Page 7 of The Regrettable Mistake

“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.

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.

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