The deed to the house was left behind too. I can’t take that from him. I don’t care if he called it a grand gesture. There have always been conditions to every gift I’ve ever been given. This one is no different.
“Looks like I’m not stuck alone with you after all,” Alex says, a smile in his voice.
Ignacio is standing on the front stoop arms crossed over his muscled chest, and my body’s first response is heat, but not the angry kind.
I know the power he holds in those arms and thick thighs. I know that he can easily hold the weight of my entire body aloft while he fucks himself into me. I know he can make me come on his dick with a few well-aimed jabs. The man was good at sex. I thought so before when he was the only one I had been with. Not that I have much experience outside of him, but he’s one of a kind.
“Mom? Are you going to get out?” Alex is standing outside the car, bent at the waist looking at me.
I nod, turn off the ignition and climb out.
The man can’t take a hint, and each time I see him, he manages to break down just a little bit of what I’m trying to build up against him. When Alex walks up to him and wraps his arms around him, both giving the other a quick squeeze, those walls crumble just a little more, and I’m left nearly helpless at this point, out of ideas of how to protect myself and my son from the inevitable where this man is concerned.
Alex disappears inside before I make it to the stoop, but Ignacio doesn’t move to the side to let me pass him. My back straightens as I look up at him, daring him to challenge me again.
“You can’t keep doing this.”
Those are his first words as if I’m the one to show up at his house this time.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You can’t keep on with this push-and-pull bullshit, Tinley.”
“Me?” I chuckle, something I manage without the hint of a smile on my face. “I started this? You’re the expert at push and pull or have you forgotten the reason I never told you about Alex in the first place?”
“I thought we weren’t playing games.”
“There’s nothing about this situation that’s a game, and that’s the whole damn point.” I keep my voice low, but the words still come out on a growl. “I’m trying to protect myself, protect our son.”
“From me? You think you need to protect him from me?” His fist hits his chest with each angry word.
“You hurt people. It’s only a matter of time.”
His head tilts back, hands running over his face as he takes a deep breath, and I can admit this man is different from the one I used to know. Years ago, teenage Ignacio would just explode. He would take a breath before letting his rage fly, but calm or outraged, the outcome would always be the same.
“You’re hurting me,” he says, his voice eerily calm, and I can tell from the sadness raging in his eyes that it takes a lot for him to admit that out loud.
What I can’t tell is if he’s using that pain as another form of control, power he’s trying to exert over me.
“I want you, Tinley.”
“You want your son under your thumb,” I counter. “I’m just the obligation that comes along with that.”
“I swear, you—” He snaps his mouth closed, the muscles in his jaw flexing. “Okay.”
He turns around, heading into the house, and the five-minute confrontation leaves me exhausted. My body sags to the steps, unable to hold the weight of everything upright.
He can’t want me now. He didn’t want me then. Then things were much less complicated. We were practically kids. We had no money and no real jobs, not that it’s much different for me in my current situation, but I always power through.
I can make it through life without him, but his insistence that I don’t have to keeps that voice in the back of my head urging me to take a chance on constant repeat.
I want to trust him. I want to be his. I want him to love me the way I thought he did long ago. I want it all. I want to dive so far deep into him that it takes me a lifetime to crawl back out, but I don’t have to worry about just myself. I have Alex to think of, and if things go south with Ignacio and me, then that will alter what they have. I already stole nearly thirteen years from them. It would be selfish to take more, and I don’t see an outcome where Alex isn’t put in the position to have to choose between us. Either way, one of us loses and Alex loses most of all.
Alex doesn’t want to stay in this house any more than I do. He wants to live in St. Louis where the foul-mouthed bird is, and he wants to go to a private school where he doesn’t have to worry about his safety. He wants his dad there every night. He wants family dinners and conversations with both parents after his games.
He wants a family.
Tears burn the backs of my eyes knowing I can give him those things, but it may be short-lived. Would it be better to have all of it now even if it’s for a little while before it’s all ripped away or to deny him that pain altogether?
I swipe the backs of my hands over my eyes when I hear the hard pound of Ignacio’s boots near the front door.
I stand to tell him that I’m willing to take the chance, but he has to promise me that no matter what happens between us, we have to protect Alex. He’s
