Page 20 of Enemies, Lovers & A Valentine's Baby

My cold fingers clutch the slim metal of his phone, trembling slightly.

Seth and Sophie? It can’t be. This entire time, they—

I scroll through the emails, my mind struggling to process what my eyes are seeing. Emails going back and forth between them for months, professing their love for each other and how even when we get married, it didn’t mean that they couldn’t continue to do their favorite…I stop reading as my heart starts to pump at an unnatural rate.

He was going to get married to me in two weeks, and he’s cheating on me?

I force my stiff fingers to scroll to the end to get a better idea of when it began. Not like it’s going to make anything better, but—I need to know.

I decide to do a search under her name and come across an email a year ago from when she’d planned a Christmas party for his parents, and he’d given her his contact information.

My heart constricts as I read through the flirtatious emails and realize that the same night he’d proposed to me, he was planning on hooking up with her.

All I can do is sit there staring glassy eyed, until it registers through the haze that there will be no happily ever after for me.

The man I thought was in love with me was just an illusion.

A pained whimper slips past my lips and I press a fist to my chest as I feel my heart shattering into a million pieces.

It cracks.

The first teardrop slips.

The bathroom door opens and Seth steps out with a towel wrapped around his waist, ripped abs and chest on display.

“Babe, what were you saying?” he asks innocently, ruffling his wet hair with a towel. His eyes finally meet mine, taking in my tear-stained face, and then slither down to his phone in my hands.

By the time his eyes make it back up to mine, I know he knows just as much as I do that it’s over.

There isn’t going to be a wedding anymore.

Chapter 7

Too Much To Ask

Lila

Present Day

I pull up to Sue’s driveway, a box of drinks in my passenger seat. I take a deep breath thinking back to yesterday.

There wasn’t much I could say to console her. All I could do was hold her while she cried and promise that we would find a way to get to the truth of it.

Sue’s suspicions stirred up memories and emotions that I have buried away for almost a decade. I thought that I was over it all, but the burn in my chest and the knot in my stomach let me know that even now, I’m still affected by it.

I’ve spent my entire life romanticizing the idea of love. With parents like mine, it was impossible not to. Forty years of marriage, and they still look at each other like they’re the only two people in the world. They adore each other, and I spent my entire childhood bearing witness to that love.

I’ve always known that I wasn’t ever going to settle for anything less. I would never be able to be with a man who wasn’t completely and totally committed to me. I wasn’t the type to give just a little in love. It had to be my all, and that’s why it had to be with someone who would do the same for me.

I told myself I would wait. However long it took to find that man—or for him to find me, I would wait. Any man that could love me the way my father loves my mom is worth waiting for.

After Seth, I pretty much gave up on that idea. How could I not have seen the blinking signs? Was I so blinded by the idea of love that I couldn’t see what was so clearly in front of me? I laughed away his flirtatious nature. It was one of the things that attracted me to him in the first place. I chalked up his tendency to override my wants as him being the alpha male. I should want someone strong to lead our family, right? Even though I had the gentle guidance of my father as a role model, I found myself slowly falling into the trap of being less than. Believing that I would never be able to succeed on my own.

It took me five years to have my first date since the near wedding disaster, and I’ve had a few dates since, but nothing to write home about. My sister and Sue both say I’m scared of intimacy, and intentionally sabotaging my relationships before they get a chance to start. Maybe they’re right. My last attemptwas three years ago. Not exactly great for the whole baby making thing.

When Sue met Greg, I was ecstatic. It was a year after Seth, and their love refilled my love bucket and made me think that maybe my generation could be lucky in love too. That it wasn’t something that only happened in fairytales, and the old days.

It might seem crazy for me to not easily believe it, considering it happened to me too, but I see how Greg practically worships the ground she walks on, and who can blame him? She’s literally the perfect human being. Beautiful, caring, loving, her warmth lifting up anyone who’s lucky enough to be in her presence.

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