Page 24 of Resolving Rumors

I went to snatch the ring off my finger too. “She handed this to me before we left the house.”

“The house you live in, with your pregnant wife,” Vic replied in a cold, detached tone I’d never heard her use before. “Right. Well, you should go home to your wife because she’s your problem. You know who isn’t? ME.”

“Vic, I love you!”

“Get the fuck out of my house, Devin!” The harsh way she yelled those words at me made me stumble to a stop before I could reach for my woman. She threw her hands up in the air, almost in surrender, except they were used to hold me at arm’s length in the most literal manner. “I mean it. Get out of my house. We are done.”

“We’re not done,” I pleaded, but she simply pointed at the door.

“Go before I call someone to remove you.”

I wasn’t sure if she meant her brothers or the law, but I turned and walked to the door. “We’re not done, Vic. There are things you don’t know…”

“There’s plenty I don’t know,” she sassed back. “Us being finished is crystal fucking clear though.”

Chapter

Fifteen

VICTORIA

I wasn'tsure if I was seeing things or if God really hated me. Once I blinked a few times to clear my vision, the sight before me remained the same.

Across the street, seated at an outdoor cafe, was my ex-boyfriend with his wife and parents, having a happy little family feast. If there was ever any doubt about how he felt for me, it was alleviated as I watched him laughing and carrying on with all of them as if life was absolutely brilliant. So much for their faux breakup at the restaurant. I suppose me pushing him out my door and telling him it was over between us changed things.

It made me sad to think that I'd cried myself to sleep while he apparently went home and made up with the she-bitch-from-hell. It shouldn’t hurt, since I was the one to tell him we were over, but it did. It sliced me to the point where all I could do was bleed out the pain.

There he sat, across the street, looking happier than ever with his current situation. It had been three days of radio silence since I kicked him out of my place. Three days seemed to have a huge impact on his life. Maybe I had been the burden holding him back all along. Devin was meant to shine with a woman his own age. His wife. His baby. The woman his family acceptedwithout even the barest hint of her being beneath him. My heart cracked wide open once again, as if I hadn’t already bled the stupid organ dry.

I was meant to go to my doctor appointment, in the office directly across the street from where they were all happily dining. There was no way I could make myself get out of the car, though. Instead, I picked up my phone and dialed the office I was parked in front of. Figures, the one time I got prime parking, and I'd have to give it up because I couldn't get out of my car.

"Dr. Mitchell's office," The sweet voice on the other end of the line answered.

"Hi, this is Victoria Mercer. I need to cancel my appointment today."

"Oh no, is everything okay?"

"I'm not feeling well. I think it's safer if I stay home in case I have something you guys might catch from me.” The sniffles I couldn’t hold back any longer most likely lent credence to my story. “I don't want to be responsible for the staff, or heaven forbid a pregnant woman, ending up with the flu." I narrowed my eyes on the one pregnant woman I wished would fall down a never-ending flight of stairs as I said that.

"Aww, I wish all our patients were that considerate. Okay, did you want to go ahead and reschedule or wait and see how quickly you recuperate?"

"I'll just wait and call back when I'm feeling better."

"That's fine. I do need to remind you that you were supposed to get your birth control shot during this appointment. You will need to be careful and use a backup birth control method until you can get back in to see us."

I laughed as another fissure was added to my heart. "Trust me, that won't be an issue. Thanks for everything. Sorry for the late notice." I hung up after babbling and didn't wait for her to say anything else. Instead, I started my car again and checkedmy blind spot to see if it was okay to pull out. As I swiveled back around to face front, my eyes caught movement. Justice’s finger extended in my direction as Devin nearly stood all the way up from his seat before his father yanked his arm to get him to sit back down. I pulled away before I could see anything else.

Maybe they knew about us the way Katy had known. It was clear by Devin's father's actions that he didn't approve of me. It was also clear that they loved his wife. My stomach twisted into a tight knot as that word embedded itself onto another fissure in my heart. Instead of stitching the wound closed, that word was placed there to hold it open.Wife. Devin had a wife and it wasn't me. My heart twisted inside my chest. It wasn’t a metaphor. I could have sworn I felt the squeeze as my lungs attempted to gulp air down.

He seemed happy without me. There was no denying that the Devin I saw today was carefree and unburdened in a way he had never been with me by his side. I had seen a similar look at Frederick’s as she fed him from her plate.

It wasn’t a moment we had ever shared together. Then again, we had never been able to sit out in an open-air cafe, or any restaurant within an hour of where we lived, together. We certainly had never been able to openly - or privately for the matter - share a meal with any of our family. That was all my fault. I had turned our relationship into something dirty that needed to be hidden in the shadows. Devin must have come to the same conclusion. It was clear from how happy he appeared that our relationship was nothing more than a dark stain on the past two years. Openly dating his harpy of a wife looked like a relief in comparison to living in the shadows the way we had been.

I didn't bother to go back to work. Instead, I drove to my lonely little apartment, went straight to my bedroom and buried myself under the covers. Every woman with a brokenheart deserved to wallow for a day, at least, after seeing her ex living his happily ever after with someone else. Life was unfair, and that thought was made worse by the fact that the misery I suffered was of my own making.

Two hours later,I was awoken from a nap I hadn't realized I'd taken, by someone pounding on my door. By the time I made it down the stairs and to the door, the pounding started all over again.

"I know you're home. Your car is outside,” Devin announced angrily.

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