Coming Clean by C. L. Parker Read Free Book Online

changed the moment
we’d
decided to bring a life into it. We might not have been married, but we were supposed to be partners, equal partners, in this whole parenting thing. It takes two to tango, you play, you pay, and all that jazz. He wasn’t single, and it was high time he stopped acting like he was.
    “Fun? We aren’t doing anything but huddling around the tiny screen of Sasha’s cellphone since she’s forcing us to look at every damn picture she took on her honeymoon. If you’ve seen one palm tree, you’ve seen ’em all,” he said.
    I’d been so lost in my own life that I hadn’t even noticed that a month had passed since Sasha and Landon’s wedding. I’d been a bridesmaid, Shaw a groomsman, and Abe the ring bearer. Afterward, they’d taken an extended honeymoon to Hawaii, thanks to the insane generosity of Sasha’s parents, who had more money than they knew what to do with. Of course
they
were married. It was the natural progression of a relationship, after all—something two people who were in love and planned to spend the rest of their lives together did.
    “He’s here alone.” Quinn’s hushed voice pulled me back to the here and now. “I just didn’t want you to think he was creeping around on you. Three sheets to the wind, maybe, but not with so much as a wandering gaze.”
    It had never crossed my mind that Shaw would cheat on me. Despite all the rumors that had circulated about him before we’d gotten together, I knew he was loyal to me. Though in a sense, I supposed he had been cheating. He might not have been sharing his body with anyone else, but he sure as hell was sharing his time with everyone other than Abe and me. And when you had a family, time was the most valuable thing you had to share. So sayeth the watch on my baby daddy’s wrist.
    Not to mention, it was just plain disrespectful of him to not even pick up the phone to let me know what he was doing. It wasn’t that I wanted him to ask my permission to do whatever he wanted, but should some emergency break out—like, say, an earthquake that caused half of California to break off and sink into the ocean, or hell, even the start of a zombie apocalypse—it would’ve been nice to know where to begin to look for his body—alive, mutilated, or wandering undead.
    So I’d hung up with Quinn, asking him to give Sasha and Demi my love, and then snuggled into bed with Abe.
    I woke with a start at the sound of Shaw finally finding his way home. Not just the sound of the door closing, but of his keys noisily finding the countertop and his shoes being kicked off across the floor and hitting the wall.
    Taking care not to wake Abe, I slipped from the bed and out of his room, closing the door quietly behind me. I found Shaw stumbling into the kitchen, using the wall as a prop to keep his inebriated body upright. It wasn’t until he opened the refrigerator door to grab the bottle of orange juice and began to chug it that I let my presence be known.
    “Your dinner is on the second shelf,” I told him, pleased that I’d startled him into a choking fit that left juice dribbling down his chin and onto his expensive silk tie.
    “Jesus, Cass! You scared the shit out of me,” he said, using the back of his hand to wipe his mouth. Classy.
    “Did I? Funny that my presence scares you where your MIA routine is what worries me,” I said in a calm, even, matter-of-fact tone. Shaw and I never yelled at each other anymore; fighting was yet another area of our life together that had lost its passion.
    “I’m sorry. I got caught in traffic and was already too late for the appointment. Then Denver called to ask me to meet him at Monkey’s, and I’ve had some things I needed to go over with him so—”
    “So you decided to go get drunk,” I finished for him. “Nice. Please tell me you didn’t get behind the wheel of a car like that.”
    “I had a couple of drinks with the fellas, Cassidy. God knows I deserve to blow off a little steam every