A two part story
Jilted
After her divorce because of her infidelity, Ursula attempts to bring her lover, David, into her children’s, Violet and Xander, lives.
After David proposes to Ursula, her children to appear to accept David after months of resistance and disrespect. However, they have a traumatic surprise in store for their mother on the day of her wedding.
Breaking the Delusion
In the aftermath of her wedding, Ursula is consumed by her delusions from her affair and refuses to accept her relationship with David is over.
However, she is forced into therapy to confront her delusions, realize her flaws and take accountability of her affair or lose her children.
Can Ursula break free of her delusions and rebuild her life?
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Free Extract
Chapter 1
Violet and Xander slowly walked down the stairs together at their mother’s, Ursula, calling. There in the hall was a man whom they both detested, with a suitcase.
‘Violet, Xander, welcome David,’ Ursula told her children excitedly. ‘As I told you he’ll be part of our family now.’
‘Mom,’ Violet scowled with disdain, ‘you haven’t even finished divorcing Dad yet!’
‘Well, I thankfully soon will be,’ her mother answered tartly, unhappy that her children weren’t sharing her excitement.
‘Don’t you think it is a little classless?’ Violet continued refusing to let up.
‘Violet!’ Ursula snapped at her daughter angrily.
‘Is that his car,’ Xander, Violet’s younger brother, said looking through the still-open front door at the less-than-spectacular but now familiar car sitting on the driveway. ‘I thought you said that this guy was successful. Dad bought a Mercedes SUV. It’s top of the range. It’s pretty cool.’
‘Good see you kids again,’ David said somewhat awkwardly after Xander’s less-than-kind comparison to his father. ‘Yeah, I’m looking to trade up too. Got a promotion coming up so we’ll soon all be rolling in it.’
Neither Violet nor Xander looked impressed. A tense air of silence hung in the air.
‘Welcome, David to our home!’ Ursula hissed at her children, seething at her children’s rudeness.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ Violet said unkindly as both children turned around and walked back upstairs.
‘They just need a little adjusting,’ Ursula soothed a distraught-looking David as her children returned to their rooms. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll talk to them. They’ll come around.’
Violet, 16, and Xander, 12, were told of their parents’ separation six months before when they were told of their mother’s infidelity. This was after two years of watching their parents arguing, their mother’s coldness towards their father, Gary, her berating of him and her regular weekends and holidays away with her girlfriends, family, trips to see family and any other excuses to be away overnight. It got to the point that not even they believed her mother. It broke their heart to see their father lose his self-respect as he desperately tried to save their marriage. Their parents tried marriage counselling, but David was never far from out of the picture. When their mother was away, they could hear their father sobbing at night.
After two years, Gary finally snapped. He found evidence of her affair and abruptly moved out. He served Ursula the divorce papers at her work and named David in it. Both parents later sat down with their children to explain the reason why they had separated. Xander cried and Violet stared at her mother with ill-concealed hostility. Ursula refused to look either of her children in the eye as she sat uneasily in front of them, anger not far from the surface. She tried to hold their father equally responsible, but it cut no ice because it was only believable to her. All she could offer was that she fell in love with someone else.
Violet and Xander held so much anger towards their mother. She was too infatuated with David to notice.
Once the divorce proceedings began, after Gary had moved out, it became bitter as no love was lost between Gary and Ursula. Gary sued for full custody of his children and the house. Ursula fought back and demanded alimony on top of the child support, the house, for which Gary was to pay the mortgage, and only supervised visitations of Violet and Xander.
It took six months for the divorce to complete. What the unimpressed judge ruled was unsatisfactory to everyone. Gary still had to pay his half the mortgage until, if ever, Ursula married again as well as child support. Custody was complicated by the difference in the children’s ages. Violet was deemed old enough to choose which parent to live with, but Xander wasn’t. It was decided that Xander would stay in the family home, with Ursula during the week and spend weekends with his father. Violet reluctantly decided to do the same for the sake of her brother. She cried into her father’s arms when she told him. Gary equally tearfully told his daughter how proud he was of her for what she was doing for her brother.
Their parents’ divorce brought Violet and Xander closer, especially as Violet was forced to babysit her brother while her mother continued her affair with David.
A month after their parents’ separation, Ursula took Violet and Xander out for dinner to meet David for the first time. It didn’t take the children long to work out who David was.
‘Violet, Xander, this is David, the man I’ve been dating,’ Ursula told her children proudly, squeezing David’s hand.
‘You mean he’s the guy you cheated on Dad with,’ Violet sneered. Xander slouched in his chair with his arms crossed and looked away sulkily.
‘Violet!’ Ursula snapped, looking around to see if the other diners heard her daughter.
‘It’s okay, Ursula,’ David smiled uneasily but not happy at Violet’s disdainful bluntness. ‘I wish your mother, and I could have met under different circumstances but when you’re older you’ll realize that love doesn’t always work how you want.’
‘Yeah, Dad learnt that the hard way,’ Violet replied.
Anger flashed across David’s face and Ursula was trying hard to hold back her fury.
‘Xander, I hear you’re quite the baseball player,’ David said brightly to Xander, trying to change the subject.
‘Yeah, I’m good,’ Xander replied surly not bothering to look David in the eye.
‘Maybe you and me could catch a game?’ David offered enthusiastically.
‘That would be wonderful, wouldn’t it Xander?’ Ursula agreed happily. ‘Thank you, David.’
‘Nah,’ was all Xander replied with youthful disdain. David and Ursula’s smiles dropped. The atmosphere at the table became tense with Violet’s hostility, Xander’s sulking, David’s frustration, and Ursula’s concealed anger. The meal was eaten in silence and dessert was declined by both children who were eager to leave.
‘That was extremely rude of both of you!’ Ursula told her children angrily as she drove them all home. ‘David was trying very hard to get to know you and you publicly disrespected him!’
‘I don’t like him,’ Xander said grumpily from the back seat.
‘I can’t believe you left Dad for him,’ Violet added. ‘Dad is so much better than he is.’
Ursula wiped away a tear and began to look upset, ‘If you just give him a chance, you’ll grow to love him like I do. He is such an amazing man.’ Neither Violet nor Xander replied and, instead, indignantly looked out of the car window. When they got home Violet and Xander went straight to their rooms leaving their mother to tearfully apologize to David on the phone for their behavior.
Chapter 2
‘Dad, you can’t be happy about it!’ Violet screamed at her dad in frustration when she told him about their meeting with David. ‘Can’t you tell Mom we don’t want to know him!’
‘No, I am not happy about it,’ Gary replied sounding exasperated before taking on a more soothing tone to calm his daughter down, ‘but this day was always going to come. There isn’t anything I can do about it unless he harms you. If I know your mother, you’ll see more of him too. Look, I’ll never punish you for your behavior around him, that is up to your mother.’
Gary’s intuition was right. Ursula convinced herself that if Violet and Xander saw more of David they would grow to love him. There was no way that they wouldn’t. David was too wonderful of a man for that not to happen.
David began to come for dinner and stay overnight. The bare minimum of conversation was returned despite his best efforts. He bought presents which would be carelessly discarded and disappear after David had left. Ursula would later find them in the trash, still in their boxes, unopened.
Ursula even invited David and his parents over, calling them Violet’s and Xander’s step-grandparents. To her intense frustration and David’s parents’ confusion Violet and Xander refused to engage.
‘Violet, Xander, I need to talk to you,’ Ursula told her children firmly. Inside she was fuming. Their behavior wasn’t normal. She had been trying hard to bring David into her children’s lives, but her children consistently refused. She was convinced Gary was encouraging them to behave this way. ‘I need to understand why you are behaving the way towards David. He has been nothing but kind to you. Neither of you is giving him a chance. Why is that? Is your father telling you to do it?’
‘Dad told us it is your problem, not his. He doesn’t want to know,’ Violet retorted. ‘Anyway, we don’t like David because of what he did to Dad. I can’t believe you are forcing him on us.’
‘Violet, David and I are in a loving relationship, you have to accept that,’ Ursula responded sounding exasperated. ‘He is going to be part of your life whether you like it or not!’ Ursula instantly regretted saying it the way she did.
‘So, you are forcing him on us!’ Violet snapped back what Ursula feared she would.
‘No one is forcing anyone on you. David is going to be part of our family. All I want is for you to accept him. Let him make you as happy as he makes me,’ she said almost pleading in her frustration.
‘That still sounds like you are forcing him on us. You have to accept that we don’t like him and never will.’
‘And you Xander? Are you going to tell me you don’t like David either?’ Ursula asked accusingly to her son.
Xander slowly shook his head in disgust, ‘I just don’t want to know him.’
Ursula couldn’t fathom her children’s attitude. Why were they behaving like this? She felt exasperated and frustrated. Her sex life with David was suffering because of it. The only time they enjoyed sex was when Violet and Xander were with their father on weekends. It seemed like it was so much better when she was still married.
The more she thought about it the more she was convinced Gary was behind it all.
After talking with her children, she ensured Gary could see David whenever he picked up their children or dropped them off. She wanted him to see that she, David, and the children were a happy family, and he couldn’t get between them. At first, she could see, with satisfaction, that seeing David was getting to Gary, but he then started to appear happier and more relaxed. She tried to send David to Gary’s house to pick up the children out of spite, but the children refused to get into his car and Gary had to take them home instead.
All Ursula could think of doing next was to have David move in with them. He was far more reluctant than she expected. Despite the problems with the children, she thought everything was good between them.
So here they were, with David standing at the front door with his suitcase and his belongings in his lackluster car having been snubbed once more by Violet and Xander while Ursula consoled him.
If Ursula thought having David live with them would make Violet and Xander accept him, she was sorely mistaken. An already tense home became even more tense. Violet and Xander continued to refuse to engage with David. Mealtimes were silent affairs. When David attempted to interact with them, Violet and Xander would wait in an awkward silence until he got the message and left. Offers to game with Xander were repulsed and offers to teach Violet to drive were given a sharp, ‘That’s my dad’s job.’ Any attempt to integrate David into the family just fell on deaf ears. Even when Violet and Xander were forced to interact as a family that included David it failed. It wasn’t long before David began to complain and suggest that Violet and Xander should spend more time with their father.
A furious Ursula now had enough and confronted Gary when he picked up his children from his former home,
‘Gary, you need to talk to your children about what they are doing to David!’ she told him angrily. ‘Whatever you are telling them, you need to stop!’
‘What do you want me to do about it?’ Gary shrugged. ‘You brought that asshole into their lives, not me.’
‘I know what you’re doing! You need to stop, or I’ll go to court and stop all access to Xander and Violet!’
‘You’re delusional!’ Gary laughed in disbelief. ‘You cheated on me with him then you complain that they won’t accept your asshole of a lover? Perhaps a relationship born from infidelity wasn’t such a good idea after all? Violet and Xander are good kids and know right from wrong. They can make their own opinions; they don’t need me to tell them. They’re old enough to decide for themselves. What happens between them, and David isn’t my problem.’
Ursula scowled at her ex-husband and stormed back into the house.
An attempt at a holiday only worked because Violet and Xander went off alone and left Ursula and David together. It gave their now flagging relationship a boost having Ursula’s children not with them.
Gary’s indifference to David’s and Ursula’s relationship soon became apparent. During dinner, after Gary had dropped Violet and David off Violet and Xander began to talk excitedly about Gary’s new girlfriend. She had visited Gary’s apartment unannounced while Gary was out on an errand and the children were alone at home. She was unaware the children were there. Their unintentional meeting went surprisingly well. A nervous Gary arrived to see his children and girlfriend talking together happily. After some awkward questions were answered and Gary’s assurance that his girlfriend already knew about them, how his marriage to his mother ended and that she made him happy, the children embraced her.
Ursula could have screamed in anger as she listened. Violet and Xander barely said David’s name after almost six months of trying but with one unplanned meeting, their father’s new girlfriend was welcomed with open arms.
Despite all the problems, Ursula was determined to prove their relationship was a success. Her social media use exploded. She posted photos of her and David hugging and smiling, telling the world how lucky she was. There were photos of her and the children. Photos of David at the children’s events, Xander’s baseball games, and Violet’s soccer games. She desperately tried to portray David as her children’s loving stepfather.
There is only so much you can fake. A birthday for Xander became a point of contention. She held his birthday at their house and put considerable effort and expense into it. Not only were Xander’s friends invited but also their parents and siblings. Ursula also invited David’s family and began to call David’s nephews Xander’s and Violet’s cousins. To Ursula’s intense frustration, Xander insisted that Gary was invited too, and Gary insisted that he was allowed to contribute to the party.
Xander had a great time. So did Violet who knew many of Xander’s friends’ elder brothers and sisters. The problem was Gary. Ursula was delighted to introduce David to all of Xander’s friends’ parents, but Gary had known them a long time and they were all keen to see how Gary was doing. David became more and more sidelined in his own home. David’s whole family were cold-shouldered by Ursula’s children. Xander completely ignored David. He refused to have his photo taken with him, but he had plenty with his father and the parents at the party noticed. Gary was ruining the party she had so carefully organized.
David then did, as far as Ursula was concerned, the most wonderful thing. He got down on one knee and proposed to her with a ring she had no idea he had bought. The surprised Ursula could not believe it and cried with happiness. Applause broke out at the proposal; she was sure of it. It truly was the happiest day of her life.
She insisted the four of them had their photo taken. If there were any negative comments, she didn’t hear them. She, David, Violet and Xander would officially become a family.
Sean Dalton Erotic 