Page 67 of Sins of Arrogance

Chap­ter 19: Busi­ness & Frag­ile Bonds

MICK

When I make it back to the apart­ment, Fitz and Kara are al­ready in his bed­room. I’m not sur­prised to find my wife snug­gled next to our son on his bed, read­ing him a Lit­tle Golden Book story about Spidey and His Amaz­ing Friends.

Purring, Gobby is curled up on the other side of Fitz.

Kara doesn’t ac­knowl­edge me stand­ing in the door­way to our son’s bed­room. Doesn’t even pause when I walk in, like my pres­ence doesn’t mat­ter.

I don’t like it. I miss when her at­ten­tion used to fix­ate on me when I was in a room.

Now, I fix­ate on her. Whether we’re shar­ing breath­ing space, or not.

Fitz no­tices me though and grins. “Hi, da. Mommy said you could read me an­other story if you got here in time.”

But she’d been pre­pared to put him to bed with­out me say­ing good­night. I don’t know why that knowl­edge stings.

I’m rarely home be­fore Fitz’s bed­time any night but Sun­day. But I told them I would be here to tuck him in tonight, didn’t I?

If some­thing ur­gent had come up, I would have texted to say I couldn’t keep my prom­ise to Fitz. And there’s not much I can think of that would make me break a prom­ise to my son.

Clearly, my wife doesn’t see it the same way.

“Have you got your sec­ond book al­ready picked out then?” I move to stand be­side Kara, mak­ing it im­pos­si­ble for her to stand with­out brush­ing her body along mine.

“Yep. I knew you’d come,” Fitz says con­fi­dently as he pulls a book from un­der his pil­low: Teenage Mu­tant Ninja Tur­tles.

My son loves su­per­heroes, but only the cheeky ones.

When it’s my turn to read, Kara gives me a look, ex­pect­ing me to step back. I don’t. Giv­ing me a look of ex­as­per­a­tion that Fitz can’t see, she stands up, try­ing to keep her breasts and belly from touch­ing me.

It doesn’t work. My wife’s curves are too lus­cious for avoid­ance at close quar­ters. I don’t sit be­side Fitz like she had been do­ing, but lift my son to sit in my lap and then pull my wife down to sit be­side us.

She’s stiff as a board be­side me, try­ing to keep her dis­tance, but again…not pos­si­ble on the small twin bed.

Un­happy with the lack of space for him to lounge on the mat­tress, Gobby jumps into Fitz’s lap and he hugs the cat.

Putting my arms around my son, I open the book in front of us so he can see the pic­tures as I read.

Then I slide one arm around my wife and of­fer the other side of the book for her to hold. “Will you turn the pages, Kara?”

The glare she gives me could peel paint, but she does it.

Fitz yawns, snug­gling into me. “I wish bed­time could al­ways be like this.”

“Me too, a mhac.” Be­fore the birth of my son, I didn’t cud­dle.

Not even Kara.

How­ever, since she came home from The Mar­lowe Cen­ter, I can’t sleep if she’s not wrapped in my arms where I know she’s safe. Fitz and I bonded in a spe­cial way while she was there and he wouldn’t sleep un­less I rocked him.

I’m not sure when I slipped back into the habit of work­ing such long days and be­ing gone at night some­times too.

But it was be­fore Fitz went to preschool.

Was that when Kara started dis­tanc­ing her­self from me? If I spent more time with her and Fitz would she go back to the way she was?

With no cer­tain an­swer to that ques­tion, I read Fitz his story. He’s asleep be­fore I fin­ish and I tuck him and Gobby in be­fore stand­ing.