If Anna was the one hurting Camille, shouldn’t she be scared? Shouldn’t she hesitate? If I’m the safe, protective parent, shouldn’t she be clinging to me instead of her mother?
Camille buries her face in Anna’s shoulder. Her small hands grip the fabric of her dress as her body trembles with unspoken emotion. She remains silent. She always does. But the way she melts into Anna’s embrace exposes everything I’ve tried hard to ignore.
Anna didn’t hurt Camille. Someone else did.
“Dante,” Anna says softly, stroking Camille’s hair, “can I stay with her for an hour? Please. I’ll leave as soon as dinner is ready.” She lowers her eyes to Camille. “I’ve missed her so much. I’m not ready to let go yet.”
I want to say no. I should say no. But when Camille peers at me with pleading eyes and a lowered lip, I cave like a coward.
“Fine,” I mutter. “But only until dinner is ready. I have… plans.”
Anna only hears what she wants to hear.
She’s always been that way.
While beaming like the winner of a popularity contest, she heads to the coloring station at our dining table—which is never without supplies—and settles in for the long haul like she belongs here.
I’ve not yet reached the same conclusion.
Anna might not have hurt Camille, but as her mother, she should have done everything in her power to stop her from being hurt.
Four years of injuries prove, without doubt, she didn’t do that.
The reminder is enough to move forward with my plan for sole custody.
When Anna tiptoes out of Camille’s room, she smiles as she always does when she gets her way. “Thank you for letting me stay for dinner and tuck her in. It wasexactlywhat the doctor ordered.” Her teeth rake over her lower lip, highlighting the fresh batch of lipstick she applied while helping Camille brush her teeth. “And thank you for not backtracking on your agreement to give me a second chance.”
The dinner I barely consumed scorches my throat’s lining. “What?”
“We talked about it last night, remember?” She tilts her head and attempts a cutesy expression. “Over drinks. It was like we were back at the club, canoodling how we did the night we met.”
I stare at her, lost.
I don’t remember that. Also, I don’t care how many drinks I had—I wouldneveragree to give her a second chance. Even with Matteo blowing up my phone every five minutes during his late-night walk with Lucia, I haven’t stopped watching Lucia’s apartment all night, waiting for her to walk through the door. I’m obsessed with Lucia, utterly and wholly snowed under, so there’s no way I would suggest we try whatever we had again.
It was barely a thing to begin with. Yes, it captivated me for almost five years and made me celibate for just as long, but even prolonged abstinence didn’t have me falling into bed with Anna in the weeks following her arrival at my door.
It took an hour to realize the magic was left in the storage room where we’d conceived Camille. There wasn’t a single spark to trigger a twitch from my cock. It was as flaccid back then as it is now.
Anna blamed my lack of interest in sex for our downfall. Since it was the easiest way to explain how things went so wrong, I let her.
Oblivious to the disgust on my face, Anna leans in to kiss my cheek, leaving a streak of red lipstick behind. She giggles while rubbing at the chunk coating my cheek.
“We’re off to a great start.” She cradles my cheek with her lipstick-stained hand, and her expression makes me wonder if she’s overloading on fiber to stay thin. “I’ll see you soon.”
She rushes down the hallway, her head bowed and her red-bottomed shoes tapping the linoleum with an irritatingclick,clack,click. She moves so fast that she bumps into someone coming from the opposite direction, further supporting my theory that she isn’t stable enough to take care of our child when she doesn’t stop to check if the person she knocked over is okay.
My already blistering anger doubles when I lock eyes with the person she mowed down. Lucia is at the end of the long hallway. Her suspicious gaze bounces between Anna’s rapidly retreating figure and me.
Guilt haunts me when her eyes narrow to the exact spot Anna kissed, and then it overcomes me when I raise my hand to check if the smear is gone.
Anna didn’t wipe away the lipstick mark from my cheek.
She lowered it to my mouth.
Like all men when they’re too enamored to think straight, I issue the shittiest excuse in the book. “It isn’t what it looks like.”
Lucia scoffs before she stabs her key into her apartment door and cranks the lock. Partway in, she halts before her head pops back out. “You paid for a month, so I’ll be here until the end of next week. You’ll need to find someone else to take care of Camille after that.”
