Acquiesce

Chapter 42

As we tried to rebuild, me and Liam, I wished he was meant to be off on tour. We were stuck with each other until September. Two more months of avoiding each other. Two months of not talking.

It was easier to throw myself into work. I needed my friends around me. With them I didn't have to look at him or think about him. He wasn't so much my husband but he was a co-parent, the kids couldn't know how we were. We already did it when they were young.

At least Liam was good for something. He wanted to spend all his time with his twins. He let me go out to work because he had them. They were keeping us from ending up in a confrontation.

When I got home from work I found Liam on the sofa. He was asleep. Quinn was asleep on his lap. Poppy was sat on the floor half watching the TV half playing with her toy. She was fighting sleep so hard although she knew she needed to sleep since she'd wrapped

I found the remote and turned the TV off. "Has daddy bathed you two?" I asked her quietly, all three of them were in pajamas so I knew he had. I picked her up and tried to take Quinn too without disturbing either of the sleepers."

"Where've you been while this time?" Liam looked at me the moment I touched him to get Quinn. "Why...?"

"What time is it Liam?" I asked, annoyed he was talking just to accuse me of something.

It was like I was back married to Enzo. He threw himself into work, we hardly talked, he accused if I didn't tell him what I was doing first. I hadn't realised how our marriage had gone until it was far too late. I found someone else to love in Liam, we couldn't let that happen again.

We were going to stick out this marriage by hook or by crook. We had to put the work in, if not for us, for the twins. We could do anything for the kids or we would've never gotten into the position of marrying in the first place.

He looked around for a clock but there wasn't one. "Late, you're usually back ages by now."

"Didn't think you noticed."

"I did. You're Where've you been?"

"We went back to Becca's and had a chinese."

"Why?"

"Cos we wanted to." I didn't want to get snarky with him so I didn't go pointing out we were hungry or something stupid like that. I went to pick Quinn up again. I just wanted to put the kids to bed and go read or something.

"No, leave him." Liam whined. "Sit down with us."

"The kids need to go to bed."

"Poppy's not tired, are ya?" he asked and she answered with a defiant no. "She'll not fucking settle if you put her down to bed, not now."

I reluctantly sat down and sat her on my lap. Liam tried to get me to sit closer to him and I did, only so I could stroke Quinn's hair. "What's this about?"

"Are ya done with me?"

"No."

"Would ya be done with me if it wasn't for these two?"

"No. I'm over it."

"You're not though, are ya?"

"I've forgiven you, it's just not so easy to forget. There's no time in life to dwell on mistakes. We'll get past it." I nodded.

"Then why are we wasting our summer?"

"We're not."

"How many days have you worked? I've only got til September. You know when I go."

"It's easier not to see you because I see you and I see that baby out there somewhere before my babies are even two. How come I'm the one who feels guilty in this?! Kids need their dad and I should never've told you, expected you..."

"Hey, don't ever feel guilty cos of my fuck ups. You've got a great dad, I took after mine, it's a good thing I'm not gonna be near that kid."

"Don't say that. You do your best with the twins when you could've left me to it."

"D'you want me to leave yous to it?"

"No! I want to work this out, you know I do."

"Why d'you keep going to work then? What's gonna get better if you keep fucking off to work?"

"I've got clients I can't just drop."

"Clients like I was your client?"

"Like clients people who've paid for me to do work on them and if I let them down my reputation and the shop's reputation will take a massive hit, again."

"So? It's not like you need to work. You can take time off any time you want and it won't matter to anything in our lives."

"It matters to me and my self respect. If the price of getting us back on track is my job, that I love, I'd rather be single."

"I'd never ask you to fucking give that up, I'm just saying, let's have the summer together. No more bullshit distractions."

I told him we were going to bed and took the kids off. I didn't think we were making any progress, I didn't know if we were ever going to. I wished I could just take away what I knew, not read that article or took it as bullshit like Meg told me to.

...

When I got on our street, close to the house I heard music playing loudly. It was drowning out my CD and I wasn't impressed. It sounded like a man was continually whining. It got louder the closer I got and as I got on the drive.

I got out the car just staring at Liam. He was smoking. He was sat by a boombox that was throwing out that awful sound. "What are you doing?"

"Waiting to see a beautiful girl." he smiled.

"What is this music?"

"It's The La's." When I didn't get that he elaborated. "As in the lads."

"This is not your lot, doesn't sound anything like you or Noel."

"No, The La's, the band." he said getting frustrated at me missing the point. "It's about being in love with a beautiful bird ya can't have." He started singing the lyrics and not along with the song.

"Can you turn it off? We're gonna get noise complaints."

He moaned about how perfect the song was and it shouldn't ever be turned off no matter how loud but he did make it stop.

"By the way you have me, I'm your wife."

"I know and that's why the babies are at your mum's and I'm gonna treat you like I should be fucking treating my wife." He picked up the boombox and we went inside.

Author Note- I went to see which of my three stories needed to be updated most and I can't believe I last posted to this one like a month ago. It was so hard to write it because of the situation their in, they'll find a way or they'll realise they weren't meant to last past the excitement of their affair. This is England got that song stuck in my head so it had to be included.