Young Revelations (Young Series)

by Kimble, W. R.

  I don’t know whether to cry or scream, but I turn to face him, finding himself bracing himself for a fight. Well, if that’s what he wants… “No one said you’re not allowed friends,” I tell him quietly, shocked at how calm my voice is remaining. “But a little forewarning next time you want to invite your ex-girlfriend to a party celebrating not only your engagement to another woman, but the coming birth of your child would be great. And I’m really not in the mood to fight you, Matthew, so if that’s what you’re looking for, get the fuck out and leave me alone.”

  He’s stunned as I stand from the bed, back against the wall, and cross my arms as I glare at him. “Sam,” he says in a soft tone that suggests we’re arguing over something ridiculous that we should be long past by now. “I’m sorry.”

  Despite the fact that he actually looks and sounds apologetic for the first time since he came in here, I’m not backing down. “How would you have felt if I’d invited Tom to this party, Matt?” I whisper. “And yeah, I get your relationship with Natalie was only a fraction of what I had with Tom, but it’s the same thing. You brought her in our home without telling me exactly who she was—I had to hear it from your sister—and you didn’t seem to have any interest in pushing her away from you or introducing her to me in the ten minutes I watched you two together. And then it took you hours to come find me.”

  His eyes widen. “Yeah, you know why? Because my mom, sister, and Bonnie all had something to say about why you disappeared.”

  Normally I might smirk at the thought of him being ambushed by three overprotective women. Now I just want to sleep. “Can we talk about this later?” I ask him.

  Brow furrowing as though he thought we’d just kiss, make up, and move on once he got a chance to explain, he stands. “Will you at least come to our bedroom?” I don’t miss his begging tone.

  “Not right now,” I say, looking straight at him. “I just want to lie down.”

  He spends another few minutes trying to urge me into our room, but he doesn’t come near me and I don’t give in; eventually he figures this out and, looking incredibly dejected, leaves me to my thoughts. Part of me wants to forget my stubbornness and chase after him so we can talk through this issue. The other part of me is incredibly hurt and pissed off that he would pull something like this on a day celebrating our family. And when it comes to keeping exes as friends, I’m not even sure how much room I have to talk; if he was still speaking to me, Tom and I would probably still be friends as well. Maybe it’s because Matthew knew all along whom I was with, while I had no idea about him. I never asked Claire until Tyler and I went to stay with her, and she never offered; not that I would have wanted to know anyway.

  I spend another hour in solitude before the desire to see my son overrides my annoyance with my fiancé. The two boys are in the basement playing videogames and unless I’m mistaken, Matthew is losing miserably. Of course he’ll just claim he let Tyler win. I walk around the couch and sit down, Tyler in between Matthew and me, earning a bright smile from my boy.

  “I’m winning, Mom!” he tells me, his eyes shooting back to the television again.

  “I see that,” I tell him proudly, carefully keeping my own eyes on the screen, despite feeling the heat from Matthew’s gaze as he affixes it to me. He’s stopped playing altogether which apparently Tyler realizes, because he scolds his father about it, causing me to smirk and Matthew to narrow his eyes on Tyler. Obviously he hasn’t yet encountered Tyler’s bossy side.

  Once their game is over—and Tyler has clearly won—he turns to Matthew. “Can we play again, Dad?” he asks eagerly.

  Neither Matthew nor I have gotten used to hearing Tyler call him Dad, and I glance briefly at Matthew’s expression. It’s a mix of fatherly pride and love, reluctance to deny his son anything when he’s addressed in this manner, and also the desire to keep Tyler occupied so he and I can talk. I’m not ready for that, though, so I quickly offer to play Tyler’s game with him, which earns me two identical looks of male skepticism that a girl could ever play videogames. Knowing it’s better not to mess with me right now, Matthew wordlessly hands me the controller while Tyler resets the game and gives me a brief rundown on the game controls. I seriously have no idea how children get this good at these games. You’d think it would be too complicated for them, whereas an adult shouldn’t have any trouble whatsoever. Clearly that’s not the case. After three rounds of the racing game, Tyler decides to play by himself because it’s too easy to beat me and Matthew is claiming his fingers are too sore to continue.

  We sit on opposite sides of the couch, watching our son play and stealing glances at one another when we think the other isn’t looking. I hate fighting with Matthew and if I thought there was a way to put aside my pride on this, I would. Unfortunately, I don’t see myself backing down.

  When it comes time to put Tyler to bed, I almost want to extend his bedtime so there’s still a buffer between Matthew and me, which makes me feel guilty for using my son. Sighing, I kiss his forehead as he’s already drifting off to sleep and turn towards the door, barely stifling a yelp when I find Matthew leaning against the doorframe. He smiles tentatively at me. “Sorry,” he mouths, stepping out into the hallway so I can pass him.

  I do so without brushing against him, despite his attempts to get me to do so, and head down the hallway towards our bedroom. Having spent enough time sleeping in the guestroom, I decide I’m not letting him chase me out of our bed. It crosses my mind to make him sleep elsewhere, but I know that’ll only cause another fight, and I’m really not in the mood. I take my pajamas into the bathroom, closing and locking the door behind me to show him that just because I’m in our room, it doesn’t mean all is well between us. After taking my time running through my nightly routine, I exit the bathroom to find Matthew already changed into his pajama pants, no shirt, leaning against the headboard of the bed with his ankles crossed and his eyes trained on me. His eyes sparkle hopefully as I cross to the bed and pull down the covers.

  “Good night,” I mutter crisply as I wrap myself with the blankets and shut off the lamp on my nightstand.

  “Samantha,” he whispers.

  I ignore him and eventually he gets the hint, shuts his lamp off, and gets beneath the blankets. Tears sting the backs of my eyes at the thought that I can’t remember the last time there was so much space between us in a bed. Normally we’re pressed so closely together it’s difficult to tell who is who, even when we’re just sleeping. Matthew always seemed to have a thing about keeping me nearby when he’s asleep. The first time we shared a bed it made me a little uncomfortable, but I quickly adjusted and haven’t had a decent night’s sleep without his arms around me since before we met.

  Without looking at him, I know he’s not having a much better time than I am right now. I can feel him tossing and turning and hear him sighing under his breath. Finally he flops onto his back with a grunt. “Do you know why I broke up with Natalie?” he asks into the dark. I don’t answer, don’t move, don’t breathe. He sighs, shifting onto his side to address my back. “When I first met her, I’d just managed to get myself back to work for full days without drinking a bottle of whiskey or punching someone out.” I can almost see him rolling his eyes at himself. “I wasn’t exactly stable. Anyway, at that point, it’d been nearly a year since you and Tyler left. Then this girl walks in, a representative for the IRS. And I had no idea why she was there. I’m sure someone told me at some point, but I’d blocked everything out. She was there because my company was in talks with the IRS to come up with a chip.”

  I swear, the temperature in the room drops several degrees as I realize what he’s talking about: the reason we’ve been brought back together after five years.

  “Yeah,” he says, reading my mind. “That chip. So I listened to her for an hour about what the IRS was looking for, managed some sort of half-assed attempt at brainstorming, and she left. She was back a couple days later for more information. I’d had a particularly long night and she got on my ner
ves, and I snapped at her. She snapped right back telling me if I wasn’t up to the task, she could take her business to my father’s company.” I almost want to laugh, but bit my lip to avoid making a sound. “Well, that pissed me off, of course.” He sounds just as amused. “There was a bit of back and forth, but eventually we settled on the fact that I was taking the project. She and I worked together on it and became friends. I told her all about you and Tyler and how much I missed you both. The friendship went on for a year or so and eventually evolved.” And now all my amusement is long gone. “We were together for six months. And I suppose I was in love with her. If it had gone on…” He trails off and I suddenly feel ill. He clears his throat. “Anyway, one morning I woke up and realized everything I loved about her were the things I love about you—smart, sexy, strong, and an absolute refusal to take any of my shit. I realized I’d been comparing her to you all along. Building her up in my mind as you. And then I realized how incredibly unfair it would be to the both of us if I continued on with the relationship knowing what I’d been doing. I got out of bed, went downstairs, made her breakfast, and broke up with her. She was very understanding and said she’d suspected all along what I’d just figured out, only she had hoped it would change. She left, we remained friends and business associates, and she hasn’t had any hard feelings against me. Obviously we finished work on the chip and she stepped completely out of that mess.

  “The day you saw her in my office, she’d just gotten back into town after a temporary relocation, and had come to see if I really had made it back in one piece after the plane crash. I told her about you coming back and our engagement. I should have told you who she was, but I was afraid of stressing you out too much, particularly before a doctor’s appointment you were already worried about. I should have asked if you were okay with inviting her today. I shouldn’t have let her touch me like that. I’m sorry, Samantha. And you were right about Saunders; if you’d invited him, I’d be beyond pissed off. I probably would have punched the bastard in the face in front of everyone. So for you to have the restraint to not drag Natalie out of our house by her ponytail… I’m impressed.”

  He’s trying to butter me up now. Flatter me so I roll over and kiss him until we’re both struggling to breathe. And as much as I want to, I stay on my edge of the bed. I’m grateful he explained about Natalie, but that doesn’t change the fact that he lied about her and their relationship. It doesn’t help that now I associate her not only with mauling my fiancé, but with the chip that uprooted me from my life. There is a part of me that realizes if she’d gone to Matthew’s father’s company to produce the chip, I wouldn’t be in his bed right now, wearing his ring, and carrying his daughter. That only annoys me, though; I don’t want to be grateful to Matthew’s ex-girlfriend for anything, let alone something that life altering and amazing.

  We fall into silence again, though I can feel his gaze on me as he waits for me to say something in response to everything I’ve just been told. Eventually our breathing evens out and I can feel myself mercifully falling asleep. My last thought is the hope that tomorrow this will all turn out to be a dream or at the very least make me feel as though this is much less significant than it seems to be right now.

  ––––-o––––-

  Unfortunately for me, I wake up in a much worse mood than when I fell asleep. Aside from tossing and turning all night, knowing Matthew was doing the same, and the dreams I kept having of him and Natalie together, when I open my eyes, I see a pair of suitcases set outside the closet door. It takes me a few minutes to figure out why they’re there and when I do, I just want to go back to sleep. The suitcases are a reminder that tomorrow morning Matthew will be leaving for Germany and I don’t know how long it will be before I see him again. That thought makes me want to rush downstairs, find him, and not let him go until the very last second.

  I don’t understand why I’m reacting so strongly to this situation. Of course there is a reason to be upset with Matthew for doing what he did, but I have to wonder whether I’m overreacting or not, especially in light of his departure tomorrow. The memory of the last time he left me to fly somewhere, I nearly lost him for good. I don’t think I could survive if that happened again.

  But even with that thought in my head, the hurt and anger he’s caused isn’t enough for me to forgive him right now. I try to get my emotions in control before going downstairs, not wanting what little time Matthew has left at home with Tyler to be sullied by our fight. The boys are in the kitchen making breakfast again. I wonder briefly if they’re trying to recreate the breakfast in bed they prepared for me the morning after Matthew proposed. If that’s the case, I almost feel bad for ruining their plan. I watch them silently for a few minutes wondering if my family is going to remain together after this. Now there’s a painful thought…

  Matthew turns towards me, reaching for a cabinet and jumps when he sees me, clutching at his chest and yelping. My lips twitch, but I don’t think he sees it. Tyler is laughing his little head off at his father’s reaction. Grinning slightly, Matthew shakes his head a little, glancing over his shoulder at Tyler, then turns back to me. “Good morning,” he says softly, his fingers reaching out for my hand.

  When I pull away from him there is undisguised hurt in his eyes that I try to block out. “Good morning,” I say stiffly. “What’s going on?” I jerk my head into the kitchen, not looking at him.

  Sighing, his jaw tense, he turns back towards Tyler. “We thought we’d make you breakfast,” he says quietly.

  “It was supposed to be a surprise,” Tyler chides.

  I grin at my son. “Well, I’m sorry I’ve ruined the surprise,” I tell him sincerely. “It smells delicious.”

  “Why don’t you go relax and we’ll bring breakfast to you?” Matthew suggests.

  Nodding in agreement, I turn away and head downstairs to the basement. I hate being at odds with Matthew, especially when he’s trying so hard to make up for his wrongdoings. But as much as I hate it, it’s going to take more than breakfast to fix this.

  Our day is tense. Matthew and I barely interact, despite Tyler’s attempts to play with both of us. Around early evening, Matthew announces he needs to pack for the morning, making a big deal of it with an attempt to remind me he’s leaving soon. My dismissal of his announcement seems to irritate him and I have a flash of satisfaction as he turns away and heads upstairs. While Tyler is occupied with his games, Claire calls to check in with us and make sure everyone is still alive after yesterday. It doesn’t take much prompting on her part to get me to open up and tell her everything that happened last night. By the time I’m finished, I’m in tears and I’m pretty sure she wants to drive out and beat the shit out of her brother.

  Once I calm down, I tell her all the thoughts I had while I tossed and turned in bed last night and I listen to her advice on how to handle the situation. I’m not surprised to hear her say she’d have done much worse to Matthew than what I did if she’d been in my position; what I am surprised to hear is that despite his moments of idiocy, she doesn’t think I should completely write him off right now, especially in light of what tomorrow will bring.

  As we’re wrapping up our conversation, Matthew finds me and I immediately wipe away my tears, though not quickly enough to avoid him seeing. I tell Claire I’ll call her tomorrow, end our call, and turn towards Matthew who is standing just outside the door leading to the back deck.

  “Hi,” I say, still trying to wipe away my tears.

  “Hi,” he replies, taking a couple steps towards me. “So I’m leaving tomorrow.”

  I nod. “I know,” I say softly.

  “And I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”

  I nod again, fixing my eyes towards the lake as he takes a chair near me.

  “Samantha, can we please talk about this?” he whispers pleadingly. “I don’t want to leave thinking you hate me.”

  I look at him sharply. “I don’t hate you,” I say, rather more harshly than I’d intend
ed. “And it’s pretty shitty of you to assume I do.”

  He holds his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that. What can I do to make this up to you, Samantha? Please tell me. I’ll do whatever it takes.”

  Shaking my head, I wipe my tears again and stand. “I don’t want to be the one to tell you what to do, Matthew,” I whisper. “You need to do this for yourself, not because of what I want. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get dinner ready for my son.”

  As I enter the house, I look at his reflection in the glass door in time to see him flinch at my words and realize this is the first time since we’ve been reunited that I haven’t referred to Tyler as “our” son. As much as I wish I could wipe away all the hurt both of us feel, I stand my ground for now, not willing to back down from him, even if it destroys both of us in the process.

  7

  I have no idea what time it is when I finally hear Matthew’s breathing evening out, signaling he’s fallen asleep. As carefully and quietly as I can, I slip out of bed and for a few minutes, I just watch him. This is the only time he ever seems completely relaxed and without worry, which is a state where he seems to permanently reside these days. I wonder how much of that is my fault, and whether his life would be easier for him if Tyler and I had stayed in Omaha with Tom. I know he’s worried about the baby and me and everything around us that seems to pile up without warning. Now he has to deal with this possible indictment in Germany. I suppose Tyler and I could have gone with him for support, but he never even suggested it and at this point, I’m not sure I’d want to be there. I wonder if there’s a reason he doesn’t want us there. It could be as innocent as knowing it’ll be stressful for him and not wanting to subject us to that. Or it could be a not so innocent reason… Suddenly Natalie’s face pops up in my mind again.