5 - THE TRUTH EXPOSED #4
Victoria watched him go. Watched his shoulders—hunched now, heavier than she’d ever seen them. Watched the way his hands dangled at his sides. Watched the way he stopped at the back door, his head bowed, his body trembling with sobs he was still trying to hold in.
Then he went inside. The screen door slammed shut behind him.
Victoria’s legs gave out.
Brock caught her before she hit the concrete.
His arms wrapped around her, and she buried her face in his chest, and the sobs she’d been holding back since the garage door opened finally tore free.
Great, heaving sobs that shook her whole body.
Sobs that made her belly ache. Sobs that the baby could probably feel.
“We destroyed him,” she gasped. “We destroyed him, Brock.”
“I know.” Brock’s arms tightened around her. His voice was raw. “I know.”
The garage door was still open. The neighbors were still watching.
The teenage boy’s phone was still recording.
Victoria didn’t care. She couldn’t care.
All she could feel was the weight of what they’d just done—the weight of a broken man walking through a house that used to be his home—and the strange, terrible feeling that was rising up beneath the guilt.
Relief.
She felt it like a current, like a tide, like the first warm breeze after a storm. The secret was out. The lies were over. The terrible, suffocating weight of deception had been lifted from her chest, and even through the guilt and the grief and the horror, she could breathe again.
“I’m sorry,” Brock whispered into her hair. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be.” Victoria pulled back. Looked up at him. His gray eyes were wet, his jaw clenched, his face a mask of grief and guilt and something that looked like the same relief she felt. “Don’t be sorry. This was always going to happen. It was always going to end this way.”
“I know. But that doesn’t make it easier.”
“Nothing was going to make it easier.”
The back door slammed open. Joey emerged with a duffel bag in one hand and his laptop in the other. He didn’t look at them. Didn’t look at the neighbors. Didn’t look at anything except the open door of his car. He threw the bag into the passenger seat. Got in. Started the engine.
The car reversed down the driveway with a screech of tires. Victoria watched it recede down the street—past Mrs. Henderson’s frozen figure, past Mr. Ackerman’s idle leaf blower, past the teenage boy who was finally lowering his phone—until it turned the corner and vanished.
—
The silence rushed back in.
Brock’s arms were still around her. His hand found her belly—the curve where their child was growing, where their future was waiting—and pressed gently against the fabric of her sweater. The baby moved. That butterfly flutter. That secret becoming a promise.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said. “I know it doesn’t feel like it. I know it feels like the world just ended. But it’s going to be okay.”
Victoria closed her eyes. Let herself lean into him. Let herself feel the solid warmth of his chest, the steady beat of his heart, the hand that was cradling their child.
“I know,” she said. And she almost believed it.
Because the truth was out now. Ugly and brutal and broadcast to the entire neighborhood, but out. In the morning, she’d have to face the whispers. The stares. The fallout that would ripple through this small town like a shockwave.
But tonight—tonight, there was just this. Brock’s arms around her. The baby moving in her belly. The garage door still open to the October evening. The radio still playing faintly in the background, some old song about second chances.
And a future. Finally, a future.
“We should go inside,” she said. “We need to figure out what happens next.”
Brock nodded. Released her. Took her hand. Together, they walked out of the garage, past the Mustang with its exposed engine, past the neighbors who were finally turning away, past the evidence of everything they’d done and everything they’d destroyed.
At the back door, Victoria paused. Looked up at the house—this house that had been Joey’s childhood home, that had been her prison and her sanctuary, that had been the stage for every lie she’d told. For a moment, she could still see him standing there. His glasses fogged. His heart breaking.
She pressed her palm to her belly.
“This baby,” she said. “This baby is going to know how much it was wanted. How hard we fought to bring it into the world. No matter what it cost.”
Brock squeezed her hand. “It’s going to know. I promise.”
They went inside. The kitchen was dark. The guest room upstairs was empty.
Tomorrow, Victoria would call a lawyer. Tomorrow, she’d start the long, impossible work of building something new from the ashes.
But tonight, she let Brock pull her close. Let him press his lips to her forehead. Let herself feel the strange, guilty, undeniable lightness of a burden finally laid down.
Joey was gone. The lie was over.
And for the first time in four months, Victoria could see the future clearly—a future with Brock, with the baby, with a love that had been forged in the worst possible way. She didn’t know if she deserved it. She didn’t know if she’d ever forgive herself for what she’d done.
But she wanted it.
God help her, she wanted it more than anything.