Page 126 of Ordinary Secrets

Trey follows me. “What are you doing?”

I don’t answer him. Speaking feels like it’ll break me, and it’s taking all my strength to keep myself from crying right now. On the kitchen floor is my purse with all my things still scattered everywhere. Frantically, I thrust everything back where it belongs, then I dig my keys out as I rush to the front door.

Trey grabs me by my waist the second I touch the doorknob. He spins me around. “Where are you going?”

I knock his arms away. “Home.”

“Youarehome,” he says so firmly, it almost makes the hurt evaporate.Almost.His house feels more like home than my ownapartment—only because he’s here. It doesn’t feel like home right now though. Not when he’s looking at me like I’ve betrayed him. If he really thinks I’d do such a thing, he doesn’t know me at all.

“I’m leaving, Trey. Call me when you?—”

He snatches the keys from me and shoves them into his pocket. “No.”

Oh, god.It’s like I’m watching a rerun of my episodes with Nathan. When I wasn’t marked up, he’d let me leave, knowing I’d come back eventually. When I was bruised, he’d take my car keys and lock me in the bedroom like a prisoner.

On the outside, this may look like the same situation, but on the inside, it doesn’t feel the same. Nathan forced me to stay because he was afraid someone would see the fresh wounds. Trey wants me to stay because... well, I don’t know. The anguish in his eyes tells me he’s hurt, but I did nothing to hurt him.

Okay, maybe I should have told him the moment I found out, but that was my only mistake. I don’t even understand how this happened. Trey only came inside me once, I’m on birth control, I took a Plan B pill the next morning, and we’ve been safe ever since. The odds of getting pregnant were like .001%. I don’t even get a regular period. With my birth control, I get a period, like, three times a year. How was my uterus able to produce life? It doesn’t make any sense.

Angry at this entire situation, I swing the door open and stomp out, slamming it behind me. It’s not until my bare feet hit Trey’s driveway that I realize I’ve left without shoes on. How far am I going to get without a vehicle or shoes?

I wipe the wetness from my cheeks as I hurry down the sidewalk. Apparently, I’ve decided that trudging around barefoot without a destination is better than being in there with my heated boyfriend who thinks I cheated on him.

I’m already past his neighbor’s house when the front door reopens.

“Arella!” Footsteps come running after me. It’s not long before he’s caught up. His breaths are heavy.

I expect him to yell at me. To smack me for disobeying him, or to call me names because I “wasn’t listening.” Instead, he takes one look at the tears rolling down my cheeks, then crushes me against his firm chest.

I attempt to push him off, but it only makes him squeeze me tighter. I’m too weak to shove him away, because I want this too. Nathan never chased after me. Some nights, I’d walk around for hours before finally coming back to find himstilldrinking,stillangry, andstillaggressive. All I ever wanted was for him to be sorry and for me to matter to him. I never did.

I matter to Trey though. I can tell by the way he’s holding me as if I’m the only thing that’severmattered to him. I sob into his shirt as he buries his face in my hair.

“Arella,” he says, all choked up. “Please don’t leave me. We can figure this out, okay? Just don’t leave me.”

38

TREY

If I wasn’t perplexedby this woman before, I am now. She’s a good liar. If I didn’t know any better, I’d believe her. But I do know better, and at the end of the day, it’s her word against biology. Believing her is like believing she can get pregnant from watching porn. It’s just impossible.

After I convince her not to leave, I carry her back into the house. The second I return her feet to the carpet, she runs and locks herself in the bedroom—ourbedroom—the one we’ve been making love in almost every night for weeks. Something I thought we were doing with only each other.

To give her some time alone, I pace the kitchen where my panic first started. My mind hasn’t stopped feeling chaotic since I saw those brochures fall out of her purse. I can’t wrap my head around the idea that she let another man put his grubby little raccoon hands all over her. The knots in my chest tighten just thinking about it.

When did she even find the time?When she’s not with me, she’s either at work or with Javina. I guess, now that I think about it, I don’t have any proof that she’s at work or with Javina when she says she is. She could have been sneaking off to see another guy this whole time.

Maybe this is why she refuses to move to Paris with me—why she didn’t even consider it. She didn’t want to leavehimbehind. What’s he got that’s so special? What am I missing that made her turn to someone else to fill that void? Maybe I should have?—

No. I can’t do this.I can’t spiral down a hole of self-pitying thoughts right now. Not while I’ve got a woman in my bedroom who’s crying her eyes out. No matter what she did, I still care deeply about her, and I’ll do whatever it takes to make this right.

Lightly, I knock on our bedroom door. Again,our.

Nothing happens.

I knock again.

“It’s unlocked,” says a sniffling voice.

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