Mafia Daddy’s Faithful Little by Mary Potter
CHAPTER FOUR
Raymond
I wasn’t the best guy for Maddy Parker.
If she had a clue what I had done to her, there was no way she would forgive me. I would lose Maddy forever and my misery would be a lot greater than what I was feeling now.
How could I bring myself to tell her the truth? Would I be able to look at Maddy and not remember that I have been lying to her for the past six years?
Every night, I feared the day that I would have to account for my sins. I tried hard not to make that day a reality. To be honest, I didn’t care how many years it would have taken me but my sin with Naomi Dunham had to stay buried.
It started six years ago, after Maddy’s aunt’s bridal shower. She had called me to pick up some cookies in her house and bring them down to where the party was being held. We had only started dating seven months ago but Maddy made sure I was known by every member of her family.
The drive to her apartment had been brief. All I had to do was go into her kitchen and get the cookies she had kept in there. Yet, when I got to her front door, I realized the door was open.
“Hello?” I called, kicking the door with my feet and contemplating on going in or not.
What if I was about to face an armed burglar? What would be my weapon of defense? I walked inside gingerly, groping for the light switch in the dark. Maybe Maddy had forgotten to lock the door.
As I switched on the light, a naked woman came into view. She shrieked in fright when she saw me, racing into the room. I didn’t want to focus on the sight of her full breasts or jiggly buttocks but the color of her hair. It was flaming red, the sort of feature that would make her stand out in a crowd.
“I’m sorry,” I called out to her, turning around to leave.
She was back in the sitting room, wrapping a pink nightgown around her body. “Raymond Baxter, right?”
I stopped in my tracks, wondering how the naked stranger in my girlfriend’s apartment knew my name. Slowly, I faced her again. Then it hit me! She was familiar.
“Naomi,” I said. “I’m sorry. I almost didn’t recognize you.”
Maddy had introduced Naomi to me two weeks ago. However, the girl had said something about leaving Leevens the next time. It seemed she had not or she was back again.
“It’s okay,” she said with a smile. “Maddy didn’t tell me you were coming.”
“Oh, yes. I have to get her cookies for her aunt’s bridal party.”
“Damn that girl,” Naomi said and led me into the kitchen. “I kept reminding her about them. Now, she left them here.”
When I took the plate of cookies from her, our hands brushed slightly. A mischievous grin crept up Naomi’s lips. I should have seen it that day that she was up to no good.
“It’s nice meeting you, Raymond.”
Two days after that, we met again at a grocery store outside town. It was almost as though Naomi was stalking me but I didn’t feel that way back then. I saw her as a cool person and since she was Maddy’s best friend, we got to each other a lot.
All was good until she called me one Friday night and asked that I go with her to a friend’s party. Maddy was out of town on a business trip with Mr. Coast and she would be gone for a week. Naomi had said something about being bored at the party since she would have no friend to talk to.
I should have stayed at home that day. I should never have listened to her and followed her to the party. After a few rounds of drink, we were both so drunk that one of her friends had to book us a room in a motel. I woke up the next morning in bed with Naomi, remembering to my dismay that I had slept with her.
We had to keep it a secret. If Maddy had known, I would never have had the chance to propose to her and get a yes. As though fate enjoyed plunging me into series of trouble one after the other, Naomi told me that she was carrying my child.
Ethan was the only friend I could run to. He knew how fucked up my life was and chose to help me. At that time, he had not gotten back to Leevens and he thought that one of his father’s homes in that city would be a perfect place for Naomi to have my child.
“That way she’s far from Maddy,” he had said. “I’ll tell my father I rented it out to a friend who needed a place to stay.”
I was grateful for what he did but as we sat in his apartment, going over our plans, again and again, I knew a time would come that my secret would crawl out to the open and bite me in the ass.
“You know I can never lie forever,” I had said to my best friend.
Ethan nodded but all he could do was reassure me that all would be well. I was truly in love with Maddy and I worked hard to make sure my mistake didn’t come between us. She was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with.
However, the dreadful moment was upon me. Naomi was back in my life, trying to get me to take in my son. It was time for me to open up to Maddy.
If only I could bring myself to do that.
