Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 109640 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 109640 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 548(@200wpm)___ 439(@250wpm)___ 365(@300wpm)
No matter what, she couldn’t imagine falling in love with someone, being happy, building a family and a home and then watching it all get destroyed, leaving behind bitterness and anger.
When she reached out and put a hand on his gut, she could feel his body riddled with tension. “How long have you been divorced?”
“We separated seven years ago. The divorce took two years and a fuckload of money because Sasha fought me over everything. Every goddamn thing. My goal was to make sure my kids were taken care of. Her goal was to make sure she was taken care of.”
Cami was surprised he told her that much. Maybe talking to someone about it would help. So she continued, “How old were you when you got married?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“How old are your kids now?”
“Dylan is thirteen. Chloé will be fifteen in a few weeks.”
“You got married when you were a year younger than I am. And you had your first child not long after. But you consider me young. Funny that.”
“I look back now and realize we were too young. I now make better choices.”
She tilted her head to the side. “But do you? We all make mistakes.”
“Despite all my mistakes, my children aren’t one of them.”
“Of course they aren’t. They’re a piece of you. And your anger shows how much you love them and how much you want to spend time with them. If you didn’t care, you wouldn’t be so upset.”
A muscle in his cheek jumped when she said “upset.”
“What happened? Why did she divorce you?”
His jaw tightened. “Do you mean, why did I divorce her?”
Cami stared up at him. She couldn’t read his eyes because he wore his signature mirrored sunglasses. “Is that what happened?”
He gave her a single nod. “That’s what happened.”
“She’s still bitter about you kicking her to the curb? Is that why she’s making your life difficult?”
“That’s part of it.”
Should she ask? Would he answer? “What’s the rest?”
She really didn’t have any right to know all the gritty details. Having sex with the man twice didn’t give her that right. But she wasn’t being nosy, she was truly interested in what made the man tick.
“She felt like I was married to my job more than to her. She used the excuse of being lonely to start a relationship with someone else.”
“Damn,” she whispered.
“Worse, when I was home, she turned into the Wicked Witch of Western Pennsylvania. Because of that, I stopped fucking her. Because I did, she began to accuse me of cheating whenever I was away on assignments.”
“But you weren’t.”
“No. I wasn’t,” he said flatly.
“Basically, she was gaslighting you by projecting.”
“She tried. It didn’t work.” He squeezed his forehead between his fingers and sighed. “I stayed for the kids as long as I could. Then it hit me one day, it was worse for them if we tried to stay together instead of separating. We were at each other’s throats constantly. I didn’t want them to see that anymore and I didn’t want to damage them further. The hardest part wasn’t leaving her, it was leaving them. I had hoped she’d be willing to let me see the kids whenever I wanted. I should’ve known she wouldn’t be cooperative, to the point I had to pursue it legally. Everything was a fight with her. We butted heads constantly. If I said the sky was blue, she said it was green just to get under my skin.” He glanced down at her. “Kind of reminds me of you.”
She assumed he meant the butting heads part because she would never stop a father from seeing his own children. Unless he was abusing them. Then all bets were off.
“I started to stay away from the house more and more to avoid the confrontations until I figured it was better for their mental health for me to throw in the towel. Our relationship wasn’t even close to being healthy. And at the time, I didn’t even know about the cheating. I didn’t find out about that until after I left and she rubbed it in my face trying to start another argument. It didn’t make sense why she ended up being this way because she’d never been spiteful about anything early in our relationship.”
“Was she jealous of your career?”
“She said I made her feel like a widow since I was gone so much. Maybe she was jealous of how dedicated I was to my job, even though my family always came first. A conversation about it, instead of finding reasons to pick fights, would’ve been nice. It could’ve avoided all the misery.”
“Communication is key,” she murmured. It was most likely why her parents’ marriage was still so strong. Of course, every relationship had its ups and downs. How one dealt with the trouble spots determined if it survived. “And the kids? How did they take the divorce?”