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“A really shitty husband, though.”
“Oh.” My cheeks burning with shame. “Mark. Yeah. He’s not my husband.”
“Divorced?”
“We were never married,” I say. “I wanted to be, especially once the strip turned pink, but he didn’t believe in it. He wanted all the benefits of having a wife, of course. Just not all the work that goes into it.”
“Sounds like a winner,” Scott drawls.
“That makes me the loser.” I shake my head, my eyes down. “He wasn’t always like this, though. Or he was. I don’t know. Maybe I was just too young and too stupid in love to see it.”
Scott hums. “Sounds like Kiss County, all right.”
“Ah, so you’ve heard of us.”
“I grew up in Big City.”
I smile. “I knew it.”
“Yes,” he says. “You rightly called that one.”
“You have that look to you.”
“Do I want to know what that means?”
“Probably not.”
“You should hear what they say about Small Town up there,” he says. “I almost expected to move here and not have indoor plumbing.”
“No, we have plumbing. Head east past Littleville, though… you’ll see some outhouses.”
“Is that where motorcycle guy’s from?”
I chuckle. “As a matter of fact...”
He winces. “Really?”
“I said I was young and stupid. Those Littleville bad boys don’t seem all that bad when you’re in high school.”
“So, what went wrong?” he asks, then holds up a hand. “If you don’t mind me asking, of course. I’m just curious.”
“No, it’s… it’s okay. You can ask. You’ve more than earned a chapter or two of that story.” I take a breath. “I got pregnant right out of high school. My parents didn’t approve. They still don’t. But I left home and moved in with Mark out in Littleville. Which… wasn’t ideal, but we were great. He was excited to be a dad. Went to all the appointments. Took care of me when I was sick. All that stuff. Shortly after Liam was born, my grandmother died, and she left me the house across the street. We moved in and… it was great. Until about a year ago, when he got mixed up with that biker bar up the highway.”
“Ah.” He nods. “I see.”
“You know of it?”
“Everybody knows it.”
“Yeah.” I sigh. “After that, he would just disappear. Sometimes for days. He’d always come back on something. But he never hurt me or Liam, so I’d make excuses for him. He was just blowing off steam. Everyone should once in a while. Things like that.”
Scott nods, but says nothing.
“Six months ago…” I swallow hard. “I found out he was cheating on me. A lot. He said they didn’t mean anything. They were just tourists looking for that Kiss County experience. But it hurt too much. At that point, I couldn’t take it anymore and kicked him out.”
“You did the right thing,” Scott says.
“I know.”
