Read the Warning Label First

by B. M. Hardin

  She had to be talking about the wrong person.

  So, I flew her and Bryson back to Washington so that we could do it all face to face.

  Tristan didn’t know anything because I didn’t want him to try and avoid the confrontation.

  I wanted to catch him off guard.

  Hell, I wanted some answers and I wanted them now!

  With both of them in my car, I drove them to my house and to my surprise, Tristan wasn’t there.

  I called him in a hurry.

  “Hi, where are you?”

  “I’ll be home in just a second.”

  Seconds went by, hours went by, and still there was no Tristan.

  Where in the hell was he?

  Delilah and I basically sat there staring at each other.

  The only time either of us spoke was if we were talking to Bryson.

  There was nothing really that I wanted or needed to say to her.

  She’d said enough already, and I was just ready to get to the bottom of everything.

  Finally, he arrived and I waited for him to walk through the door.

  “Hey baby,” he said before he noticed Delilah.

  Once he saw her, Tristan completely froze.

  Oh hell no!

  He was the same one?

  Delilah stared at Tristan.

  Tristan stared back at her.

  Lord, please tell me that this isn’t happening!

  This just could not be happening!

  Tristan a rapist?

  Never!

  Tristan is Bryson’s father?

  Impossible!

  “Yes. That’s Tristan. The same Tristan that is my son’s father and the same Tristan that raped me,” Delilah said.

  “Raped you? Really Delilah? I didn’t rape you. You gave it to me. Just like you always did,” Tristan said in a tone of voice that was unfamiliar. His voice was as cold as ice.

  Tristan just stared at her, coldly, as if he was asking her what she was doing there. As if he didn’t understand her purpose for telling me the truth.

  As if he’d wanted to kill her.

  Delilah’s facial expression had changed as well.

  It wasn’t the face of a rape victim; in a way it looked as though she was amused or if she’d told the lie on him on purpose as a way of getting under his skin.

  Well, he’d admitted to knowing her, and having some kind of sex with her, so I guess she was right.

  “Tristan what is she talking about huh? So, it’s true? You have a son? You have a child? And by Delilah?”

  Tristan didn’t say anything for a while.

  He stood there. He just looked so damn evil that it was making me more and more uncomfortable.

  Finally, after what seemed like forever, he spoke.

  “Tori, I have six kids, by six different women.”

  What the hell did he just say?

  Delilah picked up Bryson and sat him on her lap.

  It was as if she’d expected things to get ugly. She knew my temper first hand so she must have known that I was liable to swing on him at any given time.

  “What do you mean you have six kids Tristan?”

  “Just what I said; I have six kids…total. Including him and including the one that my girlfriend just had last month. Oh, and I almost forgot about yours. So, I’ll have seven kids by seven different women.”

  What?

  Did he just say that his girlfriend just had a baby last month?

  He couldn’t have just said that.

  No, my husband hadn’t just said those words to me.

  This had to be a joke.

  Someone was playing a joke on me.

  I was feeling dizzy, so I sat down.

  Tristan just stood by the door and stared at me.

  I was at a loss for words, so eventually he spoke up again.

  “This was all so easy. I mean how could you not tell that this wasn’t what you thought that it was? Well, I guess stretching the whole thing out to over a year, must have been the key to making this all work. I mean surely after the whole house incident I thought that you were going to find me out or at least kick me to the curve but you didn’t. I played the part so well, and you believed me. Hell, you even believed her,” he said nodding at Delilah.

  She shook her head at me as though he was lying but something told me that he wasn’t.

  What’s going on here?

  “Not to mention that you believed my other girlfriend too,” Tristan said.

  What?

  His other girlfriend?

  So did he have two girlfriends?

  What was he talking about?

  “Believed who Tristan? The woman at your old house? The one that you said was sold by the bank? That was your girlfriend? How? She was married. I saw her husband and I saw her ring.”

  “You saw what you wanted to see. The husband that you thought you saw was George…her brother-in-law. She’s not married, at least not yet anyway. We were, are, going to get married once you divorce me though. But first I’m leaving with at least half of everything you have. One of those papers that you thought you signed, in regards to the laundromat, wasn’t what you thought it was. But you were too tired to read it. Basically, it says that if you divorced me, you agreed to pay me. Sorry, but I didn’t do all of this for nothing. But as for her ring, it was the ring that I’d given to you, or didn’t you notice? I borrowed it from her. I’m sure she’s going to want it back. You must didn’t look at it as well as you should have. She played it all off well didn’t she? And she was pregnant then, by me of course, but I guess you didn’t notice that either.” Tristan said.

  I wanted to cry but I couldn’t.

  It was so much to take in all at once and I felt as though my mind and my heart were about to explode.

  “The papers that you saw from the bank were fakes. Well, we did find a buyer for the house, but all of the second mortgage crap was a lie. All of the papers that you’d seen, I’d printed up. They were fakes Tori. In fact, every piece of paper that I’ve ever shown to you was more than likely a fake. My résumé was even a fake. I was never really coming there for a job. I never even really had a job. I haven’t worked in years; not a legit job that is. I’d been planning this for a while and when the position come open, I jumped at the opportunity to come in and make my move. Which I did and you fell for it. Why do you think I never answered the calls for the interview? I don’t have any of the qualifications and I have a criminal background that’s a mile long. Life has been rough for me,” Tristan said.

  I had to be dreaming.

  I looked down at the ring on my finger.

  I just had to be dreaming.

  This man was my husband, and he had become my best friend.

  This just could not be happening to me.

  I just didn’t understand why this was happening to me.

  “Why?” I shook my head in disbelief.

  “Because you were the only daughter of his that was available.”

  What?

  I looked at him confused.

  “Your father stole my mother from me. She left me and my father all alone and ran off and made a new family with your Pops without thinking twice about it. I was a young boy. I needed my mother. I was stuck there trying to take care of a dying man that treated me like a dog because of what she’d done to him. It was her job and she’d abandoned us. She completely forgot about me. I’ve never even heard from her or seen her since the day that she left. The last thing that she said to me was that she loved me…but she loved him more. How do you love someone else’s husband more than your own son? My mother wasn’t that type of woman. Your father changed her. He seduced her, brainwashed her and she left me behind because of him. So, someone had to pay. And you were the only option. I’ve known who you were all along. We belonged to the same church…remember? Then again, your mother was so strict on you girls that you wouldn’t have been able to look at me back then if I was standing right in your face. You had no idea who I was. An
d then I found out that you’d done quite well for yourself. You were making the big bucks and you were still single. Someone had to pay for your fathers’ actions. And I owed a lot of very bad people a whole lot of money. Thousands of dollars to be exact and they wanted what was due to them, so I had to make a move. They were going to kill me if I didn’t pay for the product that was taken when I was busted, so I had to come up with something quick. But you were different than most women. You had so many rules so it took time. It took effort. You weren’t as easy to manipulate like I’d hoped you would be. But other than to manipulate you out of money, the only other reason that I thought to marry you was in hopes that your father would show up and bring my mother with him. For years I’ve been dying to look them both in the face. While I was in prison, I’d learned a few secrets as to how to find people so I knew everything about them and should I say our younger brother; but we aren’t related. So, I proceeded with my plan. It’s your father’s fault that she hadn’t taken me. He hadn’t allowed her to take me with her. She could have at least taken me, her son, even if she didn’t love or want to be with my pops. But she didn’t. She made her choice. He was her choice. He was the wrong choice. In prison is where I really started following your career and learning a little about accounting, through reading, so that we could be on the same page with you. I had to be ready. You couldn’t have possibly thought that I really loved you, did you?”

  The sad thing was…I really did.

  I felt like all of this was just one, big nightmare that I couldn’t wake up from.

  There were so many thoughts running wild in my head.

  I was humiliated. I was disgusted.

  I felt used. But most importantly, I was heartbroken.

  How did I miss this?

  How could I have not seen any of the signs?

  Why hadn’t he come with a big, bright, red warning label that said: Danger!

  He was a liar, a cheater, a deadbeat, a manipulator, a felon and so much more.

  He was everything that I hated in a man and more!

  I had nothing to do with my father’s decisions, nor was I to blame for his mother’s actions or hadn’t he noticed that?

  The choices of my father and his mother affected us too. Hell, it drove my mother insane and it was part of the reason why I looked at men the way that I did.

  But as soon as I open my heart and let one in, this is the thanks that I get.

  Hell knows no fury like a woman scorned…you got that right!

  I didn’t look at Tristan or say another word.

  I’d heard all that I needed to hear and I didn’t need any other explanations.

  I stood to my feet and inched forward slowly.

  I was heading for the gun in the top of my closet in my shoebox.

  Little did he know---he was a dead man.

  I didn’t look back at him.

  I didn’t look at Delilah.

  I could hear Bryson crying and calling my name but I was on a mission.

  I felt as though I was having an out of body experience. It was as if I wasn’t walking at all, but more like I was floating.

  I was floating towards the bedroom, to get my gun to put a bullet in his head.

  The amount of hurt that I felt was so unreal.

  My heart was bruised, broken into a thousand small pieces.

  I felt as though I could barely breathe.

  It was obviously that I could barely walk because it was taking me all of five minutes to make my way down the hallway.

  I’d given him everything that I had and he’d used me, played me as if it was okay.

  Why would he do this to me?

  I had been nothing but good to him.

  I finally made it to my closet and I reached in the shoebox for the gun, only to find that it wasn’t there.

  Where did it go?

  Tristan must have found it, which meant that he had to be going through all of my things when I wasn’t there.

  There was no telling what else he’d found or what else he knew. I was sure he’d been through all of my personal belongings and papers and at this point, who knew what else he was up to.

  He’d mentioned getting half of my money but he was just as stupid as he looked.

  I hadn’t stepped out of our marriage and he didn’t have any rights to anything that I had but then again, who knows what he had put in the works.

  Who knows what that piece of paper said that he had me sign.

  But he wasn’t getting a damn thing from me.

  He would have to kill me first.

  Unable to think straight, I grabbed one of the unused golf clubs that I’d won in a raffle at work one year and headed back to the living room, this time in a hurry.

  But I was too late.

  He was gone.

  And so were Delilah and Bryson.

  She’d been playing me too?

  She hadn’t driven, so she had to have left with Tristan.

  What was her point of all the things that she’d said?

  What was her point for ratting out Tristan if she was just going to leave with him anyway?

  But he raped her right?

  Yeah right!

  She was up to no good just as much as he was and I’m sure that everything that she’d said had been one big lie.

  She had played a part in setting up this whole thing!

  I was willing to bet on it and Tristan made it clear that it was something about her that she’d been lying about.

  I grabbed my keys and phone and headed out the front door which they’d left standing wide open.

  I saw the bear that I’d given to baby Byron lying on the ground in the driveway, as if Tristan had thrown it out the driver’s side window.

  Speeding, I headed over to Tristan’s house that his so-called girlfriend was still living in but when I got there, the house was vacant and a big blue and white Sold sign was in the yard.

  That bastard!

  He’d been two steps ahead of me all of this time.

  I got out of my car with the club in my hand and headed toward the house anyway.

  Without thinking twice about it, I began to smash the windows of the house.

  I screamed with every swing that I took.

  How could this have happened to me?

  What had I done to deserve this?

  The neighbors started to come outside and that was my queue to get back into my car and leave.

  They chattered as I got into my car and drove away.

  It wasn’t until I’d been driving into circles for all of five minutes that I began to cry.

  I was so hurt.

  There were no words to express what I felt.

  How could someone be so cruel?

  He was my husband.

  He was supposed to love me.

  He was supposed to care about me. I trusted him and our entire relationship had been a lie.

  I stopped at a grocery store parking lot because my vision had become blurred by my tears and I just continued to cry.

  I rolled down the window and twisted the ring off of my finger. Without hesitation, I threw it and followed it until it hit hard against the pavement.

  I sat staring at it as the tears constantly flowed down my face.

  He’d given me another woman’s ring?

  Who in the hell does that to somebody!

  And how stupid was she to let him “borrow” a ring to fake-marry someone else?

  What the hell is wrong with these people?

  Tristan deserved to die for what he’d done to me.

  All of them deserved to die.

  Reaching for my phone, I dialed his number.

  I suddenly had the need to say a bunch of the things that I hadn’t been able to say back at the house.

  I waited for the phone to ring but instead I heard:

  “The number you have reached is no longer in service.”

  I pulled the phone away from my ear and called Delilah’s phone.

  An
d what do you know, I got the same message.

  This whole time she had been on his side.

  The whole time she had been helping Tristan to prepare to come into my life and ruin me.

  She had to have been the one to tell Tristan the type of men that I liked and their style.

  She had to have told him my must haves and my pet peeves.

  That’s why it was so easy for me to fall for him. That’s why he’d had me at hello because she’d already told him everything that he’d needed to know.

  I knew that she couldn’t be trusted but I had no idea that she would have done something like this.

  If I ever saw her again, things were going to get ugly. I promise she was going to wear a beat down that she would never forget.

  Angry at the world, I threw my phone out of the car window too.

  Pieces of it flew in every direction.

  Following the battery, my eyes wandered behind me and there I saw the car of the strange woman from the store and the coffee shop that day.

  She was still following me?

  You have got to be kidding me!

  Today was the wrong day for her to stalk me.

  And I was going to make sure that she knew it too.

  I opened the car door and got out with the golf club in my hand but a few steps in her direction and she started her car and drove off.

  Was she Tristan’s other girlfriend that he had mentioned?

  I screamed at the top of my lungs and the few shoppers that were outside, hurriedly placed their groceries into their cars and got the hell out of there.

  This by far was the worst day of my life.

  What I felt inside was the worst feeling that I’d ever felt.

  I wouldn’t wish this amount of pain on my worst enemy.

  The hurt just couldn’t be put into words.

  The betrayal that had just taken place was unreal.

  Suddenly, I thought about the baby that was growing inside of me.

  There was no way in hell that I was having this baby. I refused to have a child by the Devil.

  I wanted to start punching my stomach but my hand wouldn’t let me.

  I was just going to have to take care of it the regular way.

  Dropping the club and placing my hands on my head, I headed back to the car and got in.

  There were so many thoughts that were flooding my mind but there was only one feeling flooding my heart.