Page 27 of Perdition (Unchained Hearts #4)

Waving her hand flippantly, Vicki rolled her eyes.

“Pfft, there’s a reason men die young; they’re about as self-aware as a slug—and sometimes just as slimy, too.

With my ex, it started off with late nights at the office, touches that went on too long, texts that weren’t about work, and then the compliments and the chest stroking.

It wasn’t until he rolled off her that first time that he realized he’d fucked up. ”

Shocked, Em asked, “He told you all that?”

“It was part of the court-ordered marital counseling we had to undergo before the judge would sign off on the divorce.” She snorted.

“It didn’t work, obviously, but that doesn’t mean our situations are the same.

My ex wasn’t really a piece of shit—at first; he just sort of walked into it sideways, one bumbling foot fall at a time. ”

“What makes that different from what Frost did?”

Vicki met Em’s seeking gaze, offering a sympathetic smile. “I don’t think Frost has actually crossed the line of no return yet.”

Em opened her mouth to argue, but Stephie stopped her.

“Honestly, I don’t trust Sarah. I think she’d lie to you to fuck with you, and to ultimately do exactly what she’s doing—breaking your marriage so she can be Frost’s old lady.”

“She’s a club slut; he wouldn’t make her his old lady, even if we weren’t together,” Em challenged, incredulous.

“We know that, the brothers know that, but for every woman in the club that knows her place, there’s another one who is so vain and delusional, she thinks her pussy is so good, she can change a brother’s mind,” Stephie remarked.

Stephie had been only the second official old lady in the Unchained MC, having locked down Horde after their one-night stand to friends-with-benefits situation deepened into genuine love.

So, she’d been around the club just a bit longer than the other women, and had seen more of the club dynamic.

Nadia cringed at Stephie’s words. “That’s gross.

I’m absolutely, devastatingly in love with Locust, but even his body count gives me the ick when I think about it.

I couldn’t imagine getting with a man who’d fucked all of my friends.

It would make his dick a no ride zone. It’s the same for the club brothers. ”

Em knew that, and she knew that the brothers, for the most part, were loyal men. Some were loyal for the wrong things—like Locust following Frost’s orders to seduce Nadia—but they were all in with their women.

As Frost had once been.

Still was?

Em couldn’t get her mind straight, and her heart was desperate for some clarity.

Finally, she asked what she was terrified of asking but knew she needed to know, even if it meant agony.

“Would Frost cheat?”

A chorus of “nos” rang out, making Em sag in her seat.

“But…I heard them, in his office. He said…he said he had options.”

Cilla squeezed Em’s thigh. “He said that? Those exact words?”

Em pushed the fog of pain aside to think back…to pinpoint that moment in Frost’s conversation with Sarah. Then, she replied, “No. She said it, but he grunted, which is Frost speak for ‘yeah.’” Em curled her lip in disgust.

Nadia hummed, and Vicki tsked, saying, “Is that agreement, though, or is that just him half-listening and doing what men do when they’re distracted or bored, making a noise of assent just to get the conversation over with?”

“Horde does that, especially now when I bring up having sex while he’s reading one of his many baby books.” Stephie crossed her arms petulantly, obviously put out that her man wasn’t putting out. “He’s not really listening, but he knows I’m talking, so he grunts or ‘uh huhs’ every few minutes.”

“My ex did that…like when I was complaining to him about how his secretary, that slut, shouldn’t be calling him at home on the weekends,” Vicki offered without an ounce of bitterness, which Em envied.

“Did he give full answers at all?” Cilla asked Em, her head cocked in curiosity.

Again, Em thought back to the conversation between her husband and his barnacle bitch.

“He told her not to settle so young because she’d regret it, then she brought up how long he and I had been together, and he responded by telling her how many years that was.”

All the women nodded sagely, Vicki, the oldest of them—older than Em’s thirty-six by two years—had a thoughtful look on her face.

“I know that sounds bad,” she said, then paused.

“But?” Em prodded, ready for more wine and less talking.

Vicki’s gaze peered into Em’s soul, glanced over her heart, and then seemed to read her thoughts, too. Damn, but the woman was all sorts of mental and emotional sorcery.

“I think you need to talk to him. Get every single detail—leaving nothing out. You only heard that one bit of that one conversation, so you can’t know the full story.

I know it sounded bad, and it was, but you will never know if what was said and done is worth walking away from twenty years of marriage. ”

“But what about taking her to our spot, and telling me that the red maple is just a fucking tree?” Em was desperately holding on to her anger with the bloody tips of her fingers, knowing that if she gave an inch to reason and logic, she’d find only hurt on the other side.

She’d be opening herself up to being flayed, sliced and diced and probably burned to ashes by the truth she uncovered.

“Men are shit with things like that, Em,” Stephie protested.

“They are only slightly more emotionally intelligent than animals, so their capacity to know and express their own feelings is about as good as a dog’s.

Tail wagging, licking, and ass sniffing are their most sophisticated repertoire of personal expression. ”

Em couldn’t help it, she laughed. God, it felt good to do that.

“I think you should meet with him, at least hear him out, and tell him about the shit Sarah said. Then, tell him how you feel about all the bullshit he’s been putting you through.” Ugh, Nadia made sense…and Sorsha had said pretty much the same thing.

“Give Dad a chance to explain.”

So, without giving herself a moment to think herself out of it, she pulled her cell from her pocket, unblocked him, and called her maybe-probably-soon-to-be-ex-husband.

He answered on the first ring.

His words were raw, ragged, deep with wounds and terror. “Em, baby. Please let me?—”

“I’ll be home tomorrow, after seven,” she informed him, not giving him a moment longer to speak for fear of breaking. “We can talk then.”

His breath caught, and she could hear the relief and disbelief in that single sound.

“No matter what, baby, I’ll be there,” Frost proclaimed, a tightness to his voice she hadn’t heard in a long, long time. Not since he’d gotten his first orders to report to Fort Drum for his first deployment.

Well, that was fair, since he was knowingly entering a warzone, and the chances of his survival weren’t all that high.