“Were you two together or just sleeping together?” I asked, seeking clarity.
“We were together,” he replied vaguely. Something about the way he said it struck me as strange – maybe the way he repeated my wording exactly, as if to say that there was a variation to that answer if I phrased the question differently.
Folding my arms over my chest, I leveled a glare at him.
“Jason…I swear…whatever it is that you need to say, you sure as hell better say it now….”
He had to look away again. “We were together for about a year, but now we’re…..separated,” he admitted quietly.
It felt like my heart had sunk straight through to the basement. “Excuse me! Separated? As in ‘you used to be married, and technically still are’ separated?!?!?!”
“Sam – I”
“Get the hell out,” I said surprisingly calm, which Jason knew was worse than me yelling. I got to my feet again and yanked him up from my couch by the sleeve of his shirt. He stood there and stared down on me like there was more that he needed to say.
He sighed as he took a step toward the door. “Sam…I didn’t mean to hurt you. I swear. I just…I didn’t want to mess this up.”
And that worked out so well for you.
To get him gone faster, I shoved against his chest, feeling a tear fall when I did. “LEAVE!” When he was out in the hallway, I nearly hit him with the door.
The only word I could think of to describe the way I felt was “betrayed”. Jason knew things about me that, if I’d known omitting details was an option, I would’ve never shared. How was it that he knew all the ins and outs of me and AJ’s relationship, all about my ordeal with Antonio, and he felt like he had the reserved right not to tell me that he had a wife and kid in another state?
Here, I’d exposed my every secret and every fault to this man and I was finding out that he’d been keeping me in the dark for almost two years? It felt like he’d crushed my heart inside my chest.
I didn’t sleep at all. Couldn’t. All I kept thinking, of all the things for me to be upset about in this situation, was how Jason chose to put this kid on the backburner like he had better things to do than be a father. To be quite honest, I couldn’t figure out if that pissed me off more or finding out that he’d basically made me his side-chick without me having any choice in the matter. And maybe I was a little more sensitive on the subject of children because of my past, but either way, not being in his kids’ life seemed like a douchebag move any way you cut it.
That night, Jason lost too many points to count, thus shifting the tide of whatever was left between us at this point…which I was pretty sure was absolutely nothing. As far as I was concerned, Jason already had a family and there wasn’t room in his life for much more than that…including me.
Chapter Ten
AJ
My weekends for the past three years were typically me and Kira’s time to go to dinner and maybe catch a movie. However, the conclusion of my first weekend in New York was spent surfing the net to find a gym to join, grabbing one pitiful bag of groceries from the store, and watching garbage on TV because I didn’t have cable yet. Needless to say, I was actually looking forward to the work week starting so I’d have something to do.