Page 3 of Bona Fide

And when they say love is blind—it is. It’s also deaf, dumb, and stupid.

After Demi admitted she just wanted to see “how much I loved her,” we broke up. I couldn’t look her in the face, guilt-stricken that I went that far without any evidence or even asking him what happened. I never gave him the chance to speak, defend his case—I just went off.

She did what normal girls do, whined to my sister, Phoebe. Proclaimed how sorry she was and that she’d never do a thing like that again to get my attention.

Fuck that, she almost got me to murder a man. My pussy-whipped ass still took her back with my sister’s urging. A second chance, my father told me, everyone deserves one. She was young and in love, so I had nothing to lose.

And I lost.

I forfeited so much with Demi after we got married that it was too much to bear. I almost gave up my career because I couldn’t function outside of my own head. I couldn’t eat because everything else filled me with such anguish and devastation that there was no room for anything else.

I was a shell of a man wanting to disappear into nothing. She took and took, and I had nothing left.

“Mention it again to me,” I warn, flexing my fingers at my side. “And you’ll wish you never would’ve shown up tonight.”

“Is that any way to treat me after so many years?” She’s closer to me now, dangerously so, because I’m two seconds from wringing her fucking neck in the middle of my own party. “Your world is beautiful.”

“It’s a shame you came all this way for me not to give a flying shit.”

“Start giving one,” she states matter-of-factly. That familiar tone turning harder.

Her patience lacks as much as mine does. Her sweet facade fades because she knows that I’m not going to budge. Neither of us is going to back down from this, so she might as well come out with why she’s here and what the hell she wants.

“You’re running for president.”

I roll my eyes.

If this dumb bitch doesn’t get on with it, I swear I’m going to act on those impulses I spoke about earlier.

“No shit.”

“And you’ll need your wife.”

I chuckle, eyeing a man who’s talking on his cell phone and pacing back and forth along the wall of the hall. “I don’t need you, Demi. I believe I’ve shown that with getting to where I currently am.”

“If you win the democratic delegate, Wade, they’ll start digging up everything on you. Everything.”

“And?”

“And that includes me.”

“You’re old news, darling. And washed up.” This time she laughs while her body brushes against my bicep. It takes everything in me not to flinch away, but that alludes she has an effect on me. And that’s the last fucking thing I want her to think she has.

“Not if I show back up in the public eye, Husband,” she cautions. “I’ve already been noticed by a few people here.”

“Did you blow through your monthly allowance already or what?”

“You know what I’ve always wanted, Wade,” she coos and before I used to love it. Now, I want to strangle it. “We used to talk about it all the time.”

“That was before.” I can feel the tremors form from within my body. The history that starts to blossom back up in my mind. Demi and I haven’t been in the same room in years. We haven’t been in the same country within those years. I banished her, and she freely skipped off to fuck the next clown who’d fall victim to her beauty and charm.

Shit, I did. It was easy. It was like jumping out of a moving plane and gliding downward, praying to God that the dude that packed your parachute did his job right. I did nothing good for myself when I forgave Demi for everything. I wanted a life and relationship that my parents lacked. I thought that she’d changed—people say that others do that, right? That we could move forward and be a stronger couple.

Talk about denial 101.

The moment I showed weakness, AKA forgiveness, she took it and throttled it into the floor. Demi assassinated any hope of a future for us, beat down every dream I had, and almost sucked the life right from me.

“Go back home, Demi,” I advise slowly. “I’m not the same man you were married to.”

---