Little Bird (The Tangled Series) (11 page)

“Fine, I’ll listen but don’t expect it to change anything. There’s never an excuse for cheating. And let go of me. I don’t want to lay here and cuddle with you while you tell me all about how you fucked around on your wife.”

Lee made an angry sound but he let go of her and she rolled off of him, pulling the blankets over her as she lay on her side looking at him. She needed to be able to see his face while he talked about this. Lee lay on his back, his head turned toward her, his expression impassive.

“We shouldn’t have gotten married in the first place but we were young and stupid. I guess that’s what everyone says, but it’s true.” He laughed derisively. “You think I’m an overbearing bastard now? You should have known me when I was twenty-two. Cara was obstinate and stubborn, too. We argued all the fucking time. I remember once we argued for three days, bitter nasty shit, because she changed the radio station while I was driving. It was ludicrous.”

“So why did you stay together so long?”

“She was traveling a lot for work and I was working for a firm in Arlington, billing about seventy hours a week most weeks, which meant twelve or thirteen hour days, six and sometimes seven days a week. So we didn’t see much of each other, which made it surprisingly easy to ignore how fucked up everything was. And splitting up meant admitting failure, something neither of us is very good at. Our sex life sucked and I know it sounds horrible and shallow but sex is really fucking important to me.”

“Then you should have left instead of cheating.” Savannah was proud of herself for keeping her voice calm because she still felt like she might be sick.

“That’s not when or why I cheated. But you’re right. I should have left. So should she have. We just weren’t good for each other. But neither of us did.”

Lee went silent, rolling toward her so they lay face to face. Savannah tensed, expecting him to touch her. He noticed and she was surprised to see a hurt expression shadow his face before he managed to lock it down.

“This is the hard part coming up, sweetheart. Give me a break, would you?”

Savannah was unsettled by the rawness of his voice. When she nodded, Lee laced his fingers with hers, holding her hand against his chest, and she let him. He took a moment, obviously gathering his thoughts, before he went on.

“Our condo was just a couple blocks from my office. I went home one day for lunch and Cara was there already. When I asked why she was home early she told me that she’d taken the day off because she’d had an abortion that morning. She was so indifferent about it, like she’d just told me that she’d taken the day off to have new furniture delivered. That was how I found out she’d even been pregnant in the first place.”

Savannah’s breath caught, unbidden tears spilling over her cheeks. She couldn’t begin to imagine how horrible that must have been for him.

“What are you crying for, sweetheart?” Lee gave her a tender smile, wiping her tears.

“That’s awful.”

Lee shrugged with a conflicted expression. “The way Cara handled it was awful, I know that much. Why even tell me about it at all if she wasn’t going to tell me until after it was done? It felt like she was intentionally trying to be hurtful and if that was her plan it worked because I was gutted. The rest of it, I don’t know.

“Obviously, if she’d never told me at all, I’d have been none the wiser. I’ve always been pro-choice so I’d like to think it would have been different if she’d been upfront with me and told me about it first. It wouldn’t have saved the marriage, I’m sure of that and Cara was right, it was the right thing to do. The two of us having a kid would have been, hell, I can’t even think of a word strong enough to convey exactly how disastrous that would have been. But I couldn’t see that at the time and I said awful, terrible things to her, Savannah. Things I never should have said. Things I regret saying more than I regret anything else I’ve ever done in my life.

“I’d like to believe if she’d just been straight with me I wouldn’t have behaved like such a worthless son of a bitch, but maybe I’m giving myself too much credit. And if you can believe it, I still didn’t leave and neither did she. It’s like we were fucking committed to destroying each other.”

“But that’s when you cheated?” Savannah already knew the answer.

“Yes.” Lee answered immediately, without looking away, but she could tell he was waiting for her reaction, bracing himself for it. “Ginny, of all people, says it wasn’t cheating. She claims we’d been so fucked up for so long that the marriage was just a legal technicality, but she’s been making excuses for me for almost twenty years now so she’s probably not real objective.”

“Mike and Ginny know all this?”

“Yes.”

“So Mike lied to me?”

Lee laughed quietly, stroking the palm of her hand with his thumb. “I told you he was loyal. But don’t get mad at him, Little Bird. It wasn’t his story to tell and not one I’d want broadcast far and wide.”

Savannah nodded, unconcerned with that once she’d gotten over the momentary surprise of Mike’s deceit. Actually, she was glad he hadn’t told her. Glad it had been Lee who chose to share it with her. “So who was she?”

“Does that really matter?” Lee raised both brows, a questioning look on his face. Savannah just shrugged so Lee told her. “She was a friend of Cara’s. She knew about all of it, Cara had confided in her, and she was sympathetic to me. Looking back, I don’t think I deserved sympathy. I know I didn’t, actually, but at the time, I ate it up. It went on almost a year before Cara found out about it and when she did, she finally left.”

“Do you hate her?”

“No. We were both dysfunctional as all hell. It wasn’t any more her fault than it was mine, the way that all shook out. So, the way I see it, there’s not much point in hating her when we were both assholes. I hope she’s happy and certainly don’t want to see anything bad happen to her as a result of whatever fucked up mess she’s in now.”

“That’s very mature of you.” Savannah was sincere but she knew she probably sounded a little waspish. She hated Cara and she’d never even met her. On a rational level, she understood Lee was right, they’d both treated each other poorly, but she just didn’t care. Cara had hurt Lee and as far as she was concerned, that made Cara pretty damn unlikable. She couldn’t understand how Lee didn’t hate her.

“That’s just another way of calling me old again.” Lee chuckled briefly before getting serious, quietly studying her before asking, “Do you hate him?”

Savannah frowned, confused. “Who?”

“Whoever it was who cheated on you.”

Savannah went rigid, lying perfectly still. She started to tremble, her palms damp and clammy. She didn’t want to think about this. She couldn’t. And she definitely didn’t want to talk about it.

“What are you talking about?”

“Most everybody says cheating is wrong but most everybody doesn’t act the way you did unless they’ve seen it up close.” Lee was looking at her so intently it sent a shiver racing down her spine, but she remained stiff and tense.

With a sigh, Lee wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against him and nuzzling her neck as he whispered, “I’m sorry, Little Bird. Now I’m the one who’s prying.”

Savannah allowed him to hold her as she tried to calm herself. She didn’t have to tell him, he was willing to let it go, and she didn’t want to tell him. She didn’t want to ever think about how stupid she’d been again, let alone talk about it. But he’d been open with her, even after she’d yelled at him and more or less called him a low life. It couldn’t have been easy for him to tell her all that, especially after her initial reaction. She owed it to him to be as open as he had been.

“Yes, I hate him. His name was Flynn.”

“Flynn? What the fuck kind of name is that? He sounds like a douchebag.”

Savannah laughed, despite her inner turmoil, relaxing a little in Lee’s embrace. “He is a douchebag!”

Lee grinned, evidently amused by her bravado, before saying, “You really don’t have to tell me about this if it upsets you.”

“No, it’s all right.” Savannah took a deep breath, her hands flat on his chest. The solid bulk of him reassured her. “I met him the first week at university and we started dating right away. He was a year ahead of me. He, umm, he was actually my first and I made him wait a whole year before I slept with him. I thought he had the patience of a saint. We dated right up until he graduated. He’d gotten a job in Seattle and left shortly after graduation but he proposed before he left. It pisses me off that I wasted all of college on him. I missed out on a lot of great sex because of Douchebag.”

“Probably not, sweetheart. I’ve got more than a decade on you and so far I can tell you the older you get the better it gets. You’re more confident, more experienced. You know what you like and what you want. That’s all worth a lot more than drunken groping at a frat party. Trust me.”

“I don’t know, I think you might be wrong. Sex is pretty good right now, I’m not sure it could get any better.” She gave him a clever smile, intended to convey that she specifically meant sex with
him
. “But I’ll look you up in ten years or so and let you know.”

“I’ll be waiting anxiously to hear how that turns out.” Lee laughed and hugged her tightly.

Savannah appreciated very much that he’d taken them on that flirty little tangent. It kept the mood light, kept her from getting bogged down in her hurt and embarrassment about Flynn. “Anyway, I still had a year of school left and then I’d gotten an internship with Capital Police for the year after I graduated. So the plan was after I finished the internship I’d move to Seattle and then after I found a job we’d start planning the wedding.”

“You didn’t marry him did you?”

“God, no. That’s the one bright side in the entire mess. It was about two months before my internship was over, before I was supposed to move to Seattle. I had a long weekend and I was missing him so I flew out to surprise him. I went to his apartment, well what I thought was his apartment, and his roommate was sure surprised to see me. Anyway, it turned out he didn’t live there anymore. He’d moved in with, and had a baby with, some woman he met at work. Every time I visited, his old roommate, who incidentally was one of Flynn’s frat buddies, let him pretend to still live there. You can’t imagine how stupid I felt. The kid was almost a year old, he’d moved in with her within a couple months of his moving to Seattle.”

“That’s fucked up. Did she know about you?”

Savannah snorted, shaking her head. “She did by the time I got back on the plane to come home. I wasn’t mad at her, it wasn’t her fault but I thought she ought to know he was a lying douchebag. What I found out later was that he’d been cheating the entire time. Including that whole first year when I thought he was being so patient and understanding about the whole virginity thing. It was humiliating to realize so many people knew what he was doing all along but none of them bothered to tell me. I fucking hate that I’m crying about this now, too. I’ve been over him for a long time but I still feel stupid and embarrassed every time I think about it.”

Savannah had been determined not to cry but as she came to the end she did anyway. Lee rolled onto his back, pulling her on top of him. He held her silently, letting her press her face to his neck and cry while he soothingly stroked her back with both hands. When she’d quit crying, Lee caught her chin and tipped her head back to look at him.

“I’m sorry that happened to you. I suppose it’s no wonder we argued earlier, sort of a sensitive topic.”

Savannah quirked a brow at him, her eyes narrowed as she sniffled a little. “Well, that and you were being an overbearing bastard.”

Lee shook his head and chuckled, his voice tired. “Yes, that, too.”

Savannah took a deep breath, feeling awkward about what she was about to say but knowing she had to say it. “Lee, I’m sorry about the way I acted when you started telling me about everything. You were being nice enough to answer and I should have let you finish before I got all pissy about it.” Lee opened his mouth to say something, but Savannah put her finger to his lips, asking him to let her finish. “Cheating is wrong. It’s always wrong and I still believe there are no excuses ever for it. What you did was shitty and you shouldn’t have done it. Especially with one of her friends. I mean, Jesus, that’s a fucking double betrayal and that sucks.”

“You don’t think I know that? You don’t think I wish I hadn’t done it?” Lee’s voice was hot, defensive, and his hands had gone still on her back. “The only thing I regret more are the things I said to her the day she had the abortion. And before you tell me I’ve got that backward consider the fact that you don’t know what I said that day and I’m not ever going to fucking tell you that.”

“I know, I get that, and if you’d let me finish, what I was going to say was that there are no excuses but sometimes the explanation matters. It’s never okay, but circumstances might make it more or less forgivable.”

Lee snorted, and shook his head. “Ah, so now you’re going to be like Ginny and make excuses for me.”

“No, but I wasn’t there, I don’t know what it was like for either of you, and it’s not fair for me to judge things that happened a long time ago and have nothing to do with me. But I can’t go through what I did with Flynn again. I don’t know what I’d do, I can’t even think about it. I felt less than fucking human, I was so ashamed and embarrassed and hurt. I thought I loved him and all of it was a lie. I can’t go to that place again. Don’t promise me fidelity—don’t make me promise it to you, if that’s not something you can do. We just met and we have some pretty great sex. That doesn’t have to change. This doesn’t have to be any more than that. You don’t have to pretend just to get in my pants. I’d rather keep it casual than find myself in that awful place again.” Savannah’s heart thudded in her chest as she waited for him to respond. She’d told him the truth because she’d had to, but now she felt weak and exposed waiting for him to say something.

“Savannah, I can’t promise you this will work, I can’t tell you there’s no risk involved. Who knows, I might find some new and creative way to break your heart and prove what an asshole I am. But I won’t cheat, I can promise that. I’ll also understand though, knowing what you know now, if you don’t feel you can trust me enough to take that chance.”

Savannah believed him. The look on his face was sincere and surprisingly vulnerable, his gaze locked with hers, as he waited for her response. But what really convinced her wasn’t what he’d said just now or even the way he was looking at her. It was that he’d admitted his infidelity at all. It would have been simple for him to lie to her, to tell her all the rest of it when she asked and leave that part out. She’d have never known the difference. Lee must have known he was taking a risk in telling her, that she might react badly. But even knowing she might not take it well he’d told her anyway. Why would he have done that if he were being insincere?

“I believe you, Levon.” Savannah stretched up to kiss his chin, his beard tickling her lips.