Taking it All by Maya Banks Read Free Book Online

heart.
    â€œI want out, Tate. I can’t take
this
anymore.”

FOUR

    CHESSY clamped her hand over her mouth in horror as she blurted out the damning words and registered the shock and devastation in Tate’s eyes as they hit him with the force of a punch in the face.
    Damn it, she hadn’t meant it how it came out! It sounded like she was asking for a divorce. One minute she was focusing on how to fix things—
Tate
was focusing on how to fix the problem—and she’d jumped from simply laying out her frustration to telling him she wanted out.
    â€œYou want a divorce?” Tate asked hoarsely, his eyes shiny with moisture. “God, Chessy, are you so desperately unhappy that you won’t even give me a chance to fix what’s wrong between us? I fucked up. I readily admit that. But you can’t just quit on us like that. Unless . . .”
    He drifted off, pain intensifying in his expression as though whatever he was thinking was the absolute worst and that he couldn’t bear to put it into words.
    He ran a hand raggedly through his hair and then down his face, wiping at his eyes.
    â€œUnless you no longer love me, no longer want me,” he ended in a whisper.
    â€œThat wasn’t what I meant,” Chessy said in a desperate voice.
    God, this was such a complete disaster. Nothing was going the way she’d planned. But then nothing in the last two years had gone according to her plan.
    â€œThen what
did
you mean?” Tate asked cautiously as he stared directly at her.
    Her hands fluttered in front of her as she lifted them and then let them fall uselessly into her lap. She bit into her bottom lip, closing her eyes as she tried to sort through her frayed emotions. Her nerves were shot. The alcohol was making her fuzzy. And all she wanted to do was go to bed and bury her head underneath her pillow.
    She wanted to call a redo of the entire day. Hell, the entire last two years.
    â€œChessy?”
    She opened her eyes, trying to hold back more tears. She refused to be accused of manipulating him with the one thing he hated most: her tears of upset.
    â€œI just meant that I wanted out of our current situation. I
hate
it!”
    Her hands trembled against her thighs and she pressed her fingertips into her flesh, against the material of the sexy dress she’d worn for her husband tonight. A dress that had decidedly gone unnoticed. It had been a monumental waste of money.
    Tate gently reached into her lap and tugged at both her hands until he pulled her upright from her position on the couch and forced her into closer proximity to him. His gaze was serious, his eyes grave and earnest as he stared at her.
    â€œI love you, Chessy. I don’t know how much you believe that right now, but I love you. I always have. That hasn’t changed. It never will. But I need to know if you still love me, if I’ve killed your love for me with my neglect.”
    She closed her eyes again. Shouldn’t she feel relieved by his impassioned declaration? Isn’t this what she wanted? Affirmation that he did love her? Still wanted her?
    But he’d neatly dodged the question of his fidelity, perhaps because there had been so much else addressed in her hysteria. She’d seen the shock in his eyes when she’d blurted that she wanted out, that she couldn’t take it anymore.
    Perhaps it had been swept aside in everything else that had been said, and she was too afraid to push him for an answer.
    â€œI’ve always loved you,” she said wearily. “But loving someone isn’t enough when you aren’t getting one hundred percent from them any longer. I feel as though I’ve been doing all the giving, making all the concessions, and that may sound selfish, but it’s the way I feel. It may not be fair, but it’s how I feel so there’s nothing to be done about it.”
    â€œBaby,” he said gently. “I can fix this. You just have