Chapter 7

Chapter

Seven

VICTORIA

The feeling that something wasn’t right plagued me until my sweet dream of a happily ever after with Devin poofed out of existence as my awareness of the real world came back online. A quick sniff of the air confirmed my original thoughts upon waking. It smelled like breakfast in my house. The savory aroma of seasoned hash-browns and bacon frying forced my mouth to produce an overabundance of saliva before my brain bothered to ask the all-important question. “Who in the hell is cooking breakfast in my house?”

My eyes darted to the bedside table where my phone still sat face up, quiet as a church mouse. After I reached for it, I quickly discovered the last text or call I received was from Devin the day before. For a moment, I debated calling 9-1-1, but what were the odds that a criminal broke in and stuck around to make breakfast?

Slowly, I got up and put on a robe, secured it tightly enough that it wouldn’t come loose and show off the too-thin tank top and panties I’d worn to bed the night before. I scooped my long blonde tresses up and wound them into a messy bun before I made my way out of the bedroom. ‘D read somewhere that long hair, especially a pony tail, was your worst enemy when attacked. If it was effective to roll my eyes at myself I would. I’d already determined that whoever broke into my house to make breakfast must be friendly.

I hoped.

When I rounded the corner, I was greeted with a sight that instantly made my heart leap with joy and grieve all at once. How in the hell was that even possible?

Devin stood there in front of my stove, shimmying to soft music he had playing from his phone as he scrambled up some eggs to go with the hash-browns and bacon he cooked up. He always bemoaned that he broke the omelets every time and I showed him that a good scramble, while not as pretty as an omelet, could have the same damn ingredients in it.

His ass was well defined in the jeans he wore while the t-shirt hugged his upper body in a way that showcased just how much he must have been working out lately. He was thicker, more muscular than he had been just a month ago. I guess marriage looked good on him.

It made me sick to my stomach to think about. My gaze shifted to the floor where I glared at it for not opening a hole there to swallow me up. If ever there was a time to disappear into the abyss, it was when you realized your ex was doing far better after he replaced you with another woman.

“Hey, I meant to surprise you with breakfast in bed.” I glanced up to see that Devin moved around the counter and was headed toward me.

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why are you here, Dev? Shouldn’t you be at home serving up your pregnant wife instead of me?”

His sigh nearly sent me into a homicidal rage. My brewing anger must have shown on my face because he threw his hands up in the air and took a conscious step backward. “We need to talk.”

“I think you said everything that needed to be hashed out between us when you said, “I do” to another woman.

Devin shook his head and for some stupid reason, I couldn’t look away from the sadness that iced over his normally warm, caramel hued eyes. It was only then that I noted the dark circles beneath them as well. Maybe I had been too quick to judge his growing physique because the rest of him looked as exhausted as I felt.

“Please, Vic.” It was my turn to sigh, though not as dramatically as he had done moments ago.

“Fine. We can talk. At the table though because, no offense, but I can’t stomach the thought of you in my bedroom anymore.”

“Fucking hell, woman.” Devin turned back to plate our food as I walked off to the dining table not sure what to do with the jumbled thoughts and questions that clogged up my brain. What were we supposed to talk about at this point? Was there anything that could be said to fix things? I doubted that, but I still deserved better than “I was jealous of your date” as reason to throw our whole relationship down the tubes for someone else.

I sat the head of the table, so that even if Devin tried to sit by my side, he would still be a little further away than if we sat directly beside one another as we used to do. Maybe it was petty of me, but in all honesty, it was more about keeping my distance to preserve my sanity. My heart could only take so much closeness to Devin. I still loved him even as I hated what he’d done to us. I also understood that while he was the one who made the decisions he did that put the final nails in the coffin, it was my desire to keep us a secret that built the damn thing to begin with.

“Here,” Devin stated as he pushed a full plate with silverware on it in front of me. He set his down on the table and then ran back to the kitchen. When he got back he had coffee for both of us. He took the seat to my left and pulled his chair as close to the end of the table as was possible without sliding around and practically sitting in my lap.

I took a tentative bite of the western scramble he made. My stomach wasn’t exactly up for it, despite the audible grumbles it started to make the minute I smelled breakfast cooking while I was still in bed. While my mind tried to process the fact that Devin was there, in my house, and made me breakfast, the rest of me was still stuck in a weird stage of grief for the relationship we once had. Logically, I knew he wasn’t dead, but our breakup felt like something permanent.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’ve said that and it changes nothing.” I glanced up into those confused brown eyes of his and laid my fork back down on my plate. “I understand that you are apologetic, maybe even regretful, but it doesn’t change anything about the situation. You married another woman. Even if she is pregnant with your baby, and I thought it was possible to forgive you, there is no getting around a marriage.”

“There is when it doesn’t mean the same thing as it does for everyone else.”

I reached forward and grabbed his hand to hold up between us. "In case you forgot, you married someone else. Not only are you married to the woman, but you seem awful proud of the fact, considering you're wearing a ring that symbolizes it. If it was all smoke and mirrors, you wouldn't have that on your fucking finger.” I pointed at the circle of metal that my eyes had been drawn to repeatedly since I realized he was in my house.

He reached over, took the ring off, and threw it somewhere across the room. "That shit doesn't mean anything to me. She doesn't mean anything. I doubt it is even my fucking baby.”

"There was a chance that it was your baby, though, since you married her so quickly." The accusation left me on a whisper, but he still heard it.

"All I know is that I was pissed you were on a date with someone else. I got tore the fuck up drunk and she was there getting wasted right along with me." He sighed deeply. "When I woke up, we were in bed together and I honestly don't remember how I got there or what happened that night. I was so blitzed.” Those last words came out sounding almost like a plea for me to understand.

“When I saw her naked in the bed with me, I threw up," Devin admitted. I kind of knew the feeling because I wanted to throw up after hearing that, too.

"What was she doing at your house that night?" I asked.

"She knew you had a date and apparently Brody was out for a guy's night with her dad, who bragged to her about them going to see some strip show."

I cringed. "That's just too much yuck to even process."

He nodded. "That's why we were drinking and commiserating."

"You do realize that you go out on dates with the woman you ended up married to all the time, right?”

"That was different. You didn't have to worry…" His voice trailed off when he realized how stupid that sounded.

"Yeah," I huffed. "Nothing to worry about there. It’s not like you knocked her up, or at least slept with her naked, and then married her without even being good enough to warn me beforehand. Instead, I had to hear about it after the fact, when I came to your house unannounced. And still, it wasn’t because you managed to tell me about it. I busted you talking about your sweet little family with your brand new wife. Sure, I can see where that was totally different."

"Fuck!" Devin yelled as he turned his back on me.

"I get that I have some share in the blame for how this happened, because I never should have trusted a home wrecker in a million years."

"She's not a home wrecker." The fact that he jumped to her defense , and so quickly, pissed me off.

"Right, because she's not carrying a married man's baby and she didn't marry my boyfriend behind my back after sleeping with him. No, she doesn't meet the definition of home wrecker at all. The truth will come out eventually about whose baby that is and people are going to be hurt. She doesn't care!” I yelled the last bit at him before I moved past Devin to grab some tissue from the bathroom. When I came back out he stared at me, as if waiting for the rest of whatever I’d been saying. So, I gave it to him.

“She smiled at me when she welcomed you into her waiting arms as I took off that day. And you went willingly. Why wouldn't you? You were already her husband wearing her ring by then! Now, she's taken extra efforts to make sure you never talk to me again. She literally blocked me from calling and messaging you while diverting your messages to me somewhere else. That's a whole other level of fucked up, and you know it! Yet, you have the nerve to stand here, in my home, and defend her to me?"

"She's my wife," he whispered.

"Funny, just a few minutes ago, you said none of that meant anything."

He hung his head then. "I feel like I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place here, Vic. I already married her. She's pregnant. Whether its my kid or not, I can't really do anything to upset her at the moment because it might cause issues."

"Well, isn't that convenient. She gets to play happy family with you for the entirety of her pregnancy, and then it will be her postpartum, sleep deprived state that keeps you on the hook. Before long, you'll fall in love with her baby and she'll realize that her real baby daddy isn't going to leave his wife or tell his best friend what a fucking creep he is. I thought it was bad that we were seven years apart, but that man is literally her godfather. He was there to help change her diapers and now she's having his kid.”

We sat there in silence for a while as everything I’d just spewed out hung between us like a mile-high wall we couldn’t possibly get over.

“Do you think anyone who found out about me seeing you while you are still married to Justice would see it that way?”

“Why are you so worried about what everyone else thinks?”

“You mean besides the fact that if people found out I was running around with a married man, while his wife was pregnant, I would lose my job because of the damage it would do to the firm?” I asked.

“Fuck,” Devin hissed out as he sat back in his chair and stared at the plate of food that remained mostly untouched in front of me. “I think she set me up. Does that count for anything?”

I shook my head slowly. “Jordan gave me the same impression when we talked, but even if she set it up, you still fell for her trap and now we’re all ocean deep inside the consequences.”

“We were already dating in secret. Why can’t we continue to do that until I can convince Justice to sign annulment papers?”

“You think she’ll sign without giving you trouble?”

My heart broke as he shook his head and then hid his face behind his hands as he tried to somehow scrub away all the frustrating truths that made it impossible for us to be together.

“I can’t lose you, Vic.”

“No, you threw me away without even allowing me any consideration in the choices you made.”

“I swear to you, I did no such thing. She hit me with the pregnancy out of nowhere and how her parents were going to disown her, especially if they found out Brody was one of the potential baby daddies.”

“So, the only option you two had was to get married? You said before that the chances of the baby being yours is slim. Why not let her take her chances with Brody?”

“And if it turned out to be my kid? You really want me to explain to my kid one day how I hoped they didn’t exist and I failed to help their mom?”

“You know that’s not what I meant,” I argued.

“I get it, but you have to understand, Vic. If that is my kid, then I need to do whatever it takes to make sure he or she is okay.”

“You could have moved her in if you were worried, marriage was an unnecessary step and one too far for me to be able to move past.”

“You’re right about that. If I had given myself time to think clearly, I would have seen that too.”

I picked up my fork and poked at the breakfast that had grown cold on my plate. “I don’t know where that leaves us. The simple fact that it is possible she might be carrying your baby is…” I couldn’t even finish the sentence without choking up. “It’s fucking heartbreaking, Devin. You chased me. You made me fall in love with you. Then you pulled it all out from underneath me just when I was finally comfortable enough to say, ‘Let’s do this publicly,’ and that isn’t possible now.”

“I’m sorry, Vic. We can figure this out, if you’ll just give me time to…”

“Why?”

“Why what?” He asked as his eyes hooded over with worry.

“Why couldn’t you trust me the same way I put my faith in you for over two years, a year and a half where Justice was in the picture?”

“I don’t understand,” my former boyfriend said as he took hold of my hand.

“I trusted you on dates with her, in public, and even when you were in private spaces. I put my faith in YOU that we were too important for you to go there with someone else. Why couldn’t you do the same for me?”

Devin sighed and squeezed my hand once more. “I was afraid that you would see how good it is to be out with someone without having to hide from everyone.”

“Is that how you felt every time you were on a supposed fake date with Justice?” My stomach hurt from asking the question, so in all honesty, I wasn’t sure I could handle hearing his response. He gave it nonetheless.

“No. No, Vic. Not at all. I swear to you, every time I was out with her, all I wanted was for it to be you by my side. It was like having a second job, dating her. I was an unpaid actor in this crazy farce and being out with her was nothing more than having to put on a performance.”

“Then why would you think it was any different for me?”

“I don’t know. Justice was part of the problem. She came over and talked about how Brody was the love of her life and he was out with his wife and that their dynamic reminded her of us. She insisted that Brody would leave his wife for her one day and that the same thing would end up happening in our situation, only it would be one of us leaving the other because we were tired of having to live in the shadows.”

We both sat very still in the light of that assessment. Then Devin spoke again and made me want to crawl under the table and hide away in shame. “It hit me hard because I had been feeling like the other man in an affair, waiting for the day the married woman would finally throw her husband away for me like she promised. There wasn’t another man - not yet. When your mom set you up on that date, it was all I could think of. I had been a dirty secret for so long, why wouldn’t you choose an easier, more age-appropriate option over me?”

“I never blamed you for everything, you know. I blamed myself for most of it.” He nodded as if he already knew that, and I suppose, on some level, he did. “I don’t see how we can make it work now though.” I glanced down at his left hand - the one that bore the evidence of his current married status. “For someone who claims he wants an annulment, you’re still wearing the ring, as if it is the proud symbol of commitment it is supposed to be when two people get married.”

“Fucking hell!” Devin shouted and stood as he yanked at the damn ring until it popped off his finger. Then he tossed it on the table. “There. Take it. It means absolutely nothing to me. She means nothing to me. I came here to talk this out because Jordan contacted me and after our conversation, I realized she might be on the right track. I wanted to make a plan with you. A plan to get me out of this mess with Justice and another to get us back together where we belong.” He huffed and yanked me out of my chair. “Only this time, we’ll be out in the open with everything because I’m not hiding my love for you any longer.”

I nodded my head in agreement, like an idiot, before his lips crashed down on mine and sealed his words between the two of us as if it was a sacred vow.