4. Poison

CHAPTER4

Poison

Remy

“I think we have more to talk about.”

“We disagree on that.”

“You need to give this more time.”

“We disagree on that too. What we didn’t disagree on, at least that was how I remember we left it when we spoke two weeks ago when I started sleeping on the couch, was that you would be out by this afternoon. And you were not.”

Remy stood in his bedroom with Myrna, who had returned.

Manon and Sabre were heading back to Tucson after the family meet.

Yves was at his mom’s.

So this could finally be done.

He fucking hoped.

“Remy, we hit a rough patch.”

Jesus Christ.

Was she serious?

“Myrna, that’s quite an understatement.”

“We can talk through it.”

“We cannot. And I’ll add at this juncture, I was never at one with watching you compete for my affection with my daughter, and I shared that. And you didn’t stop. I told you not once, but repeatedly, in that game, you would not win. You didn’t stop playing that game. But that isn’t the only reason you lose because that wasn’t the only game you were playing, and you know it. Now, you told me you needed two weeks to sort things to move out. You’ve had those two weeks. It’s Wednesday. I’m giving you an extension. You’re out by Saturday afternoon. But between now and then, it’s you who’ll be sleeping on the couch.”

She jerked up her chin in an annoyed way. “And what if I’m not? What if I intend to do what you seem like you don’t intend to do? Fight for us?”

Us?

After all her shit, she thought there was an us?

“There is no us. We’re done,” he stated. “I told you that. I told you why that is, even if you couldn’t possibly mistake it. And there’s no coming back from it, Myrna, and you know that too. But if you’re not out, I’ll move your things myself. And if it goes beyond that, I’ll inform the police.”

Her mouth dropped open before she used it to ask, “Are you being serious?”

“What, in our discussions about this, are you not understanding?” he asked.

That was when she lost it.

“How I could give you a year of my fucking life and you’re just done with me!” she shouted.

“All right,” he said, trying not to sound bored, which he fucking was and had been for too goddamned long. Until, obviously, recently. But his boredom had not gone in the right direction for Myrna. “I’ll count this down.”

“Do not—”

“One, when you brought it up, I told you straight when we met, I did not want more kids. You told me you didn’t want any either. Therefore, imagine my surprise when, one month after you moved in with me, you started on about kids. I reminded you of my views on that, which were unshakable, something else I reminded you about. Regardless, three weeks ago, you shared you thought you were pregnant. Even though, since we started, we’ve had multiple conversations about contraception, and you can’t have missed how committed I was to this considering we have not had unprotected sex by, as you promised, us both seeing to that, as you told me you were on the Pill and I never failed to wear a condom. And although both of those are not infallible, using them together and a possible pregnancy coming from that, means it’s highly likely someone isn’t covering their end. And that was not me.”

“I missed a few pills and—”

“Myrna, if that was the case, you should have told me, and we shouldn’t have had sex.”

“I couldn’t know the condom would break.”

He wasn’t going to allow her to try to pull that shit again.

He’d seen the fucking evidence, for fuck’s sake.

“It didn’t break,” he bit out.

Her neck started getting pink.

Yeah.

He sounded like a fucking bull when he breathed out hard through his nose.

Then he said softly, “You tampered with them.”

“Remy,” she whispered.

Yeah.

She fucking tampered with them.

“And then you had a pregnancy scare, which, fortunately, was only a scare. And equally fortunately, it made me investigate things, and that, Myrna, as I’ve explained before, is what you cannot ever come back from. And I cannot even begin to imagine how you think you could.”

“Okay, but really, there’s more to talk about.”

She could not be sane.

“I’m fifty-four goddamn years old and you were trying to trap me with a kid by poking holes in fucking condoms and skipping pills. There is not anything more to talk about.”

“I’m thirty-nine and my time is nearly up, and I wasted a year of that time with you,” she spat.

“And well before you did that, I told you I didn’t want more kids,” he returned. “So if that was important to you, you should have left me.”

“I was in love with you!” she yelled.

“If you were, then why the fuck would you betray me that way?”

“Because maybe, if I gave you a kid, like she did, you’d love me as much as you love her,” she shot back.

Remy said nothing.

Myrna did.

“And maybe, if we had a kid, you’d give them and me some of the attention you shower on Manon.”

“Listen to yourself, Myrna. You’re jealous of my daughter.”

“Tell me I don’t disappear when your precious Manon is around.”

His gut twisted in a foul way.

“This is actually repulsive,” he told her.

“Think of it from my perspective,” she begged.

“I am, and what I think is that somehow, to my disgust, after successfully managing not to do this exact thing for thirty years, I got involved with my fucking mother.”

Her head jerked like he’d hit her.

“Oh, but Wyn isn’t like Colette,” she baited.

Remy shook his head. “We’re not doing this.”

“Did you think of her when you fucked me?”

“You’ve got the couch until Saturday, Myrna.”

“Impossible,” she said like he didn’t speak. “You couldn’t think of her. She’s fat, I’m not. I cannot even begin to imagine,” she mimicked his words, “how she got as far as she did in fashion with the way she is. Talk about Colette. All of that type are just like your mother. All they give a shit about is appearances. Including Wyn.”

Remy said nothing, just crossed his arms on his chest, but she was finally doing something she’d never really done, even when she’d told him she thought she was pregnant, and he found out how that might occur.

She was pissing him off.

Myrna wasn’t finished, though.

“You are an incredibly fit man, you take your health seriously, what you do is important, lasting, it’ll leave a legacy, you have actual talent. Tons of it. What do you see in her?”

“She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid eyes on, she always was, and she is to this day, not only because she physically just is because she’s fucking gorgeous and has amazing style, but also because her heart is big, and her first thought is not for herself, but for kindness. Even with that, she’s driven, ambitious, focused. She’s the best mother I’ve ever seen and she’s an insanely good lay. And yes, before you ask, she’s so much better than you, I wonder how we got to the point of you living with me. No wait, I remember. You asked to move in due to your situation with your old place, and you needed some time to save up to find something better, so you weren’t supposed to be here this long in the first fucking place.”

“I cannot believe you just said that to me,” she hissed.

“Unlike you, Myrna, I have never not told you the truth.”

“Fuck you!” she screamed.

“Friday,” he returned. “Out by Friday. Or honest to God, Myrna, I’ll put you out.”

“You’re going back to her, aren’t you?” she demanded.

And again, Remy told her the truth.

“Yes, Myrna, I am. As fast as I can get her to forgive me and let me back in because leaving her was the biggest mistake I’ve made in my life, and I’ve been paying for it from the moment I picked up my suitcases and walked away.”

She scored a point with, “And still, you got involved with me.”

Remy nodded. “Yes, I did, and I’m sorry for that, because I swear to Christ, I was always honest with you. But I can’t say the same about how I was with myself.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“Actually,” she flicked out a hand, “I do.”

“All right then, what it means is, until Wyn walked up to the house today and I knew someone had upset her, it cut me to the bone not only because she was upset, but because I’d made it so I couldn’t do dick about it. Only then did I realize what a colossal mistake I’d made. But you exposing what you are, us being done, you eventually being gone, Wyn being upset, Yves sharing what he shared and how he shared it, I’ve come to terms with a number of things I should have come to terms with a long time ago. And you know me. I don’t fuck around.”

“So you’re telling me, just today you’ve figured out you’re still in love with her?” she asked sarcastically.

“Yes,” he answered.

“That is such horseshit,” she returned. “Newsflash, Remy, I wasn’t just competing with your beloved daughter. You took every opportunity you could find to spend time with Wyn, so I was also competing with your ex-fucking-wife.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “That’s what I came to terms with and that’s what I just apologized for.”

“So you fucked me over but it’s me who has to live with it?”

“I was absolutely not as honest as I should have been about my feelings for Wyn, mostly because I didn’t understand them, until today. But it was not me who made moves behind your back to tie you to me when, without a doubt, Myrna, I would have figured out how I felt about my wife eventually. And as such, you still would have been out, and if you’d done what you wanted to do and we’d made a child, that child, who I would love and care for, but it would not negate the fact that I didn’t want it, would be sharing time between a mother and father who had wholly no emotional ties to each other whatsoever.”

Her voice was small, and he wanted to give a shit, but after what she’d done, he just didn’t, when she asked, “So you also didn’t love me?”

“Did I ever tell you I loved you?” he asked in return, being cold and remote not only because she’d killed anything he’d felt for her, but because the woman had to get this and then go. “When you asked if you could move in, what did I say?”

“Remy—”

“What did I say, Myrna?”

She shut her mouth.

So he reminded her of something he knew she didn’t need the reminder.

“I said I enjoyed spending time with you. But I warned you I’d ended a long relationship that would never really be over since we’d made a family. I also said, although I cared about you, I was concerned your feelings went deeper for me than mine did for you. I further warned you I wasn’t certain I’d grow to reciprocate that.”

“But you let me move in anyway.”

“Your lease was up, and they were raising your rent without increasing services. You weren’t down with that, decided at your age it was time for you to live somewhere nicer, and asked if you could move in for a couple of months in order to cover it. That turned into a year because I wasn’t paying attention.”

“So this was just a trial phase and I failed, now you’re done with me?”

“I never lied to you, and I never led you on. Most importantly, and I can’t believe I need to keep driving this point home, I didn’t make moves to change the course of your life by making you pregnant when that was something you did not want.”

She was a dog with a bone and proved it by stating, “But you knew what I’d think if I moved in.”

“I’m not in your head, Myrna.”

“You knew I was in love with you.”

“So this is on me?” he asked.

“You knew I was in love with you!” she nearly shouted.

“You took a chance, and it didn’t pan out,” he returned.

“So you could have an easy fuck waiting for you in bed every night, you let me move in with you knowing you’d eventually go back to your wife and break my heart.”

This was the second time that day when someone gravely mistook the man he was.

The first, he couldn’t abide.

This one wasn’t as important. But it was the same.

He couldn’t abide it.

Because it was bullshit.

“You need to find someplace else to stay tonight and come get your things tomorrow,” he told her.

Her eyes got big. “Are you serious?”

“You’ve had weeks to figure this out, Myrna.”

“So now you’re done with me, you chuck me out like garbage?”

No.

Now, she’d forgotten that he told her two weeks ago they were irrevocably over, and if she wanted a family, that was what she needed as much as he did. And he’d asked her how long it would take her to find a place, get her shit from storage, and sort herself out, and she’d asked in return that he give her two weeks.

He’d slept on his own fucking couch for those two weeks.

And she was still playing games.

“You know, I didn’t treat you like an easy fuck, Myrna,” he stated. “You just were one.”

She gasped in outrage.

“And if you can’t own that, when there’s absolutely not one fucking thing wrong with it, it isn’t on me,” he finished. “You came into my home with designs. You knew where I was, but you wanted more, and you thought you could make that so. You couldn’t. And now you’re throwing a tantrum because you haven’t gotten what you wanted. But it’s not going to change anything, except precipitating it being finished. Now you need to leave and text me tomorrow with when to meet you here so you can come and get your things.”

“And that’s it?” she asked.

He didn’t know how he could be clearer.

“That’s it.”

“You think you’re everything, Remy Gastineau, but you’re nothing but a piece of shit.”

Good she found that out before she forced a kid on him.

He didn’t answer.

She ran into the closet, and he shifted to watch what she did in there, but she only grabbed one of her million tote bags, shoved some clothes in it, then she stormed out.

She flipped him the bird as she passed him.

He sighed.

But he followed her.

And he only got close when she opened the door to her truck. But he did this to reach beyond her and nab the garage door opener.

He then moved to stand in the door to the house to watch her pull out.

When she cleared the garage, he hit the button for the door to go down.

He then pulled out his phone and found a twenty-four-hour locksmith.

He called.

And he didn’t go to bed until all the locks in the house and the code for the security alarm were changed.

And when Remy went to bed, he didn’t think of his son being gay (mostly because he didn’t care about that, at least not that way).

He didn’t think of Myrna.

He thought of that toxic, negative, man-hating woman, Bea, upsetting Wyn.

And he was thrilled beyond belief Wyn might finally be opening her eyes to that poison.

And he was pissed as all fuck she’d upset Wyn enough to make her cry.