Chapter 2

Chapter

Two

DEVIN

"I'm so sorry, D."

I stepped into Justice's waiting arms and allowed her to hold me for a minute because I felt like my whole body might fly apart at seeing the damage I'd done to the only woman I ever wanted to marry. Newsflash – it wasn't the wife who was there to hold me when everything fell apart. No, the woman I wanted to build a life with had been too busy keeping me hidden in the shadows. One night of resentment on my part meant everything was over.

"Wow, she just gave me a hateful look," Justice sniped. I glared up at her and took a step back before I glanced back over my shoulder to see Victoria swipe angrily at the tears on her face just before she flew out of the driveway.

"What do you expect?" I growled angrily. “We both made promises to her. Promises that we broke and then compounded by the decisions we made on top of that.”

"Well, my promise didn't mean shit, since she doesn't factor into my life."

"She factored into mine. Did that not mean anything? Do I not mean anything to you?"

Justice grinned at me. "Of course you do, husband."

"Don't call me that!" I snapped.

The marriage had been another in a series of complete panic-induced fuckups on my part. We didn't even know if the baby Justice carried was mine or Brody Hinton's. Brody being her 43-year-old married boyfriend. I shook my head free of that mind fuck. Justice had been panicked, too. She begged me to make it look legitimate or else her parents might find out, disown her, and she wouldn't be able to take care of a baby on her own.

How I convinced myself that it was my problem was beyond me. It really wasn't my problem. The chances that I'd impregnated Justice were slim-to-none.

We slept together once, and I didn't even remember the part where I was supposedly inside her – though she swears it happened. I believed her, considering she told me as she apologized for allowing things to go that far while we were both drunk off our asses.

"We are married now," Justice insisted.

It took me a minute to sort my thoughts before I was able to respond. "We need to go back inside and sit down for this conversation."

"Fine." Justice turned on her heel immediately and walked into the house while I meandered in slowly, wondering if the one thing I always dreamed of was now lost to me forever. I'd been in love with Victoria Mercer since the day I met her when I was 12-years-old. My chest cracked wide open thinking that today would be the last time I saw her. That wasn't even the worst case scenario. She was my best friend's big sister, that meant we'd probably see one another again. The problem was, who would she be with when I saw her next? Judging by how everything worked out today it wouldn't be me.

When I finally made my way back into the house, I sat next to Justice and turned so that we were sort of facing one another while still sitting side-by-side. I pulled her hand into mine – the one that now had a ring adorning it that tied her to me. I felt sick to my stomach at the sight and let her hand go to run my fingers through the short hair on my head in frustration. As luck would have it, the ring she placed on my finger snagged on my hair as a reminder of just how fucking off the original plan we had gone.

"You know that I'm in love with Victoria."

Justice shrugged her shoulders and pouted her lips as if it was news to her and it made her unhappy. "It doesn't really matter, considering she wouldn’t hear you out!”

I stared at Justice, as if seeing her for the first time. "Are you kidding right now? How would you react if you just found out your boyfriend of two years might have gotten another woman pregnant and married her too?”

"She's the one that agreed to this whole situation to begin with. She had to know it was possible that we would end up hooking up."

"She literally put down rules that we both agreed to, that stated otherwise. Not to mention she thought you were in love with Brody. I imagine that's the only reason she did agree, was that you already had a man you loved."

"Still, you would have to be stupid to throw a younger, better looking woman at your secret boyfriend and not expect things to happen between them." She giggled. "I mean," she tossed her hand back-and-forth between our two bodies, "look at us. We're both gorgeous people. Of course, we were going to fuck at some point. I'm honestly surprised it took you as long as it did."

"I don't even remember ever being naked with you, let alone fucking!" I reminded her. "You are not the woman I want."

Her brow arched higher as I stated that. "Well, I'm the one you knocked up and married."

"Stop. We both know the chances that kid is mine are almost nil.”

"We don't know anything yet," She insisted.

"I may have acted out of a knee-jerk reflex when I married you, but only a DNA test will convince me that the baby you’re carrying is mine.” Her lips puckered like she tasted something sour.

"That doesn't change the fact that we're still married and everyone will know that soon enough.”

"An annulment is easy enough to obtain, since we never consummated our vows."

“Or we could consummate our vows and give this a shot,” she insisted as her hand trailed up my chest and she attempted to wrap her fingers around my neck.

"Stop!" I shook her off and stood to move across the room. "We're not doing that. What about Brody?”

“He has a wife of his own, in case you’ve forgotten. I don't know what you want from me. You promised you would be there to help protect me from my situation. Just because your situation blew up in your face doesn't mean you aren't obligated to keep helping me. We are married. I am pregnant. My family still can't know that this baby might not be yours.”

"If we tell everyone that it is mine, then it means that I can never fix things with Victoria."

Justice pulled her hair around as if to shield herself behind it and then she shook her head like the thought was easy enough to shake off. “And what will you do if the baby is yours? You’ll lose her anyway. No matter what happens between us, there is no way that Victoria will help you raise a baby we made together. Our child will always be a reminder of how she didn’t mean that much to you.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean? She means everything to me!” I argued.

Justice made a noise of disapproval. “Really? Then why in the hell did we get drunk together and end up having sex?”

“I wish I knew.”

My unwanted wife rolled her eyes at me. “Oh, you knew exactly what you were doing that night. You might have been thinking about your precious little Victoria, but those thoughts revolved around fucking me to forget she was out with another man that night. It’s really convenient how she forgot she was on a date with another man.”

"Did you set this up on purpose so that Vic would be here to hear us discussing the baby and marriage?” There was a little niggle at the back of my mind that told me something wasn’t right. Justice pushed too hard to get me to accept the end of my relationship with Victoria. I had to change the subject though because just thinking about how Vic went out on a date with some other man still made me feel downright homicidal. I hoped like hell no one ever told me who she was out with.

I was so lost in thought I almost missed the sarcastic sounding giggle that came from Justice. "How was I supposed to know she would show up here today? Besides, maybe you should have been honest with her since the first day we woke up together. At the very least, you should have clued her in the minute I told you I was pregnant, or any time before you married me. Don't try to put this on my shoulders, D. I didn't do anything that you're trying to make me guilty of. You need to accept responsibility just like Victoria does."

"She didn't do anything wrong."

"She has kept you locked in a hidden relationship for two years because she's embarrassed to tell her family that you’re together. What part of that isn't wrong? At least in my case, I'm not ashamed of you or anything else. I'm protecting my lover from the fallout of us having a relationship at the wrong time. She's just protecting herself."

Justice wasn't wrong about any of that. I had gone about everything all wrong, starting with Vic's demands to keep our relationship secret. I should have forced the issue long ago. It had been two years since we officially started dating. The minute she said yes to that first date, I should have told her brother. The only reason I hadn't was because she knew it would cause a strain between her and the rest of her family. I had to respect that, but I think we took it all too far and made everything worse. My fake relationship to throw everyone off our trail, and to help Justice out with her situation, made it impossible for her family to take me seriously as her boyfriend if and when we did finally come clean.

Now, with a pregnancy and a marriage in the mix, everything was infinitely messier. Hindsight was a bitch because we should have seen this coming. We should have already factored in how Vic’s family would perceive things after we fooled them for so long with my fake relationship to Justice. Our story was never going to have the happy ending I always envisioned, and that was on me for not standing up for our relationship from the very beginning.