THIRTY-NINE | Heartbreak | Tinsley
THIRTY-NINE
Heartbreak
Tinsley
A beeping sound woke me up with a slight pain in my head. Over and over, the noise kept going while I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t stop. I tried to open my heavy eyelids, and I blinked several times. The pain in my brain intensified while my vision appeared blurry and black dots met my eyesight. I pressed my hand to my aching forehead and groaned at the pain. In front of me, there was some movement happening.
Someone was in a chair... I think?
“Who is there?” I whispered in a scratchy throat and coughed.
There was something on my finger with a wire, and my perception grew clearer. It was dark with a bit of light peeking in through a slit in the curtains and the shadowy figure moved from their seated position. The person inched closer as I squinted and made out half of the face who hadn’t answered my question as they stepped into the light.
“Mitt?” I questioned as my hands pushed me up into a half-seated position. “Where am I?”
He didn’t answer. The silence from him was unbearable along with the constant beeping of... A monitor? Was I hooked up to a machine checking my vitals?
Mitt finally answered. “You’re in the hospital, Tinsley.”
“What? I don’t—”
He interrupted, “You have a concussion. You might not remember much.”
“How? What happened to me?” I questioned as I peered down at my body with cuts and fresh bruises.
“There was an explosion,” Mitt responded briefly in a hard tone.
I shuddered. “Explosion?”
Suddenly, I remembered being outside Morgan Estates, ready to leave to meet Mitt at his office for a romantic evening. There were bright flashes of light, and I was hot. The temperature rose to the point I felt I’d burn alive, but there was Mitt’s face with his soft hazel eyes and a dashingly handsome grin on his face. More kind than the face before me, which was hard, emotionless, and unreadable.
“The limousine I sent to pick you up blew up outside of the mansion,” Mitt answered with a careless shrug of his shoulders. “The vehicle must’ve malfunctioned. Police are investigating.”
Everything came back to me in bits and pieces, all jumbled together in my need. I remembered my past movements leading up to me ending up in a hospital bed. Hurt, in a great deal of pain, and lost. Nothing made sense.
“But why didn’t you warn me the limousine driver was coming to pick me up?” I asked with confusion.
“I simply never thought it would matter. I own you, remember?” Mitt replied as he stepped closer and held something in his hand. “You’re my wife. If I send a driver to get you, you get in. If I need you at my office, I expect you there.”
“I was going to show up.”
“Were you?” Mitt asked with an edginess in his voice as he knelt at my bedside and peered into my eyes. “Because you didn’t listen. Again.”
“Christ! Give me a break, Mitt! I was a little busy, almost getting blown up,” I said in disbelief.
“See? That’s just it, angel, you didn’t get in,” Mitt breathed as he brushed hair from my eyes and tucked the strands behind my ear. “Such a defiant wife when you want to be, and that’s why I got these papers drawn up.”
Mitt placed papers on my lap, and I reached for them to read the print. Nothing sunk in until I read further and understood what this meant. Mitt wanted a divorce. He had finally come to terms with me forcing his hand when I hadn’t even been trying. I had given up and wanted to be with him. Everything had changed after the kindness he had shown me, and I knew deep down the man I had first met was the real Mitt Morgan. Not this stone-cold, bitter man who had come out of his dark shell.
Why?
“I’m not giving you a divorce, Mitt,” I answered with certainty. “Because I love you.”
There was a long pause.
The most painful moment of my entire life after I had laid my heart out on the line and waited for my husband to admit he loved me, too. I knew he did; he had to. I couldn’t be the only one who felt the connection between us on top of the desire waiting for us to collide our worlds into one blazing inferno.
Mitt whispered hoarsely, “I don’t love you.”
“I don’t believe you,” I answered with certainty.
Mitt grunted. He swallowed hard and cracked his neck, followed by him grinding his teeth together. I had put him on edge, but I was good at that. I wasn’t about to back down when I knew the truth. Mitt Morgan loved me, he’d do anything for me.
Right?
“This is what you wanted, angel. Here’s your chance to be free,” Mitt said as he clicked a pen and held it out for me. “You mean nothing to me, and you never will, especially when you refuse to listen. I don’t need you. Sign the damn papers.”
Wrong.
Tears burned my eyes, and I whispered with hurt, “What happened?”
“Nothing,” he huffed as he stood up and turned his back to me.
“Did your father say something to you? Did he—”
“No,” Mitt snapped.
“Then tell me what happened,” I pleaded with Mitt as I pushed the bed sheets away and carefully swung my bare feet to the cool floor. “We made love, and you changed back into the man I always knew was inside of you. You even wanted...”
A baby.
The words left me because the thought of a child was so far away. We were right back where we started, and the idea of a family was disappearing into thin air. Our future together hung by a loose thread while Mitt threatened to cut it with scissors. Snip everything away. Only he couldn’t because a baby could be growing in my womb right at this second.
“There won’t be a child,” Mitt hissed as he turned around to face me with dark, hooded, unreadable eyes.
I reached out, took his hand and guided his palm to lie flat on my abdomen. “But we might already be expecting.”
Mitt’s eyes shot down toward my belly as his hand moved on its own, and he rubbed the tender spot. He was careful, gentle, and sweet. His body language had completely changed and for a moment in time, I thought everything would be okay, but he tore his hand away. I gasped from the shock of his mean disregard and how he acted as if he couldn’t stand touching me. Except this wasn’t an act. The man I loved was vanishing before my eyes.
“If you’re expecting a child, I’ll pay to support it .” Mitt glared at me, and I winced at the word it . “But nothing more. I want nothing to do with the pregnancy because I don’t want you. It was just sex, Tinsley, and I’d do anything to get in your pants, but you were fucking willing, Wife.”
I slapped him.
The force of my hand caused Mitt’s face to be thrown to the side, and my lower lip trembled. He huffed as he slowly turned to stare me right in the face and all my heart did was ache for the man I knew was gone. Mitt had degraded me again. Used me in the worst way possible and I had let him. Disrespected, embarrassed, and heartbroken, I wanted him to experience the pain searing through me. I wanted him to hurt as badly as I was.
“Fuck you, Mitt Morgan. You’re nothing but a cold, calculated, and ruthless asshole. No better than your abusive father,” I hissed with disgust.
A moment of silence.
“I’m glad we can agree,” Mitt said as he turned his back to me and glanced over his shoulder. “Sign the divorce papers, Tinsley. You got your freedom.”
Mitt left me. He took off without turning back and sobs of loss broke out through me as I shook with anguish. I couldn’t stop the convulsions because the grief of the love I had lost was still there. I loved my husband, and I didn’t want this to end. He was my everything, but I meant nothing to him. I never had, and the sooner I came to grips with the fact he was never mine to begin with, the better.
I grabbed the pen from the bed with a shaky hand and tried to read over the fine print, but tears kept getting in my way. My vision was blurry as wetness streamed down my face and onto the paperwork Mitt wanted me to fill out. Everything was wrong, nothing was right. Yesterday was a far step away, and I’d love to relive those moments for the rest of my life. Even if those memories were all fake, I’d be with him all over again. Hopelessly in love, a feeling I could get used to instead of this gut-wrenching pain.
“Tinsley?”
It was Holly. She was standing in the room with wrinkles of concern across her forehead, and my heart hurt. Everything ached from barely escaping with my life and Mitt turning back into the asshole he had always been.
“Mitt wants a divorce, Holly,” I whispered through trembling lips. “I got my damn wish, and now all I want is my husband.”
“Oh, sweetie,” Holly said, as she rushed toward me with open arms.
I threw the paperwork down onto the bed, dropping the pen, and I let Holly rock me in her embrace. She held me tight as I wept and snot dribbled from my nose. I was a goddamn mess, but she wouldn’t turn me away. Holly was the one true person I had on this awful planet, and I didn’t know what I’d do without her.
“He used me, Holly. He let me believe we had a future. He told me he wanted a...” my voice trailed off. I pulled back and peered down at my belly.
Holly reached out and touched my abdomen. “You’re pregnant?”
I replied, “Maybe. I won’t know until I take a test in a few weeks.”
Holly gasped with surprise, but smiled at me. “And I’ll be right by your side.”
“Really?”
“What are best friends for?” Holly shrugged.
We hugged tight, but I whispered in her ear, “How could I let Mitt do this to me?”
Holly pulled back and answered with a small smile, “I think you know the answer to that.”
I love Mitt with all my heart and soul. I had let my guard down, allowed him in, and he rained chaos to the most vulnerable part of me. My dream of having a family. He had tainted our future, or what I thought we had, and his father was behind this. I knew Cyprus Morgan was, and there was only one way to find out.
“Yeah, I do,” I breathed and picked up the divorce papers. “But I know what I have to do.”
Confront the devil himself.