4. Ollie

CHAPTER 4

Ollie

After Jules finally got the message that I was done bowing down to her demands and blackmail, my ticket home was booked. I didn’t know what I’d need to do to fix things with my wife, but I had to try. A little bit of the truth would hurt her, but might still make things salvageable, and yet believable for when Jules decided to blow all our lives up. No matter what, there was no doubt in my mind that my ex would do just that as soon as she realized her new goal of playing happy families would never happen.

At first, I thought it was just the plastic surgery expenses she needed from me, but after our last conversation, it was clear that wasn’t the only trick in her bag. She wanted to use me and our son to make it look like she was a family girl with a sad backstory of being the cheated on woman and a car wreck survivor, who was giving her family another chance. The fact that I fell into her trap so easily made me wonder what the hell was wrong with me.

It hadn’t been love when I first got together with my wife. In fact, it wasn’t even love – on my part – when I asked Steph to marry me. I never intended to fall for her at all, considering how that had worked out for me with Denmark’s mother. The fact that Julia had managed to sus that out made me wonder how she could know. Still, while I never had intentions of falling for Steph, my feelings for her started to grow at some point. Around the time my son tried to call her mom, she had worked her magic on me as well.

Steph earned my respect before anything else. Then she earned my laughter at the little jokes she’d tell, the way she’d poke fun of me and herself, and unfortunate situations we all found ourselves in rather than being bitter when things didn’t quite go to plan.

My love for her grew with each one of the genuine, beautiful smiles she graced me with every day when I came home. Those feelings flourished as I watched my son grow attached and fall in love with her as well.

Despite all that, my ex still had a firm hold on my heart, even if it was purely because I had deluded myself about what we had shared all those years ago. That was how I ended up in this situation to begin with. I loved two women – or thought I did. Turns out, my love for my ex wasn’t real. Those emotions were reserved for a woman Jules never was and couldn’t be. They were reserved for the woman I once hoped to build a family with. That emotional tie to Jules had always been a lie because she had never been real or honest with me. The most real she had ever been was when she decided to trap me in a blackmail scheme of my own dumbass making.

My relationship with Steph – despite trying to maintain a cool distance in the beginning – was authentic. It shouldn’t have taken the threats Jules made for me to realize it. If I had pulled my head out of my ass just a day sooner, I wouldn’t be staring down the possibility of my ex ruining my entire life with her little scheme.

I sat in my car and stared at the house where my wife and son were still blissfully ignorant that I’d fucked it all up. It was bittersweet to be home. I missed them both like crazy and regretted the time I’d spent away from them. I regretted missing every single one of the moments we could have had even more knowing what Denmark’s mother had planned. She wouldn’t stop. It didn’t matter that I’d explained she would upset her son’s life, devastate him, and ruin my business. All she saw was how the chaos, and the way she planned to spin it, would elevate her career.

I pulled my phone out and called my lawyer, Caleb Phelps. “Caleb,” he answered.

“Need you to listen to everything I’m about to tell you and then start formulating a plan because shit is about to get really fucking chaotic in my life and I need you, brother.” Caleb and I had known one another since he moved in next door to me when we were in sixth grade. We had been stuck together like glue ever since.

“I don’t like the sounds of this. What could possibly put your life in chaos when you live a vanilla Stepford dream with your nanny-wife and son?”

“Don’t fucking call her that,” I groused.

“Damn. Didn’t know you went and caught feelings for Steph. Good for you, man. About fucking time you realized what you had at home.”

“Yeah, just in time for Jules to come back and blow my life up.”

“Tell me you didn’t go there,” Caleb demanded on a heavy sigh.

“Can’t do that, but listen up because shit is about to hit the fan and I don’t have long before I have to go in and face my wife with the truth.”

“You fucking idiot,” Caleb groaned on an exhale. “Tell me everything and don’t leave a single detail out.”

I told him everything, from the initial hate fuck when I met up with Jules three months ago that led to her blackmail scheme. Then about me playing along with it to try to get evidence that she was blackmailing me. And finally, I filled him in on this latest venture in Vegas when I was supposed to be on business in Vancouver. The threats Jules made weren’t threats. I knew she would try to play the victim and make my wife look like the villain.

My beautiful, innocent, loving, unsuspecting wife who didn’t deserve the shitstorm that was about to befall her. Steph would hate me when all was said and done.

“I need to go prepare Steph.” I felt fucking defeated when I finally told him that.

“Keep the details you give her to a minimum. Don’t admit to cheating if you can skate around it.”

“Why?” I asked, suddenly perking up at the thought that maybe Steph would never have to know how bad it was.

Caleb blew out another breath and hesitated a minute, which made me worry that it wasn’t as simple as him trying to salvage my marriage for me. “Steph only asked for one concession in the prenup and I didn’t run it by you because I didn’t think you’d disagree.”

“What did you add to the prenup?”

“Everything was the same as the bullshit fifteen year clause you gave your marriage, so she could raise your son for you and then you could chuck her aside without owing her a dime for all her years of service.” Caleb wielded that statement like a weapon because it was something he warned me against doing when I first set out to find a wife who could mother my son properly.

“The only thing she wanted added, or should I say her lawyer wanted me to add, before she would sign was a fidelity clause. In the event that you are an unfaithful partner, and have an affair during those fifteen years of marriage, she gets the house – paid off and in her name, everything in it, the car she uses is to be paid off and put in her name only, and either a monthly maintenance stipend for house expenses like taxes and insurance or a small payout equivalent to ten years-worth of taxes and insurance premiums.”

“That it?” I growled into the phone. I knew what that meant. It would be harder to convince my wife to stick around as she would have everything she needed to remain independent from me.

“It also stipulates that you offer a non-contested divorce filing where you agree to meet the requirements of the prenup and have a legal separation in place within thirty days of her disclosing that she knows about an affair. With no shared biological children between you, in the state of Virginia, you only have to wait six months to divorce once legally separated.”

“Fuck, Caleb! You were supposed to be looking out for my best interest, not hers.”

“You don’t think she deserves at least that damn much, man?” He shouted back at me.

“Of course I fucking do, but now I won’t have any leverage over her to make her stay.”

“You’re still an idiot. For a man who is smart enough to build his own business from the ground up, you seem to forget that you have the best leverage of all.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Your son, you idiot.”

“My son?”

“Your wife is only Den’s stepmom. She has no legal rights to him in a divorce, since you stupidly never took your ex’s parental rights away, so that your wife could adopt your boy. I know Steph and Den have a close relationship, man. Normally, I wouldn’t tell you to cash in on that fact, but it might be your only bargaining chip with her, all things considered.”

“Thanks.”

“Ollie?”

“Yeah?”

“You picked a fine time to realize you have feelings for your wife.”

“Don’t I fucking know it.”

I hung up on him and got ready to go try to put a Band-aid over the bleeding wound I was about to open up in my family.