Chapter 15

Chapter

Fifteen

VICTORIA

I wasn't sure if I was seeing things or if God really hated me. Once I blinked a few times to clear my vision, the sight before me remained the same.

Across the street, seated at an outdoor cafe, was my ex-boyfriend with his wife and parents, having a happy little family feast. If there was ever any doubt about how he felt for me, it was alleviated as I watched him laughing and carrying on with all of them as if life was absolutely brilliant. So much for their faux breakup at the restaurant. I suppose me pushing him out my door and telling him it was over between us changed things.

It made me sad to think that I'd cried myself to sleep while he apparently went home and made up with the she-bitch-from-hell. It shouldn’t hurt, since I was the one to tell him we were over, but it did. It sliced me to the point where all I could do was bleed out the pain.

There he sat, across the street, looking happier than ever with his current situation. It had been three days of radio silence since I kicked him out of my place. Three days seemed to have a huge impact on his life. Maybe I had been the burden holding him back all along. Devin was meant to shine with a woman his own age. His wife. His baby. The woman his family accepted without even the barest hint of her being beneath him. My heart cracked wide open once again, as if I hadn’t already bled the stupid organ dry.

I was meant to go to my doctor appointment, in the office directly across the street from where they were all happily dining. There was no way I could make myself get out of the car, though. Instead, I picked up my phone and dialed the office I was parked in front of. Figures, the one time I got prime parking, and I'd have to give it up because I couldn't get out of my car.

"Dr. Mitchell's office," The sweet voice on the other end of the line answered.

"Hi, this is Victoria Mercer. I need to cancel my appointment today."

"Oh no, is everything okay?"

"I'm not feeling well. I think it's safer if I stay home in case I have something you guys might catch from me.” The sniffles I couldn’t hold back any longer most likely lent credence to my story. “I don't want to be responsible for the staff, or heaven forbid a pregnant woman, ending up with the flu." I narrowed my eyes on the one pregnant woman I wished would fall down a never-ending flight of stairs as I said that.

"Aww, I wish all our patients were that considerate. Okay, did you want to go ahead and reschedule or wait and see how quickly you recuperate?"

"I'll just wait and call back when I'm feeling better."

"That's fine. I do need to remind you that you were supposed to get your birth control shot during this appointment. You will need to be careful and use a backup birth control method until you can get back in to see us."

I laughed as another fissure was added to my heart. "Trust me, that won't be an issue. Thanks for everything. Sorry for the late notice." I hung up after babbling and didn't wait for her to say anything else. Instead, I started my car again and checked my blind spot to see if it was okay to pull out. As I swiveled back around to face front, my eyes caught movement. Justice’s finger extended in my direction as Devin nearly stood all the way up from his seat before his father yanked his arm to get him to sit back down. I pulled away before I could see anything else.

Maybe they knew about us the way Katy had known. It was clear by Devin's father's actions that he didn't approve of me. It was also clear that they loved his wife. My stomach twisted into a tight knot as that word embedded itself onto another fissure in my heart. Instead of stitching the wound closed, that word was placed there to hold it open. Wife . Devin had a wife and it wasn't me. My heart twisted inside my chest. It wasn’t a metaphor. I could have sworn I felt the squeeze as my lungs attempted to gulp air down.

He seemed happy without me. There was no denying that the Devin I saw today was carefree and unburdened in a way he had never been with me by his side. I had seen a similar look at Frederick’s as she fed him from her plate.

It wasn’t a moment we had ever shared together. Then again, we had never been able to sit out in an open-air cafe, or any restaurant within an hour of where we lived, together. We certainly had never been able to openly - or privately for the matter - share a meal with any of our family. That was all my fault. I had turned our relationship into something dirty that needed to be hidden in the shadows. Devin must have come to the same conclusion. It was clear from how happy he appeared that our relationship was nothing more than a dark stain on the past two years. Openly dating his harpy of a wife looked like a relief in comparison to living in the shadows the way we had been.

I didn't bother to go back to work. Instead, I drove to my lonely little apartment, went straight to my bedroom and buried myself under the covers. Every woman with a broken heart deserved to wallow for a day, at least, after seeing her ex living his happily ever after with someone else. Life was unfair, and that thought was made worse by the fact that the misery I suffered was of my own making.

Two hours later, I was awoken from a nap I hadn't realized I'd taken, by someone pounding on my door. By the time I made it down the stairs and to the door, the pounding started all over again.

"I know you're home. Your car is outside,” Devin announced angrily.

I flipped the locks and slid the door open a smidge, but he was having none of that. The man pushed it open wider, and knocked me out of the way as he moved into my home. "What the hell, Devin?" I shrieked at him as I stumbled out of the way and tried to catch my footing before I fell.

He ignored me and turned to shut and lock the door again with him on the inside. "We're going to have a chat. Since you won't answer your phone, I guess we have to do this the hard way – in person."

I laughed at him. "It's hard to answer a phone that never rings."

"Bullshit! I've been calling every day, several times a day, since I left your house that day. I've left voice messages and texts."

I moved over to the coffee table, where I'd thrown all my stuff down when I came back from the doctor appointment I never went to. My phone sat there, silent as the grave. I picked it up, unlocked it, and handed it over to Devin.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"Look at my texts and call history, asshole. Not that I need to prove to you that you haven't contacted me. Though, I do think it's cruel to lie to my face and say that you have. Considering I've cried myself to sleep every night while you've been off living your best life and enjoying happy family time, I guess I'm not sure why you came here to lie to my face. I realize you might want to punish me for all the time I kept our relationship a secret, but trust me when I say, having the love of my life impregnate and marry another woman is more than even I deserved. Being forced to watch as you get to play happy families with her on top of everything else is devastating. Just leave me alone, Devin. See yourself out after you verify what you already know - I never got a single call or text from you because you never sent any.”

I turned and angrily stomped my way to the kitchen. I tried to give up coffee a couple days before my world turned upside down. Obviously, it was the wrong time to attempt caffeine withdrawal.

"So, all this proves is that you deleted them without looking at anything," Devin argued as he brought my phone back to me while I filled the pot.

"You cannot be that obtuse. I just told you I cried myself to sleep every night because after you left my place the other night, I never heard from you again. You couldn't even apologize to me. Not one single, "I'm sorry." If you were happier with her because it didn't have to be a secret, all you had to do was break things off with me officially. Instead, you had to cheat. Only," I laughed again, "it wasn't really cheating as far as anyone else knows, since they all thought she was your girlfriend, right? So, I can't even be mad publicly.”

He stared at me as if I had two heads, but I carried on. “Then you had to keep stringing me along and pretending that our relationship was the one you really wanted. Honestly, I don’t understand why you would do that to me. Why do you want to hurt me so badly?”

He argued. “In case you forgot, you're the one who wanted the secrets, not me."

"And now you're punishing me for that, even though you agreed it was for the best. You told me your parents wouldn't like our relationship. You were the one worried about losing your best friend too.”

"I was worried about those things, but I told you we could handle them together. I agreed to a temporary secret relationship to make sure we were good together before we broke the news to everyone else. You're the one who refused to change that up. Then, when Dallas started to question things, it was your idea to have us both be seen on dates, which is how the whole thing with Justice was concocted."

"You're right." I told him as I stuffed far too many coffee grounds into the pot before I turned it on. Bold coffee today seemed about right. "I pushed you to cheat on me. I stood there and told her to hop on your lap and go to town and make a baby while she was at it. I practically walked you down the aisle to her!" The words screamed out of me as my frustration built. "There were rules in place! YOU broke those rules. She broke those rules. YOU broke my heart, not the other way around." We had already hashed all of this out, but those early decisions were at the core of my misery again, and they did not want to be shoved back into the box I tried to bury them in when I gave Dev a second chance.

"Look, we’ve been down that road already, and I thought we worked through it, but obviously not. I had no intention of coming here to hurt you more though, and I have tried to call and text you.” Devin offered as he pulled his own phone out and unlocked it. Then he pulled up his text messages. He put his phone in my hand, and I scrolled back, looking at about five to ten texts per day for the past few days. I glanced up to see his angry glare and shook my head in disbelief.

"I never got any of these."

"Bullshit!" He yelled at me as he snatched his phone back and pulled up his call log. "Look," he shouted at me again as he held the phone out for me to see. "I called and texted every day. Fuck! My boss damn near booted my ass out of the office because I was on my phone so much - and not to sell houses.

"Devin, if you need me to go pull up the records from my cell phone company, I can. I never received any of that."

"That's fucking impossible, unless you blocked me."

"Call me now," I suggested. He angrily stabbed at the phone and hit the call button. Nothing happened. I picked up my phone to show him that nothing was coming in. Then I called him. Nothing. It rang once on my end before going straight to voicemail.

"What the fuck?"

"You are the one who has me blocked!” My words came out on a gasp, as it registered that he had completely shut me out. Never mind the bullshit he tried to spew about how he had called and texted me. I don’t know who he called or messaged, but it hadn’t been me.

"I do not have you blocked. And why couldn't I get through to you?"

"Give me your phone." I held out my hand and he complied, but decided to invade my personal space as he crowded in beside me to see what I was looking for. I pulled up my personal contact sheet in his phone and then pushed the information button. Then, I pointed at what I saw there. "That is not my phone number." He took a solid step back and shook his head. "I don't know who you've been sending all those messages to, but it wasn't me. That's my name, but the phone number isn't right at all."

"I haven't changed anything. Your contact has always worked. Did you change your number?"

"No, I didn't. Maybe someone who had access to your phone changed it," I suggested.

"No one has…" Devin stopped mid-sentence and I could just image who might have access to his phone long enough to make it impossible for him to contact me without showing up in person.

"Let me guess, your wife decided that we should no longer be in contact now that she set her sights on you instead of the married man she was fucking."

"No. It's not like that. We're not together like that."

"Funny, but that's not how it looked this morning when I saw the two of your together having a meal with your parents.”

"What were you doing there?" He asked in a clipped tone.

"I had a fucking doctor appointment that I couldn't even go to because I couldn't force myself to get out of the car and be seen by you after watching how happy your whole family was together."

My emotions got the better of me as yelled the accusations at him. I'd like to blame the fact that I hadn't received my shot today, but I think the hormonal issue I was having had more to do with the broken heart than the birth control – or lack thereof.

"It wasn't like that, Vic."

"Wasn't it?" I asked.

"No, I swear. I told my parents the truth about everything. They know about you and what happened with Justice."

"Well, they seemed pretty happy with her and your dad made it very obvious he didn't want you coming after me."

Devin's shoulders slumped. "They're angry that I'm in this situation with a wife I don't want and a baby on the way that isn't mine. My parents blame you for putting me in a place where any of that was possible."

"They blame me? They blame me for your cheating and running off to marry a woman who claimed to be pregnant with your child before you could even ask any questions – like ‘Is it mine?'."

"They blame you for being ashamed of me and making us a secret to begin with. Everything else, they put directly on my shoulders because I'm a fucking adult and I made the idiotic decisions I did all on my own. They blame both of us for the mess I have to make to set it all right.”

"How do you know it's not your baby?"

“Not that I didn’t already suspect, but I saw her ultrasound picture and it confirmed some things for me. Considering we only had sex that once - maybe-”He scrunched his nose up on that last word

“Maybe?” I questioned.

“You know I don’t remember. It still doesn’t sit right with me that my body was able to get onboard when my brain was complete mush. I wish you had just stuck around that day when you first found out, so we could work everything out then.”

"If you'd talked to me before running off to marry another fucking woman, maybe my initial reaction wouldn’t have been to run, Devin! Jesus! How would you have felt if you came to my place and heard me talking to my brand new husband about a baby we made together? How would it make you feel to know that there would only be one way for a baby to be in the mix and that meant I was unfaithful?"

"It would suck," he admitted.

"No! It doesn't just suck. It broke me. You broke me!" I clutched at my heart as tears streamed down my face. He didn’t understand what it felt like and he never would. There was no way I could ever put him in a similar situation. “I’ve been living in this weird bubble with you the past few weeks where I couldn’t even acknowledge that there was a baby that might be yours. After not speaking to you for a few days, it all sunk in again. It’s like a dam breaking after too much rain. It all came back full force this time.”

"You don't think being a secret for two years has broken me?"

"I'm sure it has," I whispered in defeat, knowing it must have been heartbreaking at times to be with me, but never be seen with me. "I was wrong, and now there's no going back from where we are. We literally can't come clean with our secret."

"Why the hell not?"

“You are the one who is trapped in the situation with her and you and your family put the blame for that on my shoulders. It's funny how your parents just accepted her and the situation she's in, but they seem to think I'm the devil."

"They don't know who the father is.” His admission nearly floored me. Why hadn’t he told them that part? Why had he spared the dirty details when it came to her, but not me?

"Well, isn't that rich. I thought you told them the truth.” I laughed and turned my back on the man I once loved. "I guess I'm the whipping boy in this situation, since I created it. I think you should leave now. You made it pretty clear where your loyalties lie and they're not with me."

"You went on a date with another man!” He yelled at me then, as if that one moment in our lives was the defining moment that changed everything. I knew better.

"No, I fucking didn't! My mother arranged a date for me and one of her friend's sons. I said I would go but made myself so sick about it that I ended up throwing up because of the anxiety swirling in my belly over going through with it. I never went on the stupid fucking date. I never kissed another man, never held his hand, never even said more than “Hello” to him. I certainly didn’t wake up naked with anyone. I sure as fuck never had the potential of being pregnant by another man while we were together, and damn sure didn't get married to anyone else. You know who did ALL OF THOSE THINGS? You did!”

“I was talking about the other night.”

I rolled my eyes at Devin. “Oh, so now two of my supposed dates are the problem. Never mind that you were cozy with your pregnant wife that night and I didn’t even know about the blind date I’d been set up on until he showed up. And you know what, Dev? Thank fuck he showed up.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean, Vic?”

“Thank fuck he showed up because that strange man showing me kindness was the only reason I made it out of Frederick’s with any dignity, and certainly without spilling all my tears and bleeding out my heartaches all over everyone’s meals. He saved me from the humiliation of watching you eat out of that bitch’s hand. Now, get the hell out of my house and go back to the treacherous whore you married. Have fun figuring out which of your other phone numbers she screwed with. When you don't hear from my brother ever again – you know where to look for answers."

I moved out of the kitchen and went to open the door for him. He reached out to touch me after following me there, but I stepped back. "Do not touch me! Go back home to your wife where you belong. I might have kept us a secret but it was because I didn't want anyone's judgment tearing us apart. That woman set out to destroy her baby daddy's family and then did the same to our relationship. You and your parents can blame me all you want. I'm guilty of far less than either you or your whore of a wife, though. Remember that when you continue to try to shift the blame onto me, asshole!”

I pushed a stunned Devin out the door and slammed it in his face. I threw the locks and then turned and slid down the door. The sob that tore free of my body in an angry, jerky motion was not able to be clawed back. It no longer mattered if Devin heard me breaking over the end of us. It didn’t matter if my neighbors bore witness to my heart shattering. Nothing mattered.

Almost nothing mattered. It should have been impossible to break any more than I already was, but his stupid wedding ring glinted at me from across the room. He’d thrown the damn thing weeks ago when I first found out about them and I hadn’t seen it since. I’d nearly forgotten about it. If he hadn’t worn another ring on his date night, I would have never remembered. The light caught it just right, so that the metal glinted and winked at me tauntingly. Torment, unlike anything else I’d ever known, ripped a horrible keening wail from my bones and there was no one there to hold me together.

No one but the voice on the other side of the door. “Vic, please!” I could hear the pain in his voice, though it didn’t register in that moment. I was too lost in my own hurt.