“You have a lot of nerve touching me when another woman is still wearing your ring.” I pushed past him when he froze in shock. I grabbed the sandwich and put it back in the fridge, intent on punishing him. “And just because you say it like it’s nothing doesn’t make it nothing to me, Theo. You married the woman who made my life hell, months after she tortured me so bad I left town to escape it. You married the woman who is still happy to threaten me ten years later. No matter how nonchalantly you say it, it’s big to me.”
“She threatened you?”
I braced myself on the counter and looked over at him, disappointed in him. “My job. If I came between her and her husband. Her words, not mine. I have no intention of touching someone who isn’t free, so she has nothing to worry about.”
Theo pressed against me from behind, locking me in with his arms around me. “I won’t apologize for marrying her because Iris came from it. I wouldn’t change anything if it meant changing a hair on my daughter’s head. Let me make one other thing clear, Rea. Jenny and I are finished. We have been for years.”
I spun around and slapped his chest, shocking us both. “Do you really think I want you to apologize for marrying her? You think I don’t respect and appreciate the life you two created, no matter how I feel about Jenny? You don’t get it, Theo, and I think that’s what drives me the craziest. I want you to apologize for not standing up for me, for not caring enough to be my friend. I’m angry that the way she treated me didn’t matter to you. I want you to apologize for confirming the fears I had ten years ago that I didn’t mean a thing, that I was nothing more than an easy, experimental fuck, were valid.
“God, Theo, you don’t know me at all. You’re chasing after me for a piece of ass, and I can assure you that you can find it easier, and probably better, in about a hundred other places. Just in Lunar. Save us both the drama.” I slipped under his arm and walked to the other side of the kitchen. “I don’t want to lose this job. Jenny made herself clear.”
“Would you just let me talk?”
With perfect timing, Jenny strolled into the kitchen, wearing a minuscule bikini that showed off everything and then some. “What are we talking about?”
I shook my head. “Nothing at all. I was just leaving, actually.”
“I’m glad you came over to swim with me, Theo.” Jenny leaned in closer to Theo and trailed her hand down his stomach. “You know how I hate swimming alone.”
With a quick look around the kitchen, I saw it was perfectly clean and I could escape. Without looking back at them, I hurried out of the house and to my car, running away for the second time. Theo didn’t stop me that time and I drove away without interruption.