Page 27 of Resolving Rumors

I moved out of the kitchen and went to open the door for him. He reached out to touch me after following me there, but I stepped back. "Do not touch me! Go back home to your wife where you belong. I might have kept us a secret but it was because I didn't want anyone's judgment tearing us apart. That woman set out to destroy her baby daddy's family and then did the same to our relationship. You and your parents can blame me all you want. I'm guilty of far less than either you or your whore of a wife, though. Remember that when you continue to try to shift the blame onto me, asshole!”

I pushed a stunned Devin out the door and slammed it in his face. I threw the locks and then turned and slid down the door. The sob that tore free of my body in an angry, jerky motion was not able to be clawed back. It no longer mattered if Devin heardme breaking over the end of us. It didn’t matter if my neighbors bore witness to my heart shattering. Nothing mattered.

Almost nothing mattered. It should have been impossible to break any more than I already was, but his stupid wedding ring glinted at me from across the room. He’d thrown the damn thing weeks ago when I first found out about them and I hadn’t seen it since. I’d nearly forgotten about it. If he hadn’t worn another ring on his date night, I would have never remembered. The light caught it just right, so that the metal glinted and winked at me tauntingly. Torment, unlike anything else I’d ever known, ripped a horrible keening wail from my bones and there was no one there to hold me together.

No one but the voice on the other side of the door. “Vic, please!” I could hear the pain in his voice, though it didn’t register in that moment. I was too lost in my own hurt.

Chapter

Sixteen

DEVIN

Victoria shovedme out of her apartment and slammed the door in my face before I could process anything she’d just said. I didn’t even understand why I went on the defensive and blamed her for everything - again.

Yes, I did. I was angry after seeing her cry outside of the restaurant earlier. I wanted to know what gave her the right to play the victim when she refused to speak to me, see me, answer the phone, or even respond to a text. Granted, even without all that - had it been true - she deserved to feel everything. Despite trying to put some of the blame at her feet in the heat of the moment, I knew better. She hadn’t been alone in her decision making. Hell, I’d gone along with the secret nature of our relationship because I was afraid of losing my best friend - Vic’s little brother. I also hadn’t wanted to rock the boat with my parents.

All of my introspection left me, along with any hope I had, as a pitiful wailing sob tore through the front door and pierced straight into my heart. I banged on the door in response. “Vic, please!” I begged.

The door never opened. I sat on the other side and listened as my love cried so hard and so long that her voice sounded raggedin the end. She hadn’t moved away from the door, and I knew better than to think it was because she wanted me to feel every bit of the grief she expelled. There was no way in hell Vic would want me, or anyone else, to witness her breaking so tragically. That meant shit had really hit her hard and once again, I felt like the proverbial knife stabbing her in the back.

I had done this. Through my actions, through my unwillingness to bend, and with my accusations that she had somehow harmed us more than I had, there was no doubt that I had broken her beyond repair. At least, I’d broken the part of her who had once been in love with me. After a while, the gut wrenching noises of distress from the other side of the door finally subsided. She never opened it for me. I wasn’t even sure if she knew I was still there.

I couldn’t imagine adding to her pain any further, so eventually, I stood and left her house.

Something deep down inside me ached because I knew that after the mess I'd just made of things, there was no coming back. I didn't even understand why I felt so compelled to stick up for Justice when I knew what she had been up to. In some warped sense of responsibility to the woman, I made things worse between Vic and me. The evidence of just how calculating Justice had been should have held my tongue, but once again, I hadn’t properly processed all that just yet. It wasn’t until I had to sit through nearly an hour of Victoria crying herself sick on the other side of her door that I was able to work through some of what had just happened in her apartment.

One thing for sure was that Vic was right. Her biggest crime was that she kept us a secret from everyone. Mine was far bigger, considering I'd married Justice behind Vic's back. I honestly didn't think Justice and I had sex. It felt like a lie the day I woke up with her naked and plastered to my side. Even though I was hung over, seeing her curled up next to me had felt like a lie.The only thing that made me believe I had sex with her had been the fact that there was evidence. My dick had very clearly been somewhere it shouldn’t have. It disgusted me to even remember how I had to go to the shower and wash the traces of what I’d done that night off of my body. I couldn’t tell Vic about that though. She already knew enough to be shattered by everything I put us through.

No matter what else happened to cause a strain in my relationship with Vic, I had cheated when she had always remained faithful. I had also kept the fact that something happened between Justice and me a secret. I was an asshole for ever throwing the secret nature of our relationship in Vic’s face, as if that was the worst problem we had. I was the problem. The shit I did when I was too jealous to handle a situation that Vic had been forced to watch on repeat for more than a year.

I didn’t know how to come back from this latest snafu either. After I couldn’t get ahold of Vic for a couple days, I went and sat my parents down and explained everything to them. Everything aside from who Justice was carrying on an affair with. That part I kept to myself, and not for the reasons Vic thought. It wasn’t about protecting Justice. It was about what I planned to do with that information.

I spentthe entire trip home stewing over Vic’s perspective on things. She was right about everything. What she had done in hiding our relationship paled in comparison to the bullshit I had put her through. It also paled in comparison to the crazy shit my wife pulled. The wife who now lived with me because her parents kicked her out when they found out about the surprise marriage and baby on the way. They told her if she was old enough to bemarried and expecting, she was damn sure adult enough to live with the husband who had knocked her up. She had nowhere else to go. As a result of our idiotic marriage, Justice was, for all intents and purposes, my problem - for now. She turned out to be bigger problem than I could have anticipated though.

Not only had she burned our prenup, stolen money from my safe, but she had blocked and rerouted my calls to and from Victoria. Her crimes had been adding up, and I’m sure she was careful to avoid swiping my phone in range of the cameras, so there was no proof of that shit.

“Hey, where were you?” My fucking fake ass wife called out as I came through the door.

The surprise came when I rounded the corner and noticed that she was wearing next to nothing, having gotten comfortable since we came back from lunch with my parents. My fake girlfriend- turned wife -wore a white, ribbed tank top with no bra and panties that barely covered her anywhere considering they were thongs.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I asked, not in the mood to put up with more bullshit. I hadn’t told her where I was off to when I dropped her off so quickly after our lunch, but there was no doubt she knew I went to go hunt down Victoria.

“What do you mean?” The faux innocence seemed out of pocket since she already knew I saw through her bullshit. While it might have once worked on me, there was no going back to her pretend fake nice and easy flirtatious girl next door persona. She was a fucking snake in the grass and not even one that camouflaged itself well.

The headache that built since I left Vic’s place started to throb even harder. It wasn’t her being deliberately obtuse with me that caused my head to pound. It was the realization that she’d been this way all along and I had failed to see what was right in front of me in the beginning. My priority hadalways been Vic. That was where I failed her too. I had glossed over everything else about our situation, including Justice’s neediness, while I tried to figure out how to get Vic to bring our relationship into the light. There was no going back with Vic, the secrets, or Justice’s bullshit.

“What the fuck are you wearing? You never dress like that around here.”

She shrugged. “We’ve been married long enough, lover. I figured it was time to spice up our relationship, especially since Vic seems to be done with you - finally.” She huffed out the last word as her eyes rolled. Like Vic had been the problem all along.

“No.”

“What do you mean, no?” Her hands went to her hips, which she jutted out in what was probably supposed to be an enticing gesture. It wasn’t.

“You thought I would bring Vic back and you planned for her to see you like this, huh?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice was clipped, but I could hear the annoyance in her denial. “I wasn’t feeling well and wanted to be comfortable. That’s all.”

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