I stop in my tracks and tilt my head to the side and smile at him before starting up again and disappearing into our walk-in wardrobe. “Yeah, but we don’t get much talking done when clothes don’t factor into the equation and naked bodies do.”
My husband’s been gone for almost two weeks, so I’m more than ready to jump his bones again. First we need to talk, and then I need to organise the kids. I pull on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, not bothering with underwear.
Instead of sitting beside him, I straddle his lap so I can look him in the eyes. Which I do, while he pulls my hair out of the messy bun I had it in for my shower and lets it fall down my back.
He pulls me towards him and drags his nose up my neck and through my hair, before tucking it behind my ears.
“Fuck, I’ve missed you.”
“We’ve missed you too.” I rest my forehead against his as I speak.
“So, you bought Lulah some of your shampoo? Her hair smelled just like yours when I got a cuddle off her this morning.”
“Yeah, rather than keep arguing with her, I called Conner’s wife, Nina, and she got me some wholesale. It meant I had to buy twelve bottles but—”
“But anything to stop the screaming matches that go on between you two?” he interrupts.
“I scream because she takes it out of the shower. I wet my hair, and then I realise it’s missing. I don’t mind her using my stuff, as long as she puts it back where she finds it.” I let out a small huff before continuing. “We really need to have a word with her about her language, too. She’s a fourteen-year-old school girl, not a twenty-five-year-old brickie on a building site.”
He throws his head back and gives me one of his big Cameron King laughs.
It still does things to me, and my belly squirms.
“Oh my god, that’s funny! All these years, Kitten, all these years I’ve picked you up about your language, and now, your complaining that our daughter sounds just like you.”
“But I don’t swear around the kids, you dropped the F bomb more than once this morning when you were shouting at them.”
“We were shagging, they wouldn’t leave the room. Then the dogs tried to join the party. Of course I bloody swore.”
We’re both quiet for a few seconds. I assume, that like me, he’s reliving this morning’s embarrassing events in his head, which I know are going to lead him back to what he really wants to know.
“I opened that old crate, the one that’s labelled ‘Sean’s Stuff’.”
“I know, I saw.”
I nod my head and chew on my lip again for a few seconds.
“He would’ve been fifty this year, and Tom and Billy have agreed to play at the Triple M event to mark the occasion. Conner Reed is gonna play lead, like he did the other year, and Marley is gonna front the band.”
He brushes the back of his knuckles over my left cheek and lets out a long sigh.
“Why’d you need to open the box?”
“Marley’s been trying to write a new song for the band to perform. I thought maybe there might be something amongst all of the stuff in there that might help him out. Marley’s great with the music, but it was nearly always Sean that wrote the lyrics.”
He puffs his cheeks and purses his lips, they roll together as he blows out air. He looks over my shoulder, either unable or unwilling to meet my gaze. My belly twists and turns in on itself. He’s not happy about this.
“Kitten …” he sighs out my name, and I get goose bumps across my skin. “I’ve always supported you. Every year, I’ve done whatever I can to help out with this event, and I will always do that. You’ve achieved great things and helped untold charities and I couldn’t be more proud of you, I really couldn’t.” I hold my breath as I wait for the “but”.
“But …” And here it comes. “You, are my priority. When I come home early from a business trip and find you curled in the foetal position on a cold hard floor, surrounded by empty wine bottles, alone and sobbing, well, that’s when I can’t help but think you need to take a step back.”
I close my eyes when I realise he had come home and seen me crying. I’d had my Beats on, Bluetoothing my music through them so I didn’t wake the kids, and obviously missed his arrival. I feel a combination of guilt and shame as I consider how he must have felt walking in on that scene.
“I’m sorry you came home to that,” I whisper, but he just shakes his head.
“Don’t be sorry, I’ve told you a million times never to be sorry for feeling what you do, that’s not the issue, Kitten, it never has been.”
He rubs the tips of his fingers up and down my bare arms, once again causing goose bumps to spread down my spine to my toes, despite the fact that I suddenly feel too hot.
“The issue is with you deliberately seeking out something that you know is going to upset you so badly. That, and the fact that I’m not overly impressed with you knocking back two bottles of wine when you’re here on your own with the kids.”