Chapter 5

Chapter

Five

VICTORIA

After I got home, I threw my phone on the charger by my bed and left it as I went in search of comfy clothes and a hot shower. Once I washed away all the tears and desperation from earlier, I would shore up enough strength to read through all the messages Devin left for me. It was possible that I waited to read them for no reason. What the hell was I going to do if those messages were about how happy he was with his wife now? It must be refreshing not to have to hide being in a relationship. Besides, Jordan was right. His marriage was another obstacle in ever going public with our relationship.

I let the hot water melt the tension from my shoulders and tried not to think too hard about what awaited me once I got out of the shower. Part of me couldn’t stand the thought of never having Devin in my life again. Well, he would still make appearances as my brother’s best friend, but how badly would that hurt? Family events he might be invited to would no longer be a place I felt welcome, even if my family didn’t understand why. There was no way I could watch him bring his wife and baby around.

The baby.

It was part of the equation I hadn’t let myself dwell on yet. Dwell… I laughed at that thought. No, I hadn’t even given the baby a single thought since I spoke to Katy about the situation. The only time the presence of a baby in the mix even entered my mind before now was the brief mention I gave of Justice’s pregnancy when I recapped my situation for Jordan. How had I not considered what things would look like if the baby turned out to be Devin’s?

It meant that even if everything worked out and we became a couple, we would have to raise that baby and coparent with Justice forever. I wasn’t sure if that was something I could do. Then again, I hadn’t even processed the pain it would cause me to know that Devin had a child with someone else first - while we had been a couple. My heart hurt just thinking about that. More tears leaked from my eyes as it all hit me once again. How in the hell was I supposed to cope with the fact that the love of my life might have made a baby with someone else?

I swiped angrily at my tears as I made my way to the bedroom where my phone taunted me with its presence. Those messages I failed to even look at could say anything. They could be a goodbye, a confirmation of my worst fears, an apology, or…

“Fuck it!” I yelled at myself as I stomped across the room and snatched the damned phone up like it had personally offended me and I was about to teach it a lesson in manners. I angrily swiped until I got to my texts from Devin and then I scrolled back to the last one I’d replied to prior to showing up at his house unannounced to find out he was married to his pregnant fake girlfriend - err wife. “Agghh!” I shouted into the room in frustration and then leaped onto my bed to get comfortable for whatever fresh hell and heartache awaited me.

Devin: I wish you would let me explain! Please, call me back or tell me I can come there, so we can talk in person.

Devin: Vic, please. We can’t leave things like this.

Like what? I wondered. He married another woman. That definitely felt like the end of us, even if he hadn’t allowed that to sink in yet.

Devin: Vic, I love you. We’ve both had our moments where we were angry and frustrated over our situation. This is no different.

“No different?” I yelled at my phone. “No fucking different? You slept with someone else, you son of a bitch!”

Devin: That wasn’t fair. I know this is different and I am so fucking sorry. It was only that once and I was so fucking drunk I don’t even remember doing anything with her beyond commiserating that our real significant others were out with other people that night.

I hadn’t gone through with the blind date my mother set up for me. Sure, I met the guy and then… Well, we didn’t even make it past the threshold of my apartment before we went our separate ways. Me feeling queasy as hell and him obviously disappointed. I still felt bad that he might have taken my rejection as a mark against his looks or something. He had been perfectly acceptable, if only I had actually been single. Not that my mother had known I wasn’t single. Again, that was all my fault.

I was hard pressed to figure out why I had demanded we remain in a secret relationship now that things had blown up in our faces so spectacularly. I couldn’t even tell my family, outside of Katy and she was barely an adult. Despite her noticing everything, I didn’t want to put the burden of my complicated relationship on her shoulders.

“I think I need a therapist,” I whispered to the empty room. Talking to myself had become a habit since I found out my boyfriend married another woman. It was like I couldn’t process any of the thoughts that scrambled around in my mind until they were spoken. Speaking some of them was never going to happen though. It made everything real. The whole baby situation being one of those things that I refused to speak aloud. I had to keep thinking that my sister was right and the baby really did belong to Brody, not Devin.

I glanced back down at my phone at the next message.

Devin: I love you. Whatever you’re thinking, whatever horrible shit is playing out in your mind, I need you to remember that I love YOU - Vic. It’s always and will only ever be you.

Devin: Please, talk to me baby. I miss hearing your voice and seeing your smile. Miss lying beside you at night dreaming of our future together.

That last one got me. We couldn’t even have a future together because he’d given it away to the woman who was supposed to be his fake girlfriend.

I replied directly to that message.

Victoria: It’s hard to plan a future when your supposed fake girlfriend already stole it out from under me. The baby. The marriage. That was all supposed to be mine and yours together and you took that from us. YOU DID THAT. What did you expect would happen, Devin?

Devin: Vic, it was a mistake. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can fix everything and come clean to our families.

Victoria: So you had your marriage annulled then?”

Devin: No.

Victoria: So, I’m supposed to come clean to my family that I am the other woman who wants to break up a marriage with a woman you possibly got pregnant? And do you know how long it takes in this state to get a divorce if she doesn’t agree to an annulment? Not that it matters since you obviously aren’t planning to do that.

Devin: What do you want me to do? I had a knee-jerk reaction to a situation that would have never happened if you hadn’t wanted to keep us a secret so long.

Victoria: Once again, you fucking another woman and marrying her is all my fault.

Devin: I didn’t say that.

Victoria: That’s exactly what you said. I don’t know why I bothered trying to talk to you.

Devin: I resented being a secret, okay? That was part of the problem and I know, I agreed to it. I agreed to the stupid fake dating. I agreed to everything, but it tore me apart to hear that you were going out on a date with another man. It fucking broke something inside of me and I realized that none of what we were doing was okay. I needed you to be mine 100%. Out in the open. In private. Just mine.

Tears rolled down my cheeks and splashed down on my phone screen as I responded.

Victoria: Funny, but I needed you to be mine too and when I refused to go on a date with someone else because of my feelings, and I planned to tell you that we needed to come clean to everyone, you were busy fucking a baby into another woman.

I threw my phone after I hit send on that last message. It would do no good to keep going around and around about things. The truth of the matter was that even though I had come to the conclusion that we needed to come clean to our families, I was still racking my brain trying to figure out how to do that while my boyfriend avoided me for a few days. Then, when I finally got the nerve to go have the conversation with him a few weeks later, I found out he married Justice because she was pregnant.

My timing was specularly bad, but at least I hadn’t embarrassed myself by having that conversation with a man who hadn’t come clean to me about sleeping with someone else. Maybe, in the back of my mind, I knew. His whole demeanor had changed toward me in the month or so between that awful date my mother set me up to go on and when I worked up the courage to tell Devin it was time to come out into the open with our relationship.

My phone beeped with incoming messages, but I ignored the sound and left my phone where it was on the floor and burrowed deep under my covers. I didn’t have the energy to deal with my messy life anymore. Truthfully, I didn’t have energy for much of anything. It might have had something to do with the fact that I also couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten, but my money was on everything being sapped away by my broken heart.