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Chapter Thirty-Three
Call me soft for wanting to bring peace to our lives while Billie was carrying our babies, but I’d been there when she’d told Logan she was expecting and the look of sheer devastation on his face had haunted me for days. From the desolate look of resignation on his face, I knew until then he had held some faint hope in his heart about winning her back.
It had felt as if he’d never really taken what Billie and I had seriously, and he’d been waiting for her to come to her senses and give him a second chance, until we’d gotten married. Even then he’d continued to use their son to find excuses to talk to her when he dropped Colby off, but a man knows when another man has designs on what’s his.
Most men would have relished watching their wives’ ex-husbands suffer, but I’d never been one to gloat, and I supposed that was because what I knew Billie and I had was, for me at least, a once in a lifetime deal. Besides, people made mistakes in life, and even though Logan had fucked-up royally I’d have had to be blind not to notice how much he still loved her.
Unfortunately for him, it had taken his experience with another woman before he’d realized this and sometimes I wondered if I hadn’t been in the mix whether Billie would have taken him back. I’d have liked to have thought not. But I had come along and Logan’s catastrophic error in judgment had given me the beautiful woman I loved and a life I’d never imagined.
All’s fair in love and war they say, but although Billie wasn’t in love with him anymore, she still cared for him because of who he was to her son. Nothing much I could do about that, but support her and let her know that despite their past, I understood. I didn’t particularly like it, but I understood.
Life isn’t perfect, no matter how much people would try to have you believe it about their lives. It’s messy and inexact and frustrating as fuck sometimes, but if you love someone enough you accept the good the bad and ugly side of their shit, because in the end, all of it has made them the person they were when you met them.
Billie and Logan’s tangled relationship could influence how Colby related to his siblings and others in the future, and it was for this reason, plus my brother’s jealous feelings about me, that helped me decide how to deal with Logan. If they could at least be in harmony for one short day I knew I’d be willing to grant them this small concession to keep my family happy.
Having left the ball firmly in Logan’s court, I never called him back and when he came to pick up Colby on Friday there was no way I was allowing him anywhere near Billie with his answer.
“Can you send Logan an email with instructions for Colby’s weekend?”
“Send him an email? Why?”
“You are not going down to the front desk when he comes.” Billie twisted her lips in a worried expression and when she looked up at me I could see she was fighting back tears.
“Don’t you dare cry. He doesn’t deserve it. I called him the other day and asked him to consider Christmas, now we’re leaving him to think on it. He’s not getting near you. I won’t let him twist this into something other than what it is. He comes for Christmas Day or Colby goes there and he’s coming back at bedtime, instead of the following day. The day after Christmas is ours, right? I know he stayed with you last year, but that extra day was hashed out because of Florida, right?”
Billie nodded. “You really think he’ll come?”
“I do. He just needs to have some silent treatment to know how serious we are.”
“I hope he doesn’t give Colby a hard time about this … make him choose.”
“Colby’s not as fickle as you think. He wants to be here. I’ve heard him complaining week in week out about Logan not involving himself on their weekends. Trust me, he’ll come. Do you know if he’s arranged anything with his parents?”
“No. Doreen and Keith are going to Florida to spend time with their friends this year, she sent me a note in the Christmas card we received from them.”
“Sweet, that’s even better, because I’m guessing he’s got no choice or he’ll have to take Colby out to eat. Hammer said he eats takeout all the time. Did he never cook for you while you were married?”
Billie shook her head and I wondered again what the fuck she had seen in the man she’d lived with for over ten years. “It’s not all his fault. His mom is a great cook and well … she loved looking after Logan. He never had to lift a finger when he lived at home.”
“Don’t do that. Stop making excuses for him. Christ, you know the privileged life my siblings and I had at my parents’ house. We had staff, but growing up my mom still made us take turns at making breakfast or supper each night. It’s a parent’s duty to enable their kids to become independent. I suppose he thought he’d married a maid when you came along, if you did the same for him as his mother had.”
“So, we’re going to fight about how inadequate I was in my marriage? That what I did for him somehow enabled him to cheat on me?” she replied full of piss and vinegar. Her eyes flashed with anger and I immediately pulled her against me, her body stiff in offense and I cradled her head.
“Where the fuck is this coming from? No, never. I’m annoyed at him and how he treated you in general, not toward you for your giving nature.”
* * *
When Logan came to pick Colby up it was me who handed him over.
“Where’s your mom?” he asked Colby.
Glancing at me their son shrugged. “Resting,” he stated, which was true, but I saw the question in Colby’s eyes as he wondered why it was me who had taken him down to meet his father.
Logan gave me a dark look of frustration and I smiled, then turned to Colby. If he wanted to be an ass I wasn’t going to help him with that.
“Everything you need is in here, right?” I asked, lifting his weekend bag and handing it over to Logan.
“Yip,” he chirped and stepped in for a hug. Gripping me tight, he looked up at me and gave me a warm smile which tugged at my heartstrings again.
