“Jose has two dates, too,” he told me, referring to Tabby’s half-sister who lived in Piersville and was married to one of the owners of the tattoo shop in town, Ellis.
I knew her story, it was far different from mine, though.
Jose’s ex-husband had been a serial cheater and an abusive piece of shit. She’d caught him in bed with Alex’s ex-wife’s daughter, or Rita Slutita as Tabby called her, when she was heavily pregnant with his daughter. The pregnancy hadn’t been planned, but her mom was a fucking evil bitch, too, and to this day, Jose swears her drink was spiked because there was no way she’d have had sex with her ex any other way.
She’d been scared to leave her ex at the time because of a multitude of things. Like not having anywhere to go, him having access to their finances, and he’d isolated her from everyone. The house had been in her name and Jose was the only one who paid for it, so if he hadn’t moved out, she wouldn’t have been able to afford a second place for herself until he did. She’d also been scared he’d find her, and the payback from him would endanger her and the baby’s lives, too.
There was also the small fact that it wasn’t possible to get a divorce in Texas while you were pregnant anyway.
“Our situations were very different,” I pointed out. “But I can sympathize with Jose on why she didn’t end the marriage sooner. Did you know fear has one of the biggest statistical rates for why people don’t end their marriages—especially abusive ones?”
“I knew it was high up on the list of reasons, yes.”
“Fear about what you’ll do financially, fear about the impact on children—which was one of my leading worries—fears about retaliation, fear about where you’re going to live… I’d never even considered any of those things until I realized I was going to have to make plans.
“There are people who’d look at those reasons and think, ‘how weak can you get?’ But until they’re faced with them, what do they know? Even if they’ve been faced with them, every situation is different.”
Straightening from his slightly slouched position, Alex turned and rested his leg on the couch, meaning his knee was now pressing against my ass cheeks. No complaints from me on that one!
“People who call anyone’s reasons for not getting out of a marriage weak are fuckwits, baby. And if they’re doing it over an abusive one, they need help themselves.”
“Amen.”
“Do you think you’ll ever be ready for a relationship with someone else?”
The question was so unexpected and such a drastic change from what we’d been talking about that it took me a moment to answer it.
“I don’t see why I wouldn’t, but—as you’ll understand—my son’s my priority. It’s not just me in the relationship, Cody’s involved, too. So the guy would have to accept that and be able to hack it.”
I frowned, thinking about it. “Yeah, I couldn’t be with someone who didn’t love my kid and consider him part of the family. He’s my priority in everything I do, and I refuse to accept anything less than that for him.”
Alex looked off to the side, staring blindly at a spot on the floor. He was quiet for so long that I began to feel uneasy.
Finally, I couldn’t hack it anymore. “Is everything okay?”
Rubbing his lips together, he took a deep breath in and then blew it out. Instead of saying anything, though, he reached over and plucked the glass out of my hands, then placed it next to his beer bottle on the coffee table.
“Alex, wha—” I screeched as he lifted and moved me so that I was straddling him. “You can’t do that, I’m too heavy.”
Yeah, I was like a majority of women in that respect. I wasn’t obsessed with how much I weighed, but I was aware that I wasn’t light, and I didn’t want him to hurt himself.
Rubbing his hands soothingly up the sides of my thighs, he raised an eyebrow. “If I’d asked you to sit like this, would you have?”
Our faces were mere inches apart in the position, and I’m fairly sure that if he asked me to do anything at that moment, I’d do it. Heck, I’d jump on one leg and bark like a dog if he asked me to right now.
Would I have while I’d been lying down? Well, his knee was pressed against my ass and part of my vagina only seconds ago, so… Eh, the odds were likely in his favor on that, too.
My dad might have raised a determined woman who wasn’t a fool with her business, but my momma raised a woman who knew not to roll over when a man asked her to.
So that’s why I answered with, “Nope.”