Chapter 1
Chamber~
Just like being married came with some learning curves, so did being divorced, and five years later, I was still running into hiccups where Ben was concerned.
Divorce was also an illusion if you had children together, which Ben and I had.
Met our freshman year of college, immediately began dating within a few weeks, then got quietly married before our senior year of college because I’d gotten pregnant during a wild New Year’s Eve party during our junior year.
Of course, I was being facetious; it hadn’t been like that at all.
Ben Rowland and I had met like most couples in college, we’d had a couple of classes together, and we’d ended up sitting next to each other in one of them, and that’d been that.
At six-foot with dark brown hair and eyes, he’d seemed so damn kind and harmless, and I’d been instantly charmed.
We’d gone from him asking if I’d had an extra pen to having lunch together, and then our whirlwind romance had started immediately after that.
Now, while getting pregnant in college hadn’t been the plan, Ben had stepped up and had done the right thing, and no matter how I felt about him today, I wasn’t going to change the facts of those early years just because our marriage hadn’t lasted.
Ben had stepped up, and he’d even been excited when we’d found out that we’d be having twin boys.
At any rate, predictably, I’d had to step away from my education after the boys had been born, but I’d been more than willing to take the break.
Taking care of two newborns wasn’t for the weak, and it hadn’t ever occurred to me that it’d be okay for the boys to have two exhausted parents, instead of just one.
In hindsight, Ben and I could have struggled through those first years together, but I had chosen to hold down the fort at home while giving Ben all the time and space to get his degree and make a life for us all.
Granted, that wasn’t to say that we’d done it all on our own, because we’d hadn’t.
My parents, Steven and Charlotte McLaurin, had been excited about becoming grandparents, but with my father still working as an art professor, and with my mother still working as a county bookkeeper, they hadn’t been able to visit often to help out.
It also hadn’t been their fault that I’d gotten pregnant so young, and Ben and I had been determined to take full responsibility for that.
As for Ben’s parents, they’d also done their best to help when possible, but only retired grandparents had the luxury of extra time to help out, and so that was one of the many downfalls of becoming a young parent; everyone else in your family still had a life.
Nevertheless, while there were a lot of things that I’d go back and do differently, I didn’t regret getting pregnant with the boys.
The second that Eric and Evan had walked their short little legs into their first kindergarten class, I’d gone back to school for my degree, and I’d done it with Ben’s full support.
However, since my priorities had shifted over the years, I had decided to get a degree in business management to help support Ben through his career in nautical engineering.
Ben had been making a name for himself at Marina Innovations, and in the event that he’d ever want to branch out on his own, I’d wanted to be able to contribute in some way.
Of course, despite how challenging, wonderful, and messy those first ten years had been, I’d been happy.
I’d been happy, and I’d still been all in when it’d come to raising the boys, Ben’s career, and everything else that life had thrown my way.
Even with my degree finally in hand, my family had still been my priority, and I still didn’t regret any of it.
No, any regrets that I had stemmed from keeping silent when I’d begun to notice how Ben had started to change.
He’d been racing up the corporate ladder at Marina, and his drive and intelligence hadn’t gone unnoticed.
After a while, his sweet charm and kindness had been replaced with a ruthlessness that had made him a force to be reckoned with in the world of engineering and finance.
In the end, it’d been old-fashioned neglect that had ended our marriage, which was pretty boring when you thought about it.
There’d been no affairs, no huge fights, no abuse of any kind.
..just your run-of-the-mill neglect, though it’d been only marital neglect that had been the culprit.
No matter what could be said of my ex-husband, it couldn’t be said that he was a horrible father or that he’d ever been.
Ben adored our sons, and that was something that I’d never take away from him.
I’d also been idiotic enough to keep silent for almost eight years.
I’d fallen into that trap of sticking it out because of my children, and I had learned the hard way that divorce was going to be hard on children, no matter their age.
No child wanted to see their parents split up, and so ‘waiting until they were old enough’ was an illusion that we fed ourselves to justify being too scared to cross that final line, the one that couldn’t be uncrossed later.
At any rate, deciding to treat my children like the adults that they’d been, five years ago, I had finally asked for a divorce, and Ben had readily agreed, proving everything that I had suspected about the state of my stale marriage.
By then, Rowland Investments had been a thriving force in the business world, and Ben had been more than happy to write a check before sending me on my way.
There also hadn’t been any fireworks until the judge had taken note that I’d been a stay-at-home mom for twenty years.
Once it’d become clear that he’d been more than willing to take that into consideration, my lawyer had acted like a kid on Christmas morning.
While the original settlement had been generous enough for my future plans at the time, with Rowland Investments being worth millions, I’d ended up getting almost half of what Ben had been worth, and it’d been a life-changing amount.
Apart from filing for divorce, for the first time in my life, I’d taken that money and had done something for myself, and even though Ben still resented me for it, the support that I had from my family and sons more than made up for Ben’s lack of approval.
Much to the surprise of many and the dismay of some, I had opened The Fantasy Factory, and despite its fresh uniqueness, it was still a sex club when it was all said and done.
It was a sex club that catered to women, because after so many years of mediocre sex with a man that had lost interest in me years before our marriage had ended, I’d wanted to make a small difference in the lives of women who were in the same boat that I’d been in.
Now, while The Fantasy Factory gave people an opportunity to explore their sexual curiosities safely, it did more than that if you were a woman.
The club made women feel pretty when they might otherwise feel differently.
It made them feel desirable, despite their age, shape, or whatever social media might have you believe.
The club took away the shame of wanting something more than just missionary with the lights off, and the reviews on our site was proof that this place had been desperately needed.
So, no matter how many times Ben threw shade at this new chapter in my life, as long as my sons weren’t ashamed of me, that was validation enough.
*****
Hayes~
For all the mistakes that I’d made in life, I was lucky enough to have no complaints this late in the game.
I was forty-six, and I was capable of paying my bills all on my own, and that included a mortgage that I still wasn’t sure that I hadn’t gotten screwed on.
Still, things could be worse, and I was very aware of that glaring reality.
In fact, I was reminded daily, something that followed me home more often than not.
See, I worked as an acquisitions manager for Carlie Incorporated, and while the corporation was a successful one, its headquarters was located in the center of town, and so there was no escaping the homelessness that came out at night.
Since I often worked past closing, the sight was one that I was familiar with, and it could lead a man to drink if you thought about it too much.
Luckily for me, thanks to my parents, I’d had no real hardships in life, and despite some bad choices in my past, I still had no real hardships, and whatever hardships that were destined to come my way, my parents, Maxwell and Nancy Rainier, had raised me to never feel sorry for myself.
Now, though my father was retired now, his career had been as a city manager in my hometown, and so I had learned how to improvise from him.
My mother was a retired nurse, and I had learned how to manage stress from her.
They’d both been hard workers, and I liked to believe that I had inherited most of their good traits, and whatever bad traits that I had, they were all me.
Plus, with no siblings to speak of, my parents hadn’t had to divide their time between a bunch of needy kids, and so I could honestly say that my childhood had been ideal, and I was also lucky enough to say that I had a healthy grown-up relationship with my parents as well.
Raising me to be independent, they hadn’t gotten sentimental when I’d gone off to college, and they hadn’t gotten their feelings hurt when I’d chosen to live in Portal Lands after graduation.
Instead, we visited each other when we could, and they were still my biggest cheerleaders in life.