Anger burns through me, and I am holding onto my sanity by my fingernails. How dare he try to turn this back around on me. I count to ten in my head before I am composed enough to reply. “If you are suggesting I have been using Curtis, a man who is my husband, by the way, to make you jealous, you are very much mistaken.”
He harrumphs, and I grind my teeth, wanting to scream in sheer frustration. “I know what I saw! He has been all over you all night, and you’ve let him!”
“Because I didn’t want to make a scene at my son’s party by forcibly removing my wayward husband’s hands! If you think I enjoyed it, think again. Tonight has been an exercise in restraint, and I’m about to blow a gasket, so I suggest you get the hell away from me, Vander, before I take it all out on you.”
“You hurt me,” he says, letting his guard down as his anger fades. “You ran away from me, and you haven’t reached out all week, and then I show up here, and you’re playing happy family with that asshole who is cheating on you. What the hell am I supposed to think?”
“You’re supposed to trust me,” I say, working hard to lower my tone. I don’t want to react in anger, but he is making it difficult. “You told me you did, but clearly you don’t.”
“I do.” He steps toward me, and I shake my head in warning, but he ignores me, grabbing me at the waist and reeling me into his body. “I do trust you, Kendall. I just saw red. His hands were all over you, and I wanted to kill him.”
I slide out of his embrace. “I had no choice but to play along. It’s West’s birthday, and I didn’t want to do anything to upset him. But you had a choice, and you chose to flirt up a storm with Gayle Turner and let her paw at you, knowing what it would do to me. You purposely chose to hurt me, so you don’t get to turn around and accuse me of hurting you. It wasn’t intentional, but your actions were.”
He closes his eyes momentarily and wrings his hands together. “You’re right.” His eyes blink open. “I was so fucking jealous, and I didn’t stop to think. I’m sorry. You know she means nothing to me. I was only using her to get back at you.”
“That is all kinds of wrong, Vander. I know you don’t like her, but she likes you, and it’s a pretty shitty way to repay her devotion. I don’t care if she’s a whiny bitch. She doesn’t deserve that. No one does.”
“I will apologize to her, but right now, I don’t want to talk about Gayle. I want to talk about us.”
“Well, I don’t, and you need to leave before someone comes up here and finds you in my bedroom.” I walk toward the door as he wraps his hand around my elbow, pulling me back into his chest.
“I’m sorry for being an asshole. I swear it’s not who I am. You have been driving me crazy all week,” he says as his strong arm circles my waist from behind. My back is pressed up against his front, and heat rolls off him in waves. “It feels like I’m going insane. I can’t live like this, Kendall. I can’t live without a part of my soul. Not knowing how you are feeling is literally making me nuts. I’m sleep-deprived and Kendall-deprived, and I can’t function when I’m running on fumes. I was wrong to do what I did, and I promise it won’t happen again.”
I exhale heavily as I sink into his warmth, unable to avoid temptation. It’s so hard to stay mad at Vander, and to resist him, when he lays his heart on the line and he holds me like this. “I know this is hard for you,” I say, turning around in his arms so I’m facing him. “It’s hard for me too, but I’m trying to do the right thing, and you’re not making it easy.”
“I can’t bear the thought of you living with him. I can’t stand to think of him putting his hands on you. I have never felt the intensity of the feelings I have for you, and I’m struggling to deal with all the uncertainty.”
I can relate to that. A sigh escapes my lips as I rest my head on his chest. “God, we are making such a mess of this.”
He sets his chin on my head while his fingers tangle in my hair. “We were warned it wouldn’t be easy.”
I bark out a dry laugh. “That’s an understatement.” Lifting my head, I look up at him, instantly magnetized by the hypnotic depths of his big green eyes. “I should be the adult in this situation, but I’m clueless. I’m struggling as much as you are.”
“I’m an adult too, Kendall, and you don’t have to shoulder it alone. But I don’t know how to handle this when Curtis is in the way.”
I trail my hand up his chest, needing the solidity of his body to ground me. “I’m divorcing Curtis, Vander,” I admit because there doesn’t seem to be much point in keeping it a secret for the sake of a few hours. “We are telling West, Stella, and Ridge tomorrow, and I was planning on telling you then. He’s moving out tomorrow night.”
His eyes light up, and I can practically see a layer of stress lift from his shoulders. He clasps my face in his hands. “I know this must be tough for you, and I know West is going to be upset, but I won’t lie and say this doesn’t make me happy, because it does.”
“I can’t promise you anything yet.”
He leans in and kisses my lips. “That’s okay.”
“My children will need me, and my head is pretty much a mess.”
“Mine too.” His mouth glides against mine again, and I grab his shirt. “We can figure it out as we go along.”
“Vander, I—” He cuts me off with a long, slow, passionate kiss, and I stop protesting, giving in to him as he bands his arms around me and holds me close. He angles my head so he can take the kiss deeper, and I willingly open for him when his tongue slides along the seam of my mouth. I moan into his mouth as his tongue plunges inside, stroking mine and ramping my desire up a couple of notches. His erection digs into my stomach as he moves us back until my spine hits the wall. Grabbing my thigh, he pulls my leg up around his waist, and I gasp as his hard length presses against my pussy through my flimsy dress. My panties are wet, my core pulsing with abject need as the kiss turns heated and we grind against one another, groping and caressing through our clothes, and I’m slowly losing control.
We are on the verge of taking it to the next level when a pounding sounds on my door. We jump apart as my heart somersaults in my chest and blood rushes to my head. “Mom,” Stella calls out. “Are you in there?”
I almost collapse against the wall as I look at the door, noticing Vander locked it. Thank fuck, I got a new deadbolt. If Stella had walked in on this, I don’t know how I would have explained it. “Give me a minute, sweetheart,” I call out.
I point at the bathroom and shove Vander in that direction while lifting a finger to my lips to urge him to be silent. Lowering his head, he plants a quick soft kiss on my lips while I slap him away and push him into the bathroom, quietly closing the door. There isn’t time to check if I’m presentable, so I quickly straighten up my clothes and rub around my lips to catch any errant lipstick before smoothing my hair back and striding toward the door.
The second I unlock it, my daughter falls into the room, and I barely manage to catch her. I narrow my eyes at her as she straightens up. “Have you been drinking?”
She giggles. “A little.”
