Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
GRIFFIN
“It’s none of your business, Theo!” I yelled over my shoulder, the manila envelope slapping my thigh as I strode to the driver’s side of James’s truck. Theo had been nice enough to let me stay with him since Jules left. But his nosiness was getting on my nerves. “Please leave me alone.”
“No, I won’t!” he shouted from the back porch stairs. “I won’t let you do this. You’re going to find out the truth, and then you’ll regret it.”
I turned and shook the envelope in the air. “It’s too late, okay? You can stop giving yourself an aneurysm because they’re already signed.”
Theo’s mouth fell open like he couldn’t believe I’d actually done it.
Believe it, bro.
All I had to do was drive over to Uncle Holden’s and hand him the divorce papers. He said he’d take it from there. Two weeks from now, this nightmare would be over.
I climbed in and locked the door behind me, in case Theo got any bright ideas. From the fire in his eyes, he already had. Yup. When I revved the engine, he came off those stairs like I’d declared war, charging straight for the truck.
I threw it into reverse and gunned it, assuming he wouldn’t mess with a moving vehicle.
I assumed wrong.
As I shifted into drive and hit the gas, he dove onto the hood. Spread-eagled, his cheek smashed against the windshield, he gave me a clean shot straight up his left nostril.
“Are you stupid?” I yelled, slamming on the brakes.
Apparently, I was the stupid one. The momentum sent him flying through the air and onto the grass, where he lay face down, completely still.
I jammed the truck into park, jumped out, and sprinted over.
I dropped to a squat next to him. “Theo, are you okay?” I asked, panicked.
Sometimes, I forgot that while Theo was ninety percent computer nerd, he was ten percent Jiu-Jitsu black belt.
In a flash, his legs scissored around mine, and—wham!
—I was on the ground. He kicked up, landing on both feet, while I groaned and rolled onto my back.
Which, in hindsight, was the dumbest thing I could’ve done.
He whipped his dark hair out of his eyes and looked down at me. “I apologize in advance for what I’m about to do, but it’s for your own good.” Then, for the second time in less than a month, I got kicked in my manhood.
Lucky for him, I’d learned my lesson last time and covered myself. His heel crunched the bones in my hand, and I screamed a swear word my Grandma Lisa probably heard half a mile away.
“I’m gonna kill you!” I rolled over, pushing up to my hands and knees.
Theo shrieked and bolted for the truck. Once inside, he slapped the lock down, his brown eyes wide with fear.
“Let me in!” I pounded on the window.
“No! I won’t let you do something you’ll regret.” Tongue poking out, he popped the clasp on the envelope like he was opening a birthday card instead of my only shot at freedom. Once he had the papers out, we locked eyes. Oh, I did not like that look.
“Don’t you do it.” I leveled a finger at him through the glass.
Jules had already signed those papers. If he ripped them up, I’d have to hunt her down and get her to sign new ones. And I didn’t want to see her any more than she wanted to see me.
She didn’t want to see anyone. In the past two weeks, since the news of her dark extracurricular activities broke, not only had she made no attempt to contact me or any of my family, but she’d also deleted all of her social media.
So yeah, I blame what happened next on pure panic.
I grabbed the sledgehammer out of the truck bed, hauled back, and swung at the driver’s side window. Theo screamed like he was being murdered as the hammer hit—THUD. KRRACK—the glass exploded into a spiderweb of fractures racing in every direction.
I swore, annoyed it hadn’t shattered—stupid safety glass—and hit it again. Which elicited more screams from Theo. But this time, I created a hole big enough to reach through.
I unlocked the door and pulled it open, blood dripping off my hand. “Give me the papers.” I wiped glass off the seat.
Theo gaped like I was possessed. And yet, he still wouldn’t back down. “No.” He bridged his hips up, jammed the papers down the front of his pants, and sat back down. “I don’t care what you do to me. Kill me if you want.”
I sat on the seat and shut the door, more glass falling onto my lap. I needed to breathe, or I was going to kill him. And though I couldn’t feel an ounce of it at the moment, I reminded myself that I loved Theo.
My head dropped to the steering wheel, and I did the relaxation breathing my mom taught in her flexibility class. Four counts in, eight counts out.
Screw that.
As quick as he’d been on the grass, I drew back and sucker punched him right in the center of his sternum. While he gasped for air, I ripped the papers out of his pants.
He moaned and groaned—making a big show of it—but I didn’t let it slow me down. I threw the truck into drive and smashed down the gas, gravel shooting out behind us.
“Griff, stop.” He winced. “You can’t do this.”
“Why do you care so freaking much?” I snapped as our tires screeched onto the blacktop of the back road.
Sitting on his front porch in this bitter cold weather, BJ Shumaker, Theo’s neighbor across the street, threw his hand up like, Are y’all crazy?
Why yes, BJ, yes, we are.
“Because I do,” Theo said. “Because I love you, and Juliette loves you, and I know she wanted the divorce at first, but she was just hurting because you left.” His hands were moving as fast as his mouth. “She doesn’t have a family, Griff. We’re it. If you divorce her, who does she have? No one.”
“Theo,” I breathed. “Juliette doesn’t love me. If she did, don’t you think she would’ve tried to contact me in the past two weeks?” I smacked the steering wheel. “And she’s a freaking hooker. I can’t be married to that.”
“You don’t know that—”
“I do!” I shouted, at my wits’ end. “Liam was there!”
“She’s scared.” He tried a different angle. “That’s why she hasn’t contacted you. In time, when things calm down, she’ll come back, and she’ll tell you everything—and you’ll find out it isn’t what you think. She will. She has to.”
“She won’t! Gah! Man, why can’t you leave it alone? I need out. Don’t you understand that? I can’t be married to her.”
The wind whipped across my face, numbing my cheeks. It felt good. Now if only I could figure out how to make my heart go numb.
“Why not?” Theo asked. “People can change. People can turn things around. Duprees believe in that.”
“Please… stop.” I exhaled slowly, my chest aching like it was carrying something that wouldn’t fit.
Since the news broke, one thought had plagued me every day: I don’t know how I’ll ever be happy again.
Finding out Jules wasn’t what I thought she was, and that possibly she’d never wanted me at all?
I didn’t know how I was even walking around anymore, lungs still functioning, heart still beating, like I wasn’t dying one breath, one heartbeat at a time.
“I-I can’t handle it, okay?” My voice shook. “If you care about me like you say you do, you’ll just… you’ll stop.”
We rode the rest of the way in silence. But the closer we got to Dupree Ranch, the more Theo squirmed. I had no idea why. Maybe that’s what he did when he was cold?
But when we drove under the big metal sign, I found out exactly why.
“Jules is pregnant,” he blurted.
I smashed the brakes, lungs clamped in a vise.
We looked at each other, holding our breath. Me, because, well… what the heck? And him because he was probably afraid I was going to deck him.
Was he telling the truth or making it up to stop me?
Theo wouldn’t do that. Even if he’d been adopted into the family, he believed in the Dupree Creed more than anyone. And the first rule was: Duprees never, ever lie.
“You better be telling the truth,” I growled anyway.
“Would I make that up?” he asked.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He deflated against the seat like he hated himself for cracking. “I wasn’t supposed to say anything. She wanted to tell you right after you got home from the game. She’s thirteen weeks. Barely out of the first trimester.”
Stupidly, like the weak-willed sucker I was, I felt hope.
Hope that it was true. Hope that he was right and there was some other explanation for what Liam had seen.
Hope that if she was pregnant, it would bring her back.
I don’t know why. It wasn’t like I could be with a woman who would do what she’d done.
No more of this.
I had to cut the line. I couldn’t afford to hope.
But she’s pregnant.
Even if Jules was the biggest fraud who ever lived, I couldn’t help it; I pictured a baby. A little boy. With our red hair, chubby cheeks, and a dimple.
I pressed my palms into my eyes. “How long has she known?”
“Two months,” he said. Which, when I calculated it, was about right.
I sat up, jaw rolling. “How long have you known?”
“I figured it out a month later. She was crying at everything, and I mean everything. At first, I thought she was just emotional because you’d left—and I think that was part of it.
But when I picked up the dinner she’d ordered from Lucy’s one night, and they’d forgotten to add mushrooms to her pepperoni pizza, and she had a literal breakdown—sobbing, wailing, snot running out of her nose—I knew. ”
“Seriously?” I stared at him. “I can’t believe you didn’t say something.”
“She asked me not to. She didn’t want the baby to be the reason you came back. She wanted to know that if you came, you did it because you loved her, not out of duty.”
“So she was planning to divorce me, knowing she was pregnant.” I stared out at the ranch. “Unbelievable. It’s probably not even mine. Or maybe it’s just another lie. For all you know, she’s not pregnant at all.”
“Don’t do that. She’s pregnant, Griff. Why would she make that up and then not tell you? And it’s yours. It has to be—her due date is July 7th. Which means she got pregnant when you were here for Sage’s funeral.” Theo’s eyes turned down. “She’s hoping it’s a boy so you can name him Weston.”
I sank into the seat, my head falling back, as I closed my eyes.
My wife, who was likely a professional ho and secretly wished she’d married my cousin and former best friend, had vanished like she’d been raptured and I’d been left behind.
Because apparently that’s something people can do when things get inconvenient. And she was pregnant with my baby?
Somebody just cut my heart out with a rusty spoon. I couldn’t take any more.
Theo faced me. “That’s why she was so adamant about staying. She fell in love with all of us and wanted Weston—or baby girl—to grow up around cousins. Because she never had that. I’m sure she wanted to keep the baby safe, away from DayGlow, too.”
He went quiet for a couple of minutes, letting me process. I didn’t know what to do with this information. Especially now that Jules had disappeared. What if she never came back, and I never got to raise my kid?
The anxiety that thought brought on was worse than the pain of losing her.
“Just… maybe… give her a little more time,” Theo whispered. “Maybe just a few weeks?”
I let out a long breath, sat up, and put the truck in reverse.