“Tylee might be sleeping with one of them.”
“One of who?”
Bikers? Immigrants? Cops?
I meet Wyatt’s gaze, even if I wish I didn’t have to. But if he’s going to tell me that his sister, and my wife, is sleeping with another man, I want to look him directly in the eye and believe that it’s the truth.
“Biker. Guy who goes by the name of Gore.”
“I’ve never heard of him.”
“He’s the right hand to whoever the leader is but… Tamiya and Gideon haven’t turned up anything yet.”
Scum. The syllables turn around in my head and I wish I could say I felt a sick, twisting knife ripping at my guts. I sure felt that way the first time. By the second time Tylee screwed up, I had learned that this was something wrong she had going on with her. She didn’t understand loyalty because of the complicated situation with her dad and his marriages. I tried to give her space to grow. To learn how to stop spreading her legs for every man who was nice to her.
Was it all a lie? Was she never really coerced those times but playing games with me…
It’s even more humiliating than ever to have this playing out in front of Wyatt Shaw. He has the decency not to mock me, but that’s only because he knows facing this shit head on is enough of an embarrassment.
“I’ll bring you to the meeting point,” Wyatt says. “Our goal here is simple. We get her to sign the divorce papers.”
“Understood.”
“There’s no coming back from this Isaac. Even if you wanted to take my sister back, I won’t let you.”
“I can’t let the kids grow up watching this shit.”
I hate who I’ve become with this woman and the scariest part is that this is who I’ve been my entire life. Don’t think I’m capable of loving somebody else, which means I threw it all away on a woman who can’t possibly love me back.The knot in my stomach gets so big that I think I’m going to explode. And you have to shove shit deep when you’re a man. Especially in our line of work.
“That’s right,” Wyatt says patiently. He has nothing but patience for the bullshit situation I’ve found myself in. “The kids deserve better than this.”
“She’s never going to agree to share custody with me.”
“Tylee won’t have a choice,” Wyatt says bitterly. “If Anna pulled the shit she has, kidnapping the kids and disappearing across state lines, I would have spanked her ass raw and locked her up.”
“The problem I have is not my refusal to abuse Tylee.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Wyatt corrects me with an impatient tone as if he really had been abundantly clear. “Anna would never put me in the position to choose between violence and kindness.”
“Strong men can’t be pushed to hurt women.”
Wyatt glares at me as if he truly thinks of me as pig-headed and incapable of understanding the world. I’m too old to face Wyatt’s condescension, although I can understand why the predicament I’m in doesn’t exactly cause him to trust me.
“It’s not about that, Isaac. She’s never been good for you.”
“She’s your sister.”
“This world raised her. Women aren’t like us. They have different tools to survive. The ones Tylee felt she needed were cunning and manipulation.”
“She never needed that. She always had me to protect her.”
“I don’t know why she never felt that,” Wyatt says. It’s hard for me not to feel like he’s blaming me. Like I didn’t do enough for her. Pained silence hangs between us as I wrestle the childish urge to turn this into a major fight. Wyatt wants to help. He wants to get my kids back. I have to keep sight of that. He’s right, too.
I can’t go back to Tylee. For the first time in my life, I don’t want to. I’ll do the single dad thing if I must… But I can’t be with her anymore. I could tolerate her hurting me in the past, but I can’t stand watching her do this to the kids. I just can’t.
We were so close.
I could be divorced.