by Piper Rayne
“Since we have some time before everything starts, we need to discuss something. I was going to wait until tonight, but I can’t,” he says.
The pit that’s been in my belly since the topic of him relocating elsewhere came up, morphs into a crevice.
“You got an offer?” I ask, hoping I’m wrong. It’s not that I don’t want him to succeed in his career, but we need more time to see what this is before we make big decisions about our future together.
He nods toward the park a block away from the school and leads me over to a bench where we sit.
“Tell me, Reed.”
He sets our coffees down behind him on the bench, both of his hands taking mine in his. “I got an offer.”
My eyes burn, and my nose crinkles and that crevice turns into a gorge. “Of course you did.”
“It’s in New York,” he says.
“City?” I clarify although I already know. Of course, he could be the DA in New York City. How could I ever compete with that?
“Take it,” I tell him. I have to force the words out of my mouth. I know what it’s like to put your dreams on hold for a relationship and I can’t ask him to do that for me.
“Will you come?” he asks, with hope in his eyes.
“So, you’re going for sure? You’ve already made the decision?” My heart shatters, cracks and then splits into two.
“I don’t know. It’s a huge opportunity that will probably never come again. But this”—he motions between us—“I know is the real thing.”
I stand, and his hands drop to his lap. “You don’t know that. We’ve haven’t been together that long.”
He stands, too, and wraps his arms around me, his stubble pricking my cheeks. I lean in to his security. “Time isn’t an indicator of love.”
I rest my hands on his chest. It feels so safe in his arms, but the urge not to repeat past mistakes shouts its mantra in my head.
Protect yourself. Look out for yourself. You can do it on your own.
“Reed, I just got here and besides, I have my mom, Jade, and my schooling to consider. I gave up everything I was working toward for a man before and look where I ended up.”
He steps back, and my hands fall between us.
“I’m not Pete.” His eyes fill with an anger I’ve never seen from him before.
“I know, but you’ve got to see where I’m coming from.”
He steps forward again, taking my hands in his. “I know you’re scared. I know you’ve been hurt, but I’m not him. I’ll take care of you and Jade and your mom can come with us.”
I shake my head. “She won’t want to leave everybody and everything here. She’s spent a lifetime here. Otherwise, she would have just moved to L.A. in the first place.”
“Okay. Let’s just leave it on the table. They don’t need an answer until Wednesday. Just think about it.” Hope shines brightly in his eyes now and I have to glance away.
I don’t want to tell him, but no matter what, nothing will change. It’s either a long-distance relationship—which the thought of makes me want to throw up because I’ll never see him—or nothing. And a long-distance relationship would be even more difficult given the fact that my daughter is already having one of those with her father.
He wraps me in his arms and I close my eyes wondering how much longer I’ll have him here with me.
“Let’s get this carnival over with and we can discuss it more tonight when you’re at my house.”
I nod. I know it wasn’t Reed’s intention to put a dark cloud over today, but his news as wonderful as it is for him, makes me want to put on my pajamas, play sappy eighties love songs and cry over a tub of ice cream.
Because sooner or later, he’ll have to make a decision. And if he makes the right one, it means leaving me behind.
“You have every divorcee buying the tickets, so they can imagine it’s their ex’s car?” Pete comes up with Jade on his shoulders.
“Maybe you have aggression you’d like to get out,” I say, taking the tickets from a mom and handing her some protective eyewear. I set the clock for five minutes once she picks up her object of choice.
“Not on a car.” He glances at Reed, who’s talking to Helen.
“Give it a rest.”
“I heard a little rumor.” Pete lowers Jade off his shoulders and she runs over to Henry.
I follow her progress and Reed signals if it’s okay for Helen to take Jade and Henry inside the school. I nod.
“Don’t.” I hold my hand up, but Pete doesn’t listen, as per usual.
“Your boy is going to New York, huh?”
I shake my head, ignoring him, eyeing the clock and watching the woman go to town on the hood of the car with a hammer.
“You going to follow? Because you’ll need my permission to take Jade even farther away from me.” He crosses his arms with a smug look on his face.
“It’s none of your business.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Vic, Jade is my business. Where you go, Jade goes.”
He’s right. We both know it. I would need his permission to move Jade to New York. Tears well up in my eyes as the emotions I’ve been suppressing all afternoon rise to the surface, hitting me like a hurricane-force wind.
“Oh my God, just let it go right now! I will tell you if anything changes.”
“Hey.” Reed comes to my side, quickly appraising the situation—me about to break down in tears and Pete’s smug face. “Can’t you just give it a fucking rest?” he says to Pete. “You had your chance. You treated her like shit. She divorced you two years ago.”
They both take a step closer to one another.
“You’re going to have her uproot her entire life, so you can say you won?” Pete grinds out.
“What are you even talking about?” Reed asks, looking at him like he’s an idiot.
They’re chest to chest and I wiggle my hands in, trying to push on both of their chests to separate them. A crowd is forming around the perimeter of our little group.
“You’re pissed because you always wanted to compete with me. I got the girl, I got the family, and I make a shit-ton more money than you.” Pete laughs like Reed’s a joke.
“What are you talking about?” I ask Pete as I push on his chest.
“You think I’m playing a game?” Reed asks, cold fury in his voice.
“I think you threw yourself at her because you want to be able to hold it over me. Guess what? It worked. I want her back.”
The buzzer goes off and the woman comes over with a huge smile on her face and sweat beading down her forehead, handing me back the eyewear protection.
“Next,” I call out to keep things going, but Pete’s words ring in my ear. He wants me back?
No one comes up to take a turn because they’re all enthralled in Reed and Pete’s argument.
“I told you, three is a crowd,” one woman says to another and they laugh.
I roll my eyes.
“We were always in competition. Who got a better grade? That night, I stole Vic out from under your nose and you’ve never forgotten it.” Pete crosses his arms, a smug look on his face like he’s won the argument.
“I saw her first,” Reed fires back. “You may have spent the better part of a decade with her, but she was always mine. And you know it.”
The buzzer drops from my hands and they both look over at me.
“What?” I ask quietly.
Reed steps toward me, reaching out but I back step until I hit the metal barrier.
“No.” I shake my head, putting the eyewear in my hand on my face. “I’m some sort of prize in a sick game between you two?”
“No. That’s not it.” Reed fights for me to listen to him, but Pete stays in place, happy with what he’s accomplished.
I hit the timer, grab the baseball bat and a can of spray paint and push past the barrier toward the car.
Jumping on the roof, I swing the baseball bat down on the windshield, hitting it over and over again u
ntil it shatters. For the next five minutes, I stomp, hit, pound and generally go ballistic on the scrap of metal. My shitty marriage to Pete wham, Reed only being with me to get back at Pete wham, my feelings for Reed wham, the fact he’s leaving me wham...all the tension and emotion that’s been whirling around inside of me unleashes.
The buzzer goes off and I wipe the sweat from my brow before I pull out the can of spray paint. In big pink letters on the hood, I spell out what must come first. ME.
I drop the bat on the pavement and walk past Reed without a word. Everyone else is standing around like I’m Negan from The Walking Dead.
Haven’t they ever seen a woman let off a little steam before?
Chapter Thirty-Three
I’m not even to the street before Reed’s hand is clasping my arm.
“Hold up. Let me explain.”
I stop and turn, showing him my tear-stricken cheeks. There’s no more hiding how much this man means to me. How much what was said hurt me.
“Come here.” His arms tighten around me and I bury my head in his chest. “He’s making it sound bad, but it’s not. I promise.”
I look up at him, waiting for an explanation.
“Come.” He leads me to that same park again, sitting me on a swing this time. “He’s right on one thing. I saw you first. That night you met Pete, I was there.”
I try to remember him being there, but I was enamored with Pete immediately and I was in college and drinking, so the details are fuzzy.
He sits down in the swing next to me. His large body and the small swing gives him the illusion of a giant.
“I pointed you out, but you were having so much fun with your friends I didn’t want to be that douche who approached you and took you away from them. My eyes were on you the entire night. The more attention I drew to you, the more Pete was intrigued. I went to the bathroom and by the time I came back, you were talking to him and laughing at something he said. I paid my share of the tab to my other buddies and left.”
“Why didn’t you say any of this before?”
He looks at his feet digging a hole into the wood chips. “How does it sound?”
“Sounds like you had a reason to chase me.”
He raises his eyebrows. “That’s not why I’m dating you.”
A small smile creases my lips. “I know.” I do. Deep down I know Reed and he wouldn’t use someone to seek revenge on Pete.
“You do?” The chains creek as he turns the swing so he’s facing my direction. “Have I always been attracted you? Yes. Even when I shouldn’t have been? Yes. I like to think fate interceded and gave us a second chance. If I’d barged my way in there that night, Jade might never have been and she’s the true light in your eyes. As much as I was pissed at Pete and hated him asking me to stand up there to watch you marry him, it wasn’t for naught. It was for Jade. I’d never wish things were different.”
I lean forward and place my hands on his cheeks and plant a kiss on his lips. “You truly are a prince.”
“I only want to be your prince.”
I sit back, twisting the swing.
“Vic?”
I have to do what’s right. “You have to go to New York.”
He shakes his head and I nod mine.
“You do. You have to do it for yourself. You’re right, I have Jade. Reed, you’re something out of a fairy tale. As selfishly as I want to keep you in Chicago with me or pack up Jade and move to New York...I can’t. I know you’re not Pete, I do. But I can’t give up on myself. This time around I have to pick me. I choose me.”
He exhales a long, ragged breath.
“I’ll support you. We’ll do long distance until your graduate. We’ll spend the summer getting Jade acquainted. You can search for a job. It won’t be like it was with Pete. I’m your biggest supporter. You can have your independence and me. I promise.”
Tears burn in the corner of my eyes and I do my best to keep the tears from falling. “I can’t.”
He stops fighting for a moment though I know the lawyer in him is thinking up his next argument and it’s only a matter of time. He wants to win this case and I wish he could, too, but he needs to go to New York and I need to stay here. There’s no way around it.
“We could do long distance. I can fly back every weekend,” he says, desperation in his voice.
“That’s not a relationship, you know that. Even when you do come back, I’ll have Jade with me every weekend.”
“Why are you fighting this?” he stands up, pacing in front of me, threading his hands through his hair.
“I told you, I need to choose myself and you should do the same.”
He falls to his knees in front of me, wood chips flying, his hands resting on my thighs. “I’ve fallen in love with you, Victoria. Can’t you see that? I love you and I want you in my life.”
My hand runs down his cheek. “You want me in your life on your terms.”
His head drops to my lap and my fingers thread through his hair one more time, attempting to memorize the sensation since it may be the last time I get to do this. He stands up again without warning, the adoring expression he usually bears while around me gone. “I’m constantly being punished because of him.”
“That’s not it.”
“It is. You can’t open up and let happiness in, even when it’s the real thing because of everything he put you through.” He’s back to pacing, with each step taken farther from me.
“I can’t go to New York and leave my entire life behind.” My eyes burn as the tears finally escape and roll like a river down my face.
“That’s just an excuse. New York is your way of pushing me away again. Fine”—his hands fly up in the air—“you win. I fold.” His expression slices me open, flays me and opens all my wounds for his inspection. “Bye, Victoria.”
His back hunches as he walks away in the direction of where his car is parked. I watch him climb in and drive off. He doesn’t squeal his tires, or stick up his middle finger, but just as easily as he walked back into my life, he leaves it yet again.
Chapter Thirty-Four
The next day, I’m in a taxi with Pete and Jade. Jade wanted to spend as much time with her dad as possible, so I agreed that we’d go with him to the airport. Ok, so it was partly so I could make sure he actually got on the plane.
“I’m going to miss you, Daddy.” Jade nuzzles into her dad.
He kisses her head. “I’m going to miss you too, but I’ll be back soon. Promise.” His eyes glance over her head to me. “Maybe you can come out this summer.”
“And play at the beach?”
“Yeah.” He raises his eyebrows.
I look out the window not answering him. He’ll fight me if he really wants her, but as soon as he’s back in his office, his attention will be consumed, so there’s a chance it won’t happen anyway.
The taxi pulls up to the curb at the airport and we all climb out, Pete paying.
“This is where we say goodbye, Bug.” My hands slide down her long hair, fisting it in a ponytail and releasing it.
“Can’t we go in with him?” she whines.
“They won’t let us past security.”
She pouts. Pete grabs his bag out of the trunk and sets it on the curb, then crouches down with his arms out. “I’ll miss you, Bug,” he says, holding her tight.
I have no idea how he does it. How he’s able to leave her for months at a time. Our situation sucks, but how can he not have a more active role?
His eyes close and then open. “Be good for Mommy,” he says, his voice quivering.
“I will.” He stands up and Jade comes to my side.
“Get your hair done or something,” he says to me, a crack of a smirk on his face. He’s testing the waters.
“Use that gym membership,” I say back.
We hug, patting each other’s backs and keeping at least five inches between our lower regions. It makes Jade happy to see us gracious to one another.
“I’m sorry,” he whis
pers.
Pulling back, I nod, tears pooling in my eyes. It’s the second time he’s apologized since everything went down. Not only for arguing with Reed, but for saying he still wanted me. Apparently two minutes after it flew out of his mouth he realized how ridiculous that was. So, he’s not a complete idiot.
Jade and I watch Pete go through the sliding doors, one last wave in our direction before the crowd swallows him up from sight.
Jade hugs my leg, tears free falling down her cheeks.
“Oh, Bug,” I say, the tears I was holding back, finding their release.
As we get back in the taxi, we each cry for two very different men who mean the world to us.
The next Monday, my heart is my throat until I drop off Jade and see Ned walking Henry up to the door.
Darcie and Georgia side-eye me but don’t approach. It doesn’t escape me that in their minds I went from two men to none. Not that what they think of me is high on my list of things to get me down.
I hug Jade, tighter than I usually do and head toward the train. By the time I get to work, I’m ten minutes late because of a train delay.
“You’re late,” Chelsea says, placing a coffee on my desk with a muffin.
I take off my coat, hanging it up and taking my bags to my desk.
“You didn’t have to.” I motion to the coffee and muffin.
“You’re my girl and I know you’re hurting. Carbs make people happy.” She smiles sitting down in front of my desk. “I hate to ask, but the steak…”
“Packing his stuff for New York is my guess.”
She nods, biting her lip. “Do you not want to talk about it?”
I shake my head and pray I don’t cry at my desk.
“Okay.” She stands and disappears into her office.
I type in my password and a lone tear slips because I stupidly put hottiereed as my password. I lift my notepad to write down the messages from the weekend to see a folded-up Post-it note stuck to my desk.
You’re a very dirty girl, but I’ll totally lick you clean.
