“No,” I replied. “She’s beautiful. She’s the mother of your children. And you loved her once enough to marry her. I saw you outside holding her in your arms and I saw you when you got back into the house after that scene and you looked conflicted. Not annoyed, not angry, not frustrated, conflicted. So no, Brock, I haven’t lost my mind.”

His mouth got tight then he said low, “Babe, I was holding her in my arms ’cause when the mother of your sons cries crocodile tears, your best play is to give her that play and then, soon as you can, walk away. That’s what I did. And when confronted, again, with the knowledge that my boys got a mom like they got, in other words, she’s the kind of woman who would walk into my house, see another woman in my kitchen, and lose her mind when she sees someone playin’ with what she considers her toy and scheme in preparation for makin’ a play in my mother’s motherfuckin’ front yard on motherfuckin’ Thanksgiving, that is gonna make me conflicted.”

This, I had to admit, made sense.

Brock kept speaking and making more sense.

“And I’m conflicted because this means, with all that other shit I just laid out for you, I gotta look into attorneys and whatever else I gotta do to make certain my boys don’t spend the vast majority of their time suckin’ up whatever acid she leaks. Not to mention whatever-the-fuck her man is like, steppin’ out on their mom, if that’s even true, and at least try to give them somethin’ good for more than four fuckin’ days a month. Now, with this, I’ll ask you, what’s the priority? You and your motherfucker ex? My dad dyin’ and my family at each other’s throats? Or my boys in that viper’s den?”

Hmm. This was a good question.

And I had the uncomfortable feeling I’d been a bad girlfriend to my hot guy.

Time to sort myself out.

“Your boys in that viper’s den,” I told him. He did a slow blink again and I explained, “Damian does something, we’ll deal. Your family are all adults. They need to deal. Your sons are powerless and they need you to deal.”

He stared up at me and I kept talking.

“I’m sorry, my reaction was selfish. I should have thought of you and I’ll work on it but I’m a woman and women have this thing when their men have had women in their lives who are better looking than them.”

This got another slow blink coupled with a finger squeeze at my hips but I was on a roll so I ignored these and stayed on that roll.