3. Steph

CHAPTER 3

Steph

“Steph, you here?”

“Kitchen,” I called to my twin as he entered my house without knocking. My brother never invaded my privacy by helping himself into my house, so I worriedly got up and headed to meet him.

“We need to talk. Where is Den?”

“At a play date for the next hour with his best friend, Jacob.”

“Good. Come sit down.”

“What’s going on, Stevie?”

My brother blew out a breath of frustration as he pulled a chair around so that we were facing one another. He then took hold of my hands and locked eyes with me. A worried knot of tension grew along my shoulders as Stevie dropped his head for a minute, allowing his too-long-on-top hair to flop over his face and cover up whatever look he didn’t want me to see.

I pulled one of my hands out of his calloused ones and swept his hair back. “Whatever it is, I need you to tell me. Whatever internal debate you’re having with yourself is only making it worse, Stevie.”

“Sis,” he started and then seemed to think of something else. “Didn’t you say Ollie was in Vancouver on business this week?”

Slowly, my head tipped forward and back as if answering of its own free will while my tongue remained tied and unable to respond. Steve pushed a lock of my unkempt hair behind my ear and his eyes softened with what looked like a mixture of pity and regret.

“What’s going on?” I asked again.

He let go of me with one of his hands and reached into the inner pocket of his jacket to pull out his phone. “I’ve been worried about you. Everything seemed even more strained with Ollie and you than usual lately. Shit, Sis, you might as well have been a single mom these past few months.”

“Get to the point,” I muttered as my hands began to shake.

He nodded and then held his hand up with the phone and swiped to something before shoving it in my direction. “I’m so sorry, Sis.”

When I didn’t immediately take it, Steve put the phone on the table in front of me. As if even my own brain was working against me, my eyes drifted toward the image there, even though I knew before looking what I might see.

My husband stood outside a very popular destination hotel in Las Vegas, Nevada. He was looking down into the eyes of a very recognizable C-list actress with jet black hair and bright sea-blue eyes. Not even the scar on her cheek took away from her model-like beauty, statuesque figure, and pouty red lips.

Steve swiped a finger across the screen. In the next image, Ollie’s hand rested on the bitch’s cheek as she leaned into his caress with her eyes closed and a blissed out look on her face.

My brother swiped again and there was my husband’s ex, the same woman who abandoned him and his son all those years ago, popped up on her tip-toes as their lips come together in a kiss. Despite how far away the photographer must have been, I could tell, without having to zoom in, that their lip lock wasn’t a chaste one. Her bottom lip was caged in by his, her hand twined around his neck to pull him closer and his hands were wrapped around her slender waist.

My brother flicked the screen so another picture showed up. The two of them appeared to be headed into a hotel together. Another swipe and they were coming back out, both sporting wet hair.

More swiping. More pictures. Different locations. Same woman.

I could tell the pictures were going backward in time. The one thing that dated those initial pictures was that my husband had been wearing a button-down shirt I’d purchased for him before his latest trip. He had to roll the sleeves up for the Vegas heat, but then again, he was meant to be in Vancouver, not Vegas. At least he was consistent with the first letter of the city’s name.

The shirt had been an apology gift because I’d ruined one of his favorites when I tried to wash it instead of sending it out to the dry cleaners. I had been stuck at work a little longer than usual and the cleaners were closed, so I had a valid excuse but I still felt guilty for not getting it done in time for his work trip. I wanted to laugh and cry all at the same time. My husband didn’t look the slightest bit guilty to be kissing a woman who was not his wife in all those pictures, but I’d overcompensated, out of real guilt, for ruining his shirt.

I finally had enough of seeing my husband flaunting his affair with his ex-girlfriend for anyone and everyone to see. When I glanced up into my brother’s worried bronze gaze that bore into my own matching pair, I nearly choked on my question before I could ask it. “How far back do these go?”

“Vegas was yesterday, but there were more from the other two days that he had already been there. The rest go back about a month.”

“Why are you just now showing me? Why not when the first set was taken?”

“I didn’t think you’d leave him if you only saw one instance. Figured the bastard would lie and tell you it was a one-off event. His recent behavior made me believe it was never that, so I wanted irrefutable proof. There weren’t any money shots, but the sheer volume of photos with him traipsing all over the country with his ex-girlfriend-slash-baby momma, and kissing her publicly will help you in your divorce. I’m sorry, Sis. You needed to know.”

Your divorce.

Those two words played over and over in my head. It was already a forgone conclusion in my twin’s mind. He wasn’t wrong in thinking that but there were complications I’d have to face with a divorce.

“What am I going to do, Stevie?”

“Leave his cheating ass.”

“What about Denny-Boy?”

“I know you love the kid, but he’s not yours. The woman he’s been flaunting all over the country is his biological mother. You have no rights to Den. They will have to work it out for him.” My brother’s voice was gentle as he told me what I already knew. Despite my brother’s reticence over my relationship with Ollie, he had come to know and love Ollie’s son just as much as I had. Den even referred to my brother as Uncle Steve.

“I can’t just walk out of Den’s life, Stevie.”

“You won’t have a choice. The courts won’t give you rights to the kid. It doesn’t matter that you’re the one who has been raising him for years. It only matters that you aren’t blood and his biological parents are obviously back together.”

That was when the tears that burned molten hot behind my eyes finally started to fall. My husband was back with his ex. Not for a one-night mistake, either. He had been with her for more than a month. There was far too much evidence, and even if she was a shitty actress, she was still a public figure, which meant they weren’t even attempting to hide their affair. I was probably lucky that pictures of her wouldn’t fetch a big payday, even if they were of her carrying on with a married man. If she was an A-list actress the end of my marriage would have already been splattered across all the tabloids.

“Den’s going to be crushed, Stevie.”

“No more than you will, and it isn’t your fault. I’m sorry that you two will lose each other, but…”

“Are you?” I lashed out at my twin. “You never wanted me with Ollie to begin with. You certainly never wanted me taking care of his kid.”

“Because he was using you to do just that. I didn’t want you to enter into a marriage where you thought it was about love when it was really just a business arrangement for that asshole. I wanted better for my amazing sister. You deserve to be loved with someone’s whole heart, not used for what you have to offer while the idiot pines after a woman who could never compare.”

That hurt to hear. In the beginning, I would have denied my brother’s claims. There were moments where I thought maybe he had a point. Those moments became my reality in the past few months, rather than the little things I could brush off. I would have sworn Ollie loved me, though. At least, in the beginning he had felt something for me. Something more than what we’d become.

“I’m pregnant, Stevie.” The words were a whisper on my lips as my eyes drifted back to the last image left on the phone screen before it finally timed out and my brother’s lock screen image kicked in. It was a picture of the two of us from a beach trip we took a couple months ago. In fact, Den had taken the picture. My brother had picked us up for a beach day when Ollie bailed on our plans for work again.

“Do you think the judge would allow for visitation for the sake of siblings?”

“Steph, how are you pregnant? He’s barely been here?”

“I didn’t know. When I went in to get my checkup, I found out. There were no symptoms. I’ve been spotting apparently, and thought it was just light periods. I’m fourteen weeks along already.”

“That’s just over three months,” my brother mumbled. “Before he started acting weird and working longer hours,” Stevie surmised.

“Before he stopped touching me,” I admitted with an emotional wobble to my voice.

“Jesus!” Stevie cursed. “I’m going to kill that motherfucker.”

“No. Can you just…” I glanced around the room, trying to think. “Can you help me pack? I can call Ollie’s father and get him to pick up Den from his friend’s house.”

“No. You can’t do that. You need to make him leave. If you abandon the house, he could use that in court for a reason why you shouldn’t get your end of the prenup. He’ll claim you obviously didn’t want it, since you left.”

“I can’t stay here,” I screeched, voice full of panic.

“I’ll stay with you and when he gets home, we’ll deal with throwing his ass out. Together, Sis. I’m not leaving you to deal with this alone.”

“Don’t tell him about the baby,” I insisted.

My brother shook his head. “I wouldn’t, but you know it will come out eventually. You used his health insurance for your doctor visit, right?”

My head bobbed in agreement. I had done that and now it felt like the stupidest thing in the world to have done. When I went in, it never occurred to me that there would be a need to hide anything from my husband. Not that I planned to hide our baby from him, but I wanted to be able to get everything settled first without the pregnancy being an issue.

“Will a judge even grant me a divorce, considering I’m pregnant?”

“He was cheating on you with his ex, his son’s mother, and not just once. So, yeah, they’ll still grant your divorce.”

“The part of my heart that aches so bad it feels like it might stop working altogether wishes that I’d listened to your warnings back when I first started getting serious with him.”

“The other part?”

“That’s the part that can’t regret anything because I wouldn’t wish my time with Denmark away for anything. That little boy doesn’t deserve what’s about to happen in his life.”

“No, he doesn’t. You need to remember that none of it is your fault, though.”

“Still, how in the hell am I supposed to tell that innocent little boy that his “real” parents will probably never let me be in his life now?”

“You’ll still have a baby with the asshole. He won’t be able to keep Den out of your life when you have to coparent for another child.”

“That’s another thing, Steve. How am I supposed to be okay with leaving my baby with him when his mistress has already abandoned her infant child before? What if she harms my child?”

“We’ll figure it all out. I’m going to call Hutch. He needs to get things squared away for you before the asshole gets home.”

I nodded and then went upstairs to go cry in the privacy of my own bathroom. Hutchinson Wallace had a pretentious name befitting the shark of a divorce attorney he was. He also happened to be my brother’s best friend since grade school. That was good because I couldn’t afford him on my teacher’s salary.