Family Affair by Elle M Thomas
Chapter 29
Declan
The sound of voices drift from the kitchen, Anita, and another I recognise, but it’s not Liv’s. Christian. Mase’s meeting call got cancelled so he decided to come and retrieve Liv for lunch and a relaxing afternoon. I didn’t delve into how he planned on relaxing her but can feel him walking behind me.
We come to a standstill near the kitchen and everything blurs. Time stands still and flashes by at the same time. Christian is doing all the talking about someone coercing married men and getting pregnant…Anita. I know they were involved, but this can’t be right. She couldn’t have got pregnant. She would have told me, wouldn’t she? An abortion? I wouldn’t have judged her for that. Not in the circumstances, so why didn’t she tell me? I told her everything about me and Amber and the child we should have had.
My whirring mind and attempts to understand and reason the thoughts in my head stop dead when I hear Anita’s words. Words from her own mouth.
“I could never have aborted my own child. I gave her up for adoption.”
She had been pregnant, like Amber, and just like Amber she gave the child up for adoption. It now seems that the thing that broke me almost to the point of complete and utter destruction, obliterating my trust in anyone outside of my family, in women until Anita, is back to finish the job off.
Why didn’t she tell me when I told her about Amber? Surely that would have been the ideal time to explain her own situation. To make me understand why she did that. She didn’t. I am crushed at the realisation that she didn’t even value me and our relationship enough to tell me to my face. This is how I discover the truth, by accident. There’s a sour taste in my mouth at the realisation that she never intended to tell me.
I hurt everywhere; my heart is broken.
“Cupcake.” One word, my pet name for her, the last time I will say it.
I push the hurt aside and allow anger to rise within me. Somehow Mase and I stand together in the doorway and take in the scene; Anita and Christian, the former looking horrified and the latter looking scared. Then I hear Mase call Liv’s name before I see her struggling to get to her feet from the floor.
Christian chooses now to speak, but to Mase rather than me. “It was an accident.”
He doesn’t have time to utter another sound before Mase has made short work of the distance between them and his fist is colliding with Christian’s jaw sending him to the floor where Liv had been.
“You fucking piece of shit. You do not, ever, speak to her, look at her, or anything else within fifty feet of her, and I swear if you even consider putting a finger on her, I will kill you, do you understand?”
Mase pulls Christian, who is nodding frantically to his feet before hitting him again.
“Mason,” Liv’s voice breaks through my brother’s red mist of fury.
He immediately goes to her, checking her over for any sign of injury.
It’s my turn to look at Christian now. “Get the fuck out. Don’t ever come back or speak to me or anything…and keep away from her, for good.” I point in Anita’s direction.
Christian mutters something about a misunderstanding, his wife, his children, and fuck knows what else. I have stopped listening and I really don’t care what he’s got to say.
“Out!” I roar and he has the good sense to leave.
Turning back, I see Mase holding Liv tightly.
“Did you know?”
Mase shakes his head, so I turn my attention to Liv. She shakes her head too. “Not everything.”
I roughly run my hands over my face and through my hair as I try to order the chaotic thoughts in my mind before having to speak to Anita.
“Dec, do you want us to stay, or go, or whatever?” Mase looks seriously concerned for me. I notice that he hasn’t spoken or looked at Anita either.
“No. I need to do this alone. Thanks.”
Mase nods and begins to lead Liv away. She turns back, a little reluctant to leave.
“Dec, don’t do anything rash, please. Listen to her—”
I neither want nor need her advice so shut her down quickly. “Liv, I don’t want to say nasty shit to you, but I am struggling here. You need to go with Mase. This is fuck all to do with anyone who isn’t me or her.”
She looks as though she is about to come back at me, and I need her not to.
I hold up a halting hand. “No. Go. Now. I don’t even know if I believe that you were oblivious to everything, so, please, leave.”
She is clearly upset, but right now, it’s my own upset concerning me more.
I half expect Mase to take me to task, he doesn’t. Instead, he takes Liv’s arm a little more firmly to direct her through the kitchen door and away from this fucking war zone I feel my life has become.
“Dec,” Anita begins and that’s as far as she gets.
I need answers, not excuses so I ignore her plead of my name.
“He got you pregnant.”
She nods, tears begin to run down her face. I fight the urge to reach across and brush them away, to comfort her because I am hurting as much as her, maybe more so.
“You told him, and I assume he didn’t want to know.”
Another nod and more tears.
“Whose idea was it to get rid of the baby?”
“His. He told me I couldn’t have it, that I would be alone, and he wouldn’t help financially.”
It’s my turn to nod now. I can hear Christian telling her that.
“You agreed?”
“I didn’t think I had a choice.”
“Of course you had a fucking choice!” I am incensed at her pathetic response. “Everyone has a choice. You chose to sleep with him. You contributed to getting pregnant by a married man—”
She cuts me off, her words a jumble of sounds through her sobs. “I didn’t know he was married.”
I laugh, a cold and heartless laugh, which is ironic considering my heart is currently being torn from my chest. “Well, that’s okay then! So long as you didn’t realise you were fucking a married man the moral high ground is clearly yours!”
“Dec.”
“No, I’ve heard enough unless you can tell me that you didn’t give your own child up for adoption without the courtesy of advising the father beforehand.”
And there it is, my real issue with this. As much as Christian is a creepy, cheating arsehole, he has had done to him what was done to me. I know he’s unlikely to lose any sleep over that unless he thinks his dirty secret is about to be discovered, but the fact remains that Anita did to him what Amber did to me. I clearly have a type, but no more. I am done.
With my shoulders pushed back, I wait. Anita says nothing. There is nothing left for her to say.
I look around the kitchen at her bowls and utensils.
“You have until the club opens tonight to remove your things from my kitchen. You and your company are no longer welcome here.”
I hear the sobs catch in her throat, but I am not prepared to look at her or allow my feelings to be manipulated into feeling anything but anger and contempt for her, so continue making my way as far from her as possible.
“Your belongings at mine will be back at yours within the hour. Goodbye, Anita.”
The sound of her cries, howling from the confines of the kitchen follow me all the way home. The ringing of them in my ears cutting me like a knife, but this is the right decision. She is not the girl for me. She is not the girl I thought she was, and it is better that I found out now.
I need something to dull the pain and anguish coursing through my body. Whiskey is a good start, but where do I go from there?
Anita
When I gave up my baby, it was the right decision, maybe not for me, but certainly for her. She needed and deserved what I alone couldn’t give her, and I do not regret that decision. What I do regret is not being honest from the start, with my parents and Liv possibly, but definitely with Dec.
It is because of my dishonestly rather than the actual adoption that led to him breaking things off between us and cutting ties completely.
It’s been almost three weeks and he hasn’t once made contact and having spoken to Liv most days; I know she’s not spoken to Dec directly, but Mase has, I know Dec is in a bad way and drinking too much. I can only imagine how many women he has got through in order to block me out. Maybe blocking me out was the easy bit and I was never as important to him as he professed, or I believed. I dismiss that. What we had was real and special. I was the one who ruined it, not him.
My dad was fuming and assumed it was all Dec’s fault. I explained it wasn’t, but he refused to accept that until I opened and told him and my mum the whole truth, including Christian and the baby.
I barely sleep with thoughts of Dec and what could have been, but those same thoughts make me cry, a lot. After a chat with Scott, who told me how brave I was to have made a decision for my child rather than myself, I have decided that I am going away. I don’t entirely know how long for or where to, but my bag is packed and I am going to see Liv before heading to the airport to jump on a plane somewhere, hopefully somewhere hot.
Apart from Christian, this is the biggest risk I have ever taken. I just hope it works out better than it did with him. I have no clue what has happened with him and his wife if anything because Liv won’t even discuss him beyond saying Mase has been desperate to punch him for years and him laying a hand on her was the final straw.
I look around my room before skipping downstairs, ready to leave having already done all my goodbyes. The cab is already outside and waiting, I just need to take this final step.
The lift to Mase and Liv’s home is quick and before I really register being in it, the doors are opening to reveal my sister waddling towards me. She is huge and looks ready to burst.
“Not a bloody word,” she says, already pulling me into her warm embrace.
With my hand in hers she takes me to the sofa where we sit opposite one another. From her position, Liv eyes my suitcase near the lift doors.
“Are you going somewhere?”
I nod. “I think it’s for the best. For me and all of you.”
She looks sad. “What about the baby. I’m already two days over.”
I shake my head, refusing to cry so soon. We haven’t even said goodbye yet.
“I don’t want you to go.” Liv allows a couple of stray tears to fall.
“I have to. This situation is impossible. I love Dec and I had no idea not having him could hurt so badly, but it does. I am barely surviving, and he is Mase’s brother so I can’t pretend he doesn’t exist or avoid him forever, can I?”
She gives a slow shake of her head.
“We both need some time and space before we can be in your life and not each other’s.”
“Why are you being so mature and sensible?” she asks with a short laugh.
“I dunno. Maybe I grew up. I felt so guilty about my baby and so, so ashamed, but now, I can see that I did the right thing. I was brave and selfless and letting her go is the only thing that hurt me more than losing Dec. I didn’t know you or Mase or Dec when I made that decision so I can’t say it was the best decision because of seeing Christian through all of you, but that would have been horrendous for everyone involved. However, she didn’t deserve to grow up without a father or to discover how she was conceived, in deceit and lies and to be faced with the fact that her daddy loved his other children more than her and he chose them and his life with them over her.”
Liv is crying silent tears now, their flow refusing to be stemmed by her hands that are attempting to wipe them away.
“I am sorry I didn’t tell anyone. Sorriest of all that I wasn’t more honest with Dec. I thought I could hide my shame, then I wanted to tell him but was scared he’d judge me badly, and once he told me about his own experience with Amber…I couldn’t do it because I knew how hard he’d found it to be on the receiving end of that decision. I never wanted him to compare me to her, to judge us both to be peas from the same pod, and I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t. Turns out it was all in vain because that is exactly what he thinks.”
“He loves you. He’s a mess. Mase is worried about him.”
My heart lurches, almost pleased that he’s a mess too, but I quickly reason that he’s a mess because I have reminded him of Amber and their child who he lost, not because of me directly.
“He’ll get over it.” I sound hard, but I don’t mean to. I would do anything to turn the clock back and have things work out differently, but I can’t, so I guess we’ll all have to get over it as best we can one way or another.
~~~
I spend another hour or so with my sister, discussing baby names and all the possibilities of where I might end up once I get to the airport. She makes me promise to call her once my flight is booked and then when I land. I happily agree to her demands but refuse to check in at least once a day, although I agree to drop her messages regularly if nothing else.
It’s time for me to leave and I really wish I didn’t have to do this. I want to be here when the baby is born and continue to build my relationship with Liv, but I’m unsure how easy that would be right now because although he’s been mentioned a few times, I haven’t seen or spoken to Mase since that day in the kitchen and I get the feeling he is seriously pissed off with me.
“I love you and if you need anything.” Liv is pulling me in for another hug. “Promise me.”
“I promise.”
She finally releases me and with my suitcase picked up, I hit the button on the lift, but it instantly opens to reveal Dec.
He does look like shit, but I can’t even consider that right now. I need to leave. To get as far away from him as I can because my heart is breaking all over again at the sight of him.
We cross as he steps off the lift and I hurry in.
“Don’t forget. Call me,” Liv cries as the doors close between us.
Falling back into the corner of the lift, I hug myself and allow the tears to fall with a promise that they will stop by the time I am in a cab on my way to the airport. I don’t even believe that will be the end of them once I reach my next destination because Declan Harding is without a doubt the love of my life and I will never feel for anyone what I feel for him. He is the one, and now, the one who got away.