AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I go back and forth between the need to keep her quiet, and the need to just beat her to the punch and expose her in my column.”
“I don’t want you affected,” he says. “If I have to pay her off—”
“No,” I say, a sharp pang of emotion in my chest jolting me. “No, you will not pay her off.” I try to get up and he holds on to me. “Let me up.”
“Cat—”
“Paying her off feels like guilt.”
“It’s not about guilt, you know that.”
“Paying her off feels like guilt and admission of owning that child’s future for the rest of our lives, and her with it.”
“It’s about protecting the firm.”
“And she knows that. She picked now, while you’re in the middle of this trial, for a reason. Not only do you need her silence, you can’t demand a DNA test now without endangering the child.”
“But I can demand it as part of the settlement and I will, Cat. I shut up her up now with money she can keep even after the test. It’s about protecting everyone else, including you, but damn it, Cat, I’m not guilty.”
“I know.”
“You don’t,” he says, his voice hard now. “I feel that in you now.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “Damn it.”
“I trust you, Reese, but the idea that other people might not, feels weird which is probably why I just want to do it myself and write about it. It’s about control. I’d have some kind of control I don’t have right now but it’s not your fault. I don’t want her to punish you through me.”
“She is. She most definitely is.”
“No,” I say. “Pay her off. Your career matters.”
He lowers me to the couch, and comes down on top of me, like he needs to hold me in place to keep me from running. “You matter. Only you.”
“Your career matters,” I say. “It matters to you and me. It matters to us and our future. It matters to our future family. Pay her off.”
“Our family?”
“Yes. Our family, Reese. We want one. Don’t we?”
“Yes, sweetheart. We do.”
“Then let’s go downstairs and end this.”
“Not yet,” he says. “I’m not ready. We’re not ready.”
“We are ready. We’re strong together. We need to show that strength now.”
“You’re strong,” he says. “So damn strong, Cat, and I swore when you said ‘I do’ I’d keep you from having to be that strong. I’m supposed to protect you.”
“We protect each other.”
“I need to feel you right now,” he says, his mouth closing down on mine, a deep drugging lick of his tongue stroking against mine, possessiveness, passion, and something I’ve never felt in Reese in that kiss: desperation and fear. He’s afraid of losing me and I feel that same fear, for no reason. We’re in love. We’re happy. That isn’t going to change because of Debbie.
Chapter fifty-five
Reese
Ikiss my wife, who is my life, and I will let no one take her from me. I want her to know this. I want her to feel, not just hear, how much I love her, and yet, there is a rage of anger inside me I need to bury and control. I have to go downstairs and act like I’m king of the fucking world when everything I love is right here in this room, and delicate, too damn delicate. As surely as I think those words, though, Cat bites my lips, and not gently. “Get out of whatever place you are in your head,” she demands. “Right now. I know what you need, so use me.”
“I never use you, Cat.”
