Page 45 of The Baby Behind Their Marriage Merger

Addi’s mouth fell open. Well, that was one mystery solved. ‘The greedy pig!’

Lex nodded her agreement. ‘So, we have a custody hearing the day after tomorrow, and Joelle will be there. Cole and Storm will join us and, if we show a united front, Thandi doesn’t think the judge will give Joelle custody.’

A united front...not quite. Jude wouldn’t be there. She hadn’t seen or spoken to him in more than a week, and instead of coming to terms with losing him each day seemed bleaker than the one before. A cold front kept rolling through her soul.

She felt her throat clog with tears and swallowed them down. She’d cried enough but, despite telling herself she was done, more tears rose to the surface.

‘Oh, Ads,’ Lex murmured, wiping away Addi’s tears with the tips of her fingers and pulling her into her arms. ‘It’ll get better, babe, I promise.’

The thing was, Addi thought as she sobbed into Lex’s neck, she really didn’t think it would.

Day nine, still no improvement. He still felt utterly miserable, completely shell-shocked.

Jude stood in his living room at his house in Franschhoek—he hadn’t left his house since driving from Addi’s house—and rested his forearm above his head, the glass cold beneath the fabric of his sweatshirt.

Night had rolled into the valley hours before and, by the light of the weak moon, he could see the outline of the jagged mountains just a few kilometres away. His heart felt equally jagged. It was almost as if it was struggling to pump blood around his body.

He’d thought he understood what heartbreak was, and had assumed he’d experienced all the lows a person could sink to. It was mortifying to realise he hadn’t been even close to complete devastation.

He was now.

Back then, his heart had been dinged, but it had been his ego that had taken the biggest beating with Marina, and it had been smacked around again when Jane had sold him out. But he’d never once felt as though he was scrambling to find his feet in the seventeenth level of hell.

He missed Addi. No, saying that he simply missed her was like calling a nuclear missile a BB gun. This went beyond ‘missing’...

Jude picked up his wine glass, sat on the edge of the leather couch and stared into his unlit fireplace. The truth was staring him in the face, demanding his attention, and he had to face it at some point. He couldn’t possibly feel any worse than he did.

He’d messed up at various times, and with different results, but he’d kept blundering in, not thinking about what he was doing, saying or thinking, and hoping he’d emerge with nothing more than a slap on the wrist. That ended, right now.

He needed to up his game, and there was no option but for him to become a better man. A man worthy of someone as strong and special as Addi.

He rested his wine glass against his forehead. He’d had all the advantages of money and power, and had been spoiled rotten from the day he’d been born—yes, sure, he’d lost his parents, but he’d had the opportunity to attend an amazing school and get a stellar education. He’d had a ton of friends and girls had loved him. He’d led a very privileged life.

Sure, Marina had scammed him, but he’d been young and in love. Sure, she’d made a fool of him, but so what? And had she,really? Even at nineteen, he’d stuck by her, showing her far more loyalty than she’d deserved. He’d believed in her, believed what she told him. Surely he deserved praise for his loyalty?

And maybe it was time to put Marina, and that incident, in perspective. He’d been young, idealistic and she’d been older and skilled at the con. But nobody had died, and it had only been his and his grandfather’s pride and ego—and a small portion of his heart—that had been hurt.

Instead of looking at the situation and brushing it off, he’d spent too many years nurturing the pain, giving it and his grandfather’s mockery far more power than they deserved. He’d given that year of his life far too much importance, and too much mental energy. And, as a result, he’d started to believe that love was dangerous, that women couldn’t be trusted.

Jane, and the humiliation of having his story appear in the papers, had reinforced that notion and scoured his soul even further, allowing cynicism and distrust to settle in, to flourish. Instead of responding to the newspaper articles with a laugh and shrugging his shoulders, telling the press that he’d been young and an idiot, his horrified and embarrassed response had made it a far juicier story than it had ever needed to be.

He, and old Bartholomew, had been the kings of the overreaction.

Marina had been a con artist, and Jane had been nasty, but that didn’t follow that every woman was.

Addi certainly wasn’t. She was a straight shooter, brave beyond belief, independent and feisty. She’d taken the knocks life had handed her without letting herself be knocked out. She’d simply stood up and kept fighting.

She was the bravest woman he knew.

From the moment she’d been small, she’d stepped up to the plate to look after her sister, to try and keep their ragtag family together. She’d worked her tail off to get her degree and, when she’d had the world at her feet, she’d sacrificed her freedom—financial and social—to take in her sisters.

Whether it was hard or not, Addi did what was right. She had more character and integrity than anyone he’d encountered before. She was the best person he knew...

And, for some reason, she loved him. And that was the biggest miracle of all.

She deserved far more from him than to keep their marriage secret and their affair under wraps. Far, far more. Miracles, love and second chances at happiness didn’t come around all that often and he was pretty sure that he was running out of opportunities and second, or third, chances.

Maybe it was time he stopped moping and starteddoing.

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