, Aaron,” she said, resigned and knowing that as angry and disappointed as she was that he needed to hear that.
His tall and slender figure paused briefly, not looking back at her, before he left the kitchen and headed up the stairs.
As she rose and dumped the broken glass she was holding into the trash can, she wondered if he was still in communication with Darren. She gritted her teeth and clenched her hands at the thought of Darren.
She didn’t give a flying fuck that Darren was only three years older than Aaron. His relationship with her son was—in the words of Aria—“a done dada.”
Renee picked up the phone and called Jackson. She walked around the island and out of the kitchen. The smell of the tequila still clung to the air and taunted her. “Jackson?”
“Yes?”
She ignored the coolness of his tone. “Listen, I need to talk to you today.”
He paused. “You and your lover not working today?”
My lover. Negro, you are so far off,
she thought. “I’m going in this morning, but I can be at your office by noon. I really don’t give a flying fuck what Darren is doing, Jackson.”
He paused again.
“Jackson?”
“I hear you,” he said.
Renee closed her eyes and did a ten count. “Listen, I know you’re pissed at me or all working women or what the fuck ever, Jackson, but we’re parents and we need to discuss a . . . a . . . situation with Aaron.”
“A situation like what?” Jackson asked, his tone softening just a bit.
Renee walked into the room that had once served as their joint office. She made her way to her desk and slid onto the leather executive chair. “I’d rather talk in person,” she said, turning on her all-in-one desktop.
He fell silent again. “Even though I hated that you were working, I still never thought you would cheat on me, Renee.”
Her fingers froze above the keyboard. Her brows furrowed. Trying to kick her newfound love of liquor and having the urge to drink nipping at her constantly like a dog on a rubber bone, Renee didn’t have the time, patience, or will to play Dr. Phil. “Jackson, listen,” she began, licking her lips and swallowing hard. “Cheating has nothing to do with time or place or opportunity. If it’s in you to cheat it is in you. I don’t care if it’s a strip club or a church. Period.”
“No, because my parents were fine until my mother went to work, Renee,” he stressed. He released a heavy breath. “You know what? Just forget it.”
Renee’s face filled with surprise. “Jackson—”
“Just forget it, Renee. I’ll see you later.”
Click.
Renee was left with nothing but a dial tone in her ear.
Jackson’s mama dipped out on his daddy. Say what say who now?
She set the cordless on her desk and pressed her chin into her palm.
But Charesse doesn’t work.
The fact that her mother-in-law was always at home was the reason Renee was sending Aaron there, to be under her watchful eye.
Renee always assumed Jackson’s beliefs about women working were because his mother was a stay-at-home mother. Obviously she was missing a big chunk of info on his parents’ history and how it affected her husband.
Knowledge is power and maybe things between them could have been resolved if she knew she was working against his history. But now. Now it was just time to move on. She quickly finished typing her document and printed off two copies before sliding them into a folder.
As she pushed back in the chair her eyes dropped down to the lower drawer of her desk. She leaned back in the chair and crossed her legs as her eyes stayed locked on it. It was one of her stash spots. She licked her lips and blinked her eyes rapidly in nervous anxiety.
Is a bottle in there or not?
She tapped the toe of her shoe against the drawer. A drink would rest her nerves and take away the jitters she felt.
Just one drink.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Just a sip would get me straight.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Renee dropped her head before she forced herself to wheel the chair back. One drink would lead to another . . . and another . . . and another. Then total blackout.
“No,” she said forcefully, rising and striding out of the office with more strength and confidence than she’d felt in weeks.
She was just walking out the front door with her briefcase when a silver minivan turned into the drive. Renee smiled and waved at her mother-in-law, before she walked back up from the porch to push open the front door. “Aaron, your grandmother’s here. Let’s go. She’s waiting,” she yelled, before stepping back outside to walk up to the minivan.
“Thanks again for picking him up, Charesse. I appreciate it.” Renee looked down at her mother-in-law, every bit of fifty-five and the epitome of a grandmother. She still couldn’t swallow Jackson’s insinuation.
“No problem at all. Anything I can do to help,” Charesse said.
Renee flushed with embarrassment. Anytime she spoke to her in-laws they never discussed her and Jackson’s separation. Until that moment, she didn’t even know if they knew. Until that exact moment. It was hard to miss the compassion.
So had Jackson told his parents about his bastard? Did they decorate a room in their house into a nursery like they did for Kieran and Aaron? Did they call Jackson’s bitch and check on her like they did me?
“I gotta go, Charesse, but thanks again,” Renee said, turning to quickly walk to her car and climb in.
Behind the wheel she blinked away her tears and fought for composure, all the while the urge to drink whispering in her ear.
She looked over her shoulder to reverse the car down the drive, careful not to strike her mother-in-law. On the entire ride in to her office, she tried not to think about Jackson’s lover’s pregnancy and who all said what, where, when, and why about it. Between the usual stop-and-go morning traffic and fighting the urge to stop her car on the Garden State Parkway to check the car for an errant liquor bottle, Renee was almost successful.
As soon as she strolled into her office on the fourth floor of the fifth-story glass-and-steel building, Renee’s hands slightly trembled.
She dropped down into her seat and covered her face with her hands. “The best way out is always through. The best way out is always through,” she repeated the Robert Frost quote.
Feeling more steady she picked up the phone and dialed the extension for the receptionist. “Hi, Yolanda. Is Darren here today?” she asked, hoping otherwise.
Maybe his ass is too ashamed to show his face.
“Yes, he just walked in.”
Renee’s stomach felt like it dropped to her heels.
This motherfucker is really trying me?
“Ask him to come into my office, please.”
“Yes, Mrs. Clinton.”
Renee hung up the phone and leaned back in her chair. Waiting.
Knock knock.
“Come in, Darren,” she called out, crossing her hands to keep them from trembling.
The door opened and Renee smirked at the boldness of his walk and the way he held his head high. “So first you try to fuck me, then you fuck my son, and now you’re trying to fuck me over.”
Darren paused, his ass just inches above the chair, before he relaxed and sat down. “Renee, I really like Aaron,” he said, looking as sharp as ever in a gray and white pinstriped suit.
Renee shifted her ass in her chair. “So much so that now you’re blackmailing me to keep your job?” she asked.
Darren’s dark and handsome face became incredulous. “You’re firing me when I have covered for you and helped you keep your job.”
Renee sat up a bit straighter and nodded. “So I should thank you and forget that you’re a twenty-year-old man fucking my seventeen-year-old son in my house. Nigga, please,” she snapped, reaching for her phone and quickly punching numbers.
It was Darren’s turn to sit up straighter. “I messed up about disrespecting your house, but—”
“Hi, this is Renee Clinton. I need security to escort my assistant from the building,” she said, her eyes locked on Darren. “He is no longer an employee here.”
Darren jumped to his feet as Renee hung up the phone and reached for her briefcase and the folder she’d placed inside. “Look, I like you, Renee, and I learned a lot working with you, but if you think I will sit back and let you ruin my career—”
Renee held up her hand. “Say what you want to whomever you want. I don’t give a shit.” She pushed the folder across the desk toward him.
He frowned as he opened it and read the contents. “You’re resigning.”