Chapter 13
[Dart]
Imentally spiral as I drive to the baseball field.
I’m watching Trinity struggle to eat. Watching her barely sleep. Watching her parent alone. I’ve been trying to do small things to help without overstepping.
And every time I look at Mirabelle, that little pink bundle of joy, I struggle, knowing she belongs to Trin and someone who isn’t me. She slept with someone else. Possibly even multiple men.
I’m not only jealous, I’m devastated. And I’m disappointed that I lost her so completely. She’s built a life without me. Hell, she even has new friends, minus Vale Sylver.
When I pull up beside the chunk of land just east of downtown Rogue River, there is a tremor in my hands as I set the truck in park. I make a fist and tap the side of it against the steering wheel, trying to calm my nerves.
But the second I reach the field, I explode. “You’re all assholes.”
I haven’t seen any of them since I went to The Ferryman’s Rest more than a week ago, but there have been dribbles of chat in our group text.
Hutch invited me to join their team, the One-Eyed Snakes, which is a thirty-five-and-over, men’s baseball league.
Their logo looks like a braided penis, with a split tongue coming out the tip.
“Yeah, and fuck you, too,” Tate grumbles at my outburst.
“I’m serious.” I glance at Hutch, Marshall, and Petty, ignoring Tate. “Not one of you guys told me Trinity had another man.”
“Uhm . . .” Marshall glances at Tate.
“What the fuck, man?” Tate stands taller, squaring off at me, although it’s difficult to take him seriously with a giant dick on his shirt.
“Don’t what the fuck me, man,” I snap. “I know I hurt your sister, and you’re fucking pissed at me, but someone could have told me she moved on. Had another man. Or many.”
Tate charges me faster than I expected and only narrowly misses clocking me in the face before Hutch catches him around the waist, and Petty yanks the back of my shirt to get me away from the punch.
“Easy,” Petty warns, his tone sharp near my ear.
I know. I know I’m in the wrong, and my accusation is unfair, but my chest feels like it’s been cracked open. Like someone took a bat to my already damaged ribs and slammed straight into my heart.
“She fucking slept around.” My voice cracks with thick emotion.
My wife, my beautiful wife, had a baby with another man, and no one told me.
And she’s had multiple lovers.
The kicker is, the guy is gone, abandoning her, leaving her a single mom and that precious baby without a father. A position I’d never want for Trinity. To be alone. To parent on her own. Without a partner. Without me.
My own guilt socks me in the gut. Maybe Tate should punch me.
“I’m going to kill you,” Tate vows, struggling to rush toward me again.
Hutch wrestles him back.
“Enough,” Marshall hollers, holding out his hands to separate Tate and me. “Don’t talk about Trinity like she’s trash.”
Someone might as well have taken another bat to my gut, because that is not what I intended.
“She’s my wife,” I counter, devastation causing my voice to crack.
She thought we were divorced. And whose fault was that?
She had the right to do what she wanted with whomever she wanted, but it still fucking hurts to consider there’s not only been one man touching her soft skin and tasting her sweetness, but enough men that she can’t remember who the father of her child is.
I shrug Petty off me and bend at the waist. I’ve been worked up for days, but my thoughts spew like poison out of me, which pitches me forward. I’m going to be sick.
“Funny way of showing it,” Tate hisses. “And not like you didn’t sleep around with all those pit lizards.”
I stand so abruptly that Tate flinches, although he’s more than a foot away from me. “I didn’t.” The words squeak, emphasizing the truth.
I haven’t slept with anyone other than my wife.
Hutch and I meet eye-to-eye. He knows the truth. Marshall’s head swings in my direction, meeting my eyes next, before Petty claps my back so I will look at him.
“Right,” he teases, wiggling one brow higher than the other.
“I might not have been the best husband, but I’ve been one-hundred percent faithful.” I snap my attention back to Tate. “I’m practically a virgin again.”
Tate stares at me, disbelief in his eyes.
“Despite what it might look like . . .” I pause, glancing from Petty to Marshall to Hutch before falling to Tate. “I love my wife.”
“Ex wife.” Tate scoffs.
Marshall hangs his head. Hutch shakes his.
“Not ex-wife.” I whip my left hand upright, flipping it like I did the other night. The silicone ring dark and prominent.
Tate is not the smartest one in the group, and he clearly wasn’t paying attention when the other guys put things together.
Trinity and I are still married.
“Fuck,” Tate growls, as if finally realizing the truth.
I drop my hand and stand taller, thinking of Mirabelle. “And one thing I would never have done is leave my kid behind.”
These guys know this. For all the ways I’ve been left behind, I’d never do that to a child. Never.
“Only your wife,” Tate counters, spit forming in the corners of his mouth.
I deserve that. I’ve done Trinity wrong. I’ve done wrong by both of us, but Tate also isn’t perfect. His faults are many, and he shouldn’t be casting stones. I realize he might have had to draw a line, his sister or me, but he’s also a guy. He’s human. And we all fucking make mistakes.
“Man,” I mock him. “You don’t know anything.”
How I asked her to come with me, and how she refused. How broken we both were by the last miscarriage. I almost lost her forever. I was desperate to make a fresh start for us, somewhere away from all the reminders. The empty bedrooms and the packed-up baby clothes.
But I also needed to prove something to myself. I thought I needed to reinvent myself.
“Well, whoever that guy is . . . the baby daddy . . . he’s a dick.” I glance at each of them as if they know who he is, or where he is. Another slice of information no one is willing to share with me.
I’ll kill the guy for leaving Trinity and Mirabelle behind, and I realize that makes me the pot calling the kettle black.
At least, I’m wearing my shame, owning up to it. I made a fucking mistake.
“Hasn’t she told you anything?” Marshall asks, additional questions etched in the creases near his eyes.
Again, I sense they all know something I don’t. And that sensation of things not adding up comes back to me. It just didn’t seem like Trin to suddenly run out and hook up with a handful of men.
As for my friends, I could argue that I thought we were tight, told each other everything. But our friendship has a red flag, and it is Trinity.
Glancing over Tate’s shoulder at Hutch, I beg. “Tell me what I’m missing.”
He purses his lips and shakes his head. “That’s between you and her.”
I meet Marshall’s eyes next, imploring him.
He tips his head back and lowers his shoulders. “Look, I don’t want to be a dick, but we have a game to play.” He looks back at me. “You in, or you out?”
He nods toward the field where the other team has been warming up, but several of them are watching our party of five. The tension is still heightened between us.
I glare back at Tate. “I’m in. One-hundred and ten percent.”
As our gazes lock on one another, Hutch asks a deeper question. “For the long haul or only the season?”
Their baseball season? The summer months? The racing circuit?
“I’m back. For good.” I don’t think I realized it until the words are finally shared.
I’d told Trinity my racing career was probably over, and in many ways, it is. I’m out for the season, and I might not be able to return. But I already know one thing for certain, I’m not going back to racing without her. I won’t leave her behind again.
I’m here for my wife, and I’ll do whatever groveling I need to do to make things right between us. Between her and me.
Our marriage is a race I refuse to lose again.
When the game is over, which we won, I drink one beer at the field and head home. As much as it felt good to be part of a team again, and among my friends, their quiet still haunts me.
What if . . . I’m missing something big. Like . . . Trinity didn’t sleep with multiple men. Like she didn’t sleep with any man.
Could she have adopted Mirabelle?
It wasn’t like adoption hadn’t been an option. We’d discussed it, but Trinity was determined to have a baby from her body. We’d already lost three, though, and the last one nearly killed her.
I refused to take the risk of losing my wife. It scared me. The thought of her not in this world made me physically sick.
Then, I did the exact opposite of what I should have done. Instead of holding her closer, I pulled away. I was almost afraid to have sex with her. Afraid she’d get pregnant again. Afraid I would lose her permanently.
Instead, I lost my wife slowly over time.
I threw myself into the distraction of racing. I could control the speed, manipulate a machine, make it move the way I wanted. The adrenaline rush was fueled by intense focus. The ability to push limits and take a different risk, and win, when everything else in my life felt like I’d lost.
My wife. Our dream. My motivation.
I’d worked in construction since I was seventeen, when Russell Haven hooked me up with a family friend.
Clint Haven eventually worked for a different construction group, and I switched jobs to work with him.
My ties to the Havens tightened.
I worked with Clint. I was best friends with Tate. And I had a crush on their sister.
When their football-playing brother came home, Clint and Cort started their own business. I transferred once again.