Chapter 36
March 2008
Zach
The last month has been a living fucking nightmare. She better thank her lucky goddamn stars that Morgan and Melanie showed up and warned her away before I ever saw her.
After telling Morgs everything, I was the one that then had to hold her back from going after the cunt.
Papaw flew in the next day with our family attorney in tow, Jordan Bates. Since our fucking marriage had been consummated thanks to one fucking drunk and lonely night, the easy route of annulment was taken off the table. Until Bates asked why the separation had occurred. Once I filled him in on everything, he said we could file on the grounds of one party misrepresenting themselves before the marriage.
And just like that, thirty days later, I am no longer a married man.
She disappeared somewhere. Bates told her if she ever came near me again, we would turn everything into the cops and press charges. I don’t really care where she went or what happens to her as long as I never set eyes on her again.
My life is in complete shambles. I don’t recognize myself. The anger that I feel. The rage. The devastation.
How can you mourn someone you’ve never met? I’ve spent the late lonely hours in the dark, in a drunken haze, missing the child I never had .
It may be stupid, but he was the only thing keeping me going. The life I wanted to provide for him. The things I wanted to teach him. I was looking forward to being a daddy. Even if I hated his mama. I was willing to pretend for his sake. I would’ve made it work.
Rebecca– I refuse to call her by anything else– was only ten weeks along at our last doctor appointment, and they couldn’t see the baby’s gender yet. But, they set us up with a genetic test that would tell us in a few weeks. But I could just feel that it was a boy. My boy. Not my boy . Hunter’s boy.
I haven’t left this apartment yet. I’m not sure where I will go. Probably to Papaw and Mee-maw’s for a little while until I figure out my next move. But I feel tethered here. I haven’t allowed myself to reach out to her. To Charlotte.
I don’t know what I would say. So much has happened. It’s such an incredibly crazy tale that she probably wouldn’t even believe me. The cards are stacked heavily against me. I don’t blame her for taking the evidence at face value. It’s hard to believe there was a time when my word meant everything to her. Now, it’s as worthless as my high school diploma.
What the fuck has happened to my life? A year ago, I was living high on the hog. I had my girl. I had my team. I made a new best friend. I had a future.
Now? I have nothing. I am nothing.
The front door flies open, and Morgs comes stumbling through, her arms filled to the brim with plastic grocery bags. “Okay, Pretty Boy. I’ve got some shit for dinner, and then you and I are going on a recon mission.”
I meet her at the door and take some of the bags off her arm. We then take the groceries to the kitchen and begin to unload.
“Recon mission?” I ask.
“Yup. So wear all black, ‘cause incognito is the name of the game.”
My nuts are squished beyond any sort of comfortability. This car is a hell of a lot smaller when you’ve been sitting in it for hours. Why we are doing this “mission” at all is beyond me. What does Morgan think we will learn in the middle of the night on a weekday, hanging outside a dorm building?
Pushing away the balled-up tinfoil from Morgs’ fifth Ding-Dong, I lift my right leg and put it on the dash, trying desperately to give Bert and Ernie some pressure relief. It’s only been three hours, and I’m already sick of this stakeout.
I look over at Morgs, who’s bee-bopping to a 90s boy band jam; something about it’s hard to say you’re sorry and to make the things you did undone. I throw her a side-eyed glare. If I thought that would deter her, it doesn’t.
In fact, during the chorus, she reaches over and grabs my left fist to begin singing into it like a microphone. Her hips lift off her seat to make way for grotesque gyrating against the steering wheel while she sings about needing to be told what to do because he wants her back.
When the next song comes on, and I hear the lyrics wail something about making love to her like she wants you to and holding her all through the night, I narrow my eyes and slam my finger against the eject button of her CD player.
She’s interrupted mid-lyric when she slaps at my hand, “Hey! I was jammin’ to that!”
I roll my eyes at her and look down at the burned CD. Pretty Boy’s Sad Sack Jamz is handwritten across the otherwise blank disc top in black permanent marker.
“Dick,” she whispers into the now silent interior.
“What are we even doin’ here, Morgs?” I ask tiredly, tipping my head back against the headrest and closing my eyes.
“I told you. Recon. Duh.” She answers like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
“Recon for what?” I press.
“Okay, so don’t get mad,” she cautions in an upbeat tone.
If there was ever a sentence to make sure the person would get mad, it’s that one. I turn to face her, cocking my brow, and wait for her to continue. Fully bracing to get fucking mad.
“So I may have done this a time or two…” she trails off at the end of her statement in such a low voice that I’m not quite sure if I heard her correctly.
“Come again?” I challenge.
She sighs, shoves a sixth Ding-Dong into her mouth, and begins speaking over the large chocolatey confection. “I said I may have done this before. Look, you’re my best friend, Pretty Boy, and I couldn’t stand to see you throwing your life away on that—” she pauses to grit her teeth, trying to come up with the best way to describe the woman who ruined my life. “basic meat pocket.”
“And?” I urge. I hate when she drags shit out and doesn’t get to the damn point.
“And… So, I started checking in on her. Getting her class schedule– which I had to flirt with a fucking douche boy to get, by the way, so you’re welcome for that. I happen to know that on Wednesday nights, she comes back to the dorm late,” she looks down at her watch and then back to the building in front of us, which is now just illuminated by lamposts every fifteen feet or so. “And, if my previous recon was accurate, she should be walking up any second.”
The ice surrounding my heart cracks just a little at the thought of setting eyes on her again. It’s only been a little over three months, but it may as well be a lifetime. I wonder if she’ll look any different. I wonder if she’s thought about me at all since the day she slammed the door on us.
My breath catches in my throat, and my heartbeat thuds in my ears as I get a glimpse of a curvy blonde with much shorter hair than I saw her last. She’s so fucking beautiful. All I want to do is run to her, fall to my knees, and beg her to take me back. Give me a chance to prove that she’s it for me. She’s all I want in this world. Nothing else matters. Just one chance, that’s all I need, and I would make sure she never regretted it for the rest of our lives.
I would give her foot massages every night. Wash all of the laundry and the dishes. She would want for nothing. I would give the very breath from my lungs so she may thrive another day.
That ice in my chest ignites into a raging inferno when I look past my girl to the tall, curly-haired brunette man beside her. As they walk to the door to her building, his hand glides across the sliver of skin exposed on her back by the pink crop top she wears.
Fucking kill him. He’s touching what’s yours. Protect. Protect. Protect.
As if we are sharing the same thoughts, Morgan latches on to my forearm and pins it in place on the console. “Well, this is an unforeseen turn of events. I swear I’ve never seen that dude before. She is always alone. ”
A growl emits from the deepest part of me. This bastard is wrapping his arms around my Little Bit. How fucking dare he.
I swear to all the Gods, if his hand reaches any lower, I will be leaving this campus in handcuffs.
The knife twists in my very soul when I watch her lips press against his. From this angle, I can’t quite tell if it was on the mouth or cheek. But either way, her lips have no fucking business touching him at all.
But that’s not your place to say anymore, jackass. Remember? You destroyed any chance at keeping her. She can kiss and fuck whoever she wants, and you can’t do a damn thing about it. Way to go, Zee. Like everything else, you’ve managed to fuck this up too.
Her smile is radiant when they split apart and stand face to face with interlocked hands.
“What are you doing just sitting here? Go get your girl, bro!” Morgan implores while violently shaking my arm.
What am I doing?
Every part of me wants to get out of this car and sock that dude right in the mouth for daring to press his lips against her skin. Every part of me wants to wrap her in my arms and hide her away from anyone who might try to take her from me. Every part of me wants to bury myself so deep inside her that we can’t tell where she ends and I begin. Remind her that our souls are bound to each other. Remind her of what we have together. What we can have.
The marriage, the kids, the beach—whatever she wants, it’s hers. I’m hers, now and always.
Then why? Why am I not getting out of the car?
“Zach?” Morgan calls, uncertainty and panic filling her voice.
What if she’s finally finding happiness after a lifetime of darkness? Could I really be that selfish of a bastard to come barreling in and disrupt her healing?
“Zee?”
What if she’s actually moving on with her life? After everything she’s been through these last couple of years, God, if anyone deserves happiness, it’s her.
Can I give that to her? Even if somehow I worked my way back into her life, would she ever trust me again? Would she think about my betrayal every time I held her? Would she question if it was true when I professed my love for her?
“Pretty Boy?”
Look at me. I’m no prize. Maybe once upon a time, I was worthy of Charlotte Belle Johnson. But I’m not that guy anymore. I wish like hell I was.
Now, I’m just the college dropout who fucked an echo of the woman I loved– breaking her heart. Marrying someone who wasn’t her– breaking my own heart.
I don’t deserve her. She needs a chance to live her life, to be happy, and to be loved wholeheartedly by someone who would never betray her the way I have. I have to be man enough to give this to her. If I can do anything for her, it’s this.
“Dude, you’re scaring me. Are we whoppin’ ass or what?”
I can’t fix the things I’ve broken. But I can give her this one thing. If I could go back and change the last few months, I would in a heartbeat. But I can’t. This is real.
This is my penance. I have to let her go.
“Let’s go home, Morgs.”