Page 13 of The Regrettable Mistake

“Of fucking course we did.”

Caleb threw his hands in the air in a sign of surrender. “As your lawyer, I needed to know. Is there any way she might be carrying your baby by now?”

I shook my head. “We haven’t…” Fuck, how did I tell my friend that I hadn’t even fucked my gorgeous wife in months. “I didn’t want to taint her with the shit I did with Jia.”

“You were careful with Jia, weren’t you?”

“I wore a condom, if that’s what you mean.”

“Yeah, that’s what I meant. Why weren’t you fucking your wife then?”

“Every time I looked at her like that, all I could see was her heart breaking if she ever found out about Julia. Guilt man. The guilt was eating me alive and I couldn’t give her the shitty leftovers after stupidly going there with my ex and then being forced into situations that I knew would look bad if it ever got out.”

“If this shit with Jia hadn’t come up, do you think you would have realized that you’d fallen for your wife?”

I scrubbed a hand down my face in frustration and thought about what he was asking. “I don’t know, man. Fucking up definitely put things into perspective for me.” I stood and moved to the sink, overlooking where the window view was nothing more than a tiny patch of grass before Caleb’s grandmother’s house took up the rest.

“What if she can never forgive me?” I asked. “What if Den hates me and wants to stay with her?”

Caleb scoffed. “According to Jia’s plans, your ex-girlfriend won’t allow that to happen anyway. Remember back when that bitch left, and I told you to get her to sign her parental rights away?”

“Yeah,” I huffed before turning back to look at my friend.

“As I recall, you never did that, since you never returned the papers for me to file with the courts.”

I shook my head in response. “I didn’t want to chase after her and sever that tie for my son.”

“Well, that means she still has parental rights and a say in whether Den and your wife can see one another. From what you told me about her plans, that might be something she tries to exercise.”

“Can we get an emergency injunction to keep her from exercising her rights?”

“Already had my assistant file the paperwork this morning.” He glanced away and then back down at the table where his fingers tapped out a rhythm that was only in his head.

“What is it?”

“Just because we file it, doesn’t mean the judge has to grant it. Had you not had an ongoing affair with Jia, I’d say you had a good case to terminate parental rights.”

“It wasn’t ongoing. I know there is a ‘but’ in there, so what is it?”

“First, appearances are everything. No one is going to believe that you weren’t fucking her that whole time. The “but”, part is that you getting involved with Jia for months on end will not look good in your favor. In fact, it will appear as though you approve of her being in your life. Not only that, it will look worse on you because you brought her back into your life by having an affair while you left your kid at home with your wife.”

“Fuck. Could this get any worse?”

“Judging from Jia’s plans to use you and Den to springboard her into the hearts of her future adoring fans, yes. It will get worse and not just for you. Denmark and Steph are going to be thrust into the limelight in the worst way possible and I don’t think either of them is ready for this. They certainly don’t see it coming.”

“You need to get in touch with Hutch and let him know.”

“I’ll give him a call as soon as we’re done with this conversation. You said you had proof of Jia’s blackmail?”

“Yeah, I have audio and video recordings of her talking about it.”

“We need to be able to authenticate which states you made those recordings in and figure out what their laws are for consensual recording. Hopefully, they were done in a single-party consent state like Virginia.”

“That’s easy enough. The first recording I made, where she talked about how I had to fuck her or she would release the sex tape she made without my knowledge, was recorded in Virginia when she came back the first time.” Caleb gave me a look and I growled my frustration out. “I didn’t fuck her again. When I refused, that was when she demanded that we go search for a doctor to fix her face, since my dick no longer worked.”

Caleb rolled his eyes as he laughed. “She is something else, but that’s good. I need that recording. Get it to me while I reach out to Hutch and give him a head’s up about Jia’s plans. Once you send everything, you need to get with your parents and make a plan for Denmark. When the shit hits the fan, it’s liable to get ugly.”

“Fuck!” I hissed through clenched teeth.

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