“Tired. I bet he’s already asleep.”
“Because he’s got so much energy throughout the day.” She sipped her wine then set it on the table beside her. She turned her body into me and cuddled into my side.
My lips moved to her hairline, and I kissed her.
Her arm wrapped around my waist, and she squeezed me like a teddy bear.
“Ready to go to bed?”
“I’m so comfortable…”
My arms scooped under her body, and I lifted her, cradling her to my chest, finding her weight insignificant because I benched more than this every morning. I carried her to bed before I stripped off my clothes and got under the sheets.
She ditched the bottoms but left the black shirt on, turning on her side to face me.
I lay on my back beside her, my face angled in her direction. My hand grabbed hers and held it on my stomach, knowing both of us were too tired to make love tonight. It’d been such a terrible day that I really wasn’t in the mood anyway.
“So…if Valerie really leaves, we’ll have to figure something out.”
I didn’t have many options. I needed someone to be there for Derek constantly. That meant I really did need to hire someone, which was weird. Paying someone to raise my kid…that didn’t feel right.
“She’d only pick him up from school and be with him for a few hours until you get home. It’s not as bad as you think it is.”
“But he does his homework when he gets home. I should be there for that.”
“If he needs help with something, he can move on to the next assignment then circle back to it when you get home.”
“Yeah…I guess.” I still didn’t want a nanny having those moments. They should be mine. But my job wasn’t just a job. If I left early every day, I would miss out on a lot of progress. Derek was important, obviously, but I couldn’t completely sacrifice it either. Going to work earlier made me tired all day long, and it just wasn’t practical. My colleagues needed to be there at the same time. I really wished Cleo would do it, but it was unfair to even ask. She was right. He wasn’t her responsibility.
“I can work it out to pick him up from school every day and deliver him to the residence. That way, he can see my face first. And then the nanny can meet me here and take over.”
I knew she was only offering to make me happy. “I’m sure that’s unrealistic, Cleo, to reserve a spot in the middle of the day to always do that. It’s alright. A nanny makes more sense. Maybe I can go into work early two days a week so I can pick him up from school on those days.”
“Yeah, that could work.”
“I guess you can work on finding someone…”
“I promise I have good people. They aren’t just random people off the street, okay?”
I still felt like shit about it, but there really was no option. Even if Cleo were my wife, she still wouldn’t sacrifice her job to take care of Derek because her job was important to her, which I understood. But that was a reality I’d like to see, her being the one to take care of Derek until I came home…for us to be the family that Valerie and I never were. But I didn’t say that, didn’t make her feel bad about it, because it was wrong. “Alright.”
She stared at me for a while, her hand rubbing my chest, feeling each slab of muscle on either side of my spine. “There’s something I need to tell you…”
Her tone of voice implied disappointment, and I’d already had a shitty day. But may as well make it as shitty as possible so tomorrow could be a new beginning. “Okay.”
“I saw my ex-husband today.” Her hand stopped moving, as if she expected a reaction.
I never really thought about her ex-husband. Sometimes I forgot she was once married—like I was. “You ran into him someplace?”
“No…I went to his office to see him at lunchtime.”
Now I was really getting confused. “Why?”
“I just… I had so much guilt I needed to get rid of.”
“Guilt?” I asked. “You did nothing wrong.”
“I thought that too…but then I realized I was wrong.” She dropped her gaze, her thick eyelashes hiding the color of her blue eyes. “I realized it doesn’t matter how busy I am, I always do the dishes in your sink. It doesn’t matter how tired I am, if you want to make love, I want to make love. It doesn’t matter how busy my schedule is, I’ll rework everything for you. I’ll push jobs onto Matt so I can go to the cabin with you. All I ever do is make sacrifices for you…and I never did that for him.”