Shallow River by H. D. Carlton

Author:H. D. Carlton [Carlton, H. D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-10-31T16:00:00+00:00

RYAN TOOK ME TO a classy restaurant called Deep Blue. It’s not as upscale as the last restaurant, but the bill is easily going to be over a hundred dollars between the two of us. I made sure to choose the most expensive meal on the menu. I’m just finishing up my food and enjoying my third glass of wine when his voice cuts through my buzz.

“You graduate next May, right?” he asks, staring at me over the rim of his own wine.

“Yes,” I answer, setting my glass down. The wine beckons me to pick it back up and finish it off. Alas, appearances, appearances. Can’t embarrass my successful boyfriend now, otherwise his reputation would be ruined over a glass of wine.

“What are your plans after college?”

My hand drifts over to the stem of the glass, spinning the dainty glass between my red painted fingernails. Does his secretary have red fingernails? I bet she does. Does Ryan look down at her hands and pretend they’re mine? Or does he close his eyes and pretend he’s fucking her when he’s balls deep inside of me because he can’t stand to look in the eyes of the woman he’s lying to. Then, he’d have to face the fact that he’s the one in the wrong.

“I’ll start working on getting my PhD,” I answer. Or maybe I’ll run off to a farm and tame wild horses and fuck a real cowboy in the stalls. Who knows?

“I’d rather you stay at home.”

Just barely do I suppress the sigh building in the back of my throat.

“And do what?”

He looks at me like I’m stupid. “Raise our kids, obviously,” he answers slowly, speaking to me as if I suffer from the same condition as his tone.

Nice to know abusive assholes and misogyny go hand-in-hand. Ryan and I have discussed kids before. I want them eventually but I’m not in a hurry; Ryan is adamant I have them anyways. He has a traditional outlook on life where the wife stays home and raises his little prodigies that will one day take over the law firm, while he goes off and works and fucks whoever he wants apparently.

We’d be the perfect cliché. Raising little spoiled assholes that he only acknowledges when he’s teaching life lessons and molding them into mini Ryan’s, while I get drunk and high to deal with the pain of an abusive husband and settling for a miserable life. And the more I remember that I could’ve had a good life if I’d only left—with someone like Mako maybe—the more intoxicated I’d get until I can’t even remember my own name. Until I no longer remember his name.

I don’t know where his outlook came from. Julie is an interior designer and highly successful at that. Ryan always use to say that his mother only stayed home with him for the standard maternity leave timeframe and then was back to work, leaving Ryan with an older nanny that he hated.

Maybe he’s always resented Julie for leaving him with the nanny.

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