What If

I wanted to believe the pain in his features came from his heart breaking like mine, but I would’ve been lying to myself, again, like I’ve done for the past eight years.

Lacey screamed at me, calling me names, but I didn’t care. I already felt like the worst kind of person by sleeping with a married man. I felt like a fool.

I wiped my eyes, stood straighter, and with all of the venom I could muster said, “I hate you, Arrow Donovan.” The cracking of my voice made me wince, but the way Arrow recoiled at my words hurt me worse. Still, I refused to take it back or apologize. He had hurt me enough.

I walked quickly to the living room, grabbed my purse, took one last look at the letters littering the ground, at the man who had written those to me, said a silent, final goodbye, and left.

This time, Arrow didn’t come after me.



Finding Briar the way I did… Her sobbing silently into her arms, her body folded in on itself like a seated fetal position. I didn’t know how to fix what had happened. I wish I could’ve gone back in time. I knew when I was telling Briar that Lacey and I weren’t together that I wasn’t being completely honest. I knew she would take it to mean we were divorced. But that wasn’t the case. I didn’t consider myself with Lacey anymore. I didn’t want to be with her, and she knew it, too.

Not caring that Lacey stood inches from me, I fell to my knees and called out Briar’s name repeatedly. I never saw her look so shattered, so oblivious to everything going on around her.

I prayed she would stick by my side, listen to what I had to say, wait for me, believe in me. But I saw the pain there, shining brightly in her soulful brown eyes. I wanted to pick her body up off the ground, carry her to the bed, and love her body and soul the way she deserved to be loved.

It wasn’t the slap that hurt me. I deserved it. If Briar wanted to use me as her own personal punching bag, I would have let her. No, it was the revulsion illuminating from her features. Then her words… those words, ‘I hate you, Arrow Donovan.’

Jesus. I wanted to fight like hell for her. But how could I fight for someone who despised me? No. No. This was just one lost battle in a long war. I had to believe that even though we lost this round, Briar and I would ultimately be victorious.

I wanted to go after Briar and force her to admit how much she loved me, to admit she only said she hated me from anger and fear. I wanted to believe she couldn’t hate me just like I could never abhor her. And when I could, I would go after her. I would make her tell me the truth.

First I had to figure out what was going on with Lacey and get her to sign the divorce papers I’ve tried shoving down her throat for a year.

Lacey claimed to be pregnant, a few months along. I knew enough about pregnant women to know most didn’t show right away, so she could very well have been pregnant. But the numbers didn’t add up. Yeah, we still slept together a few times when I was in California even though I knew I didn’t want to be with her anymore, but she told me she was just over two months pregnant. I was almost positive it had been a lot longer since we were together.

I left her in California when I came to the decision that I needed to get away from all the people making my drug abuse easier rather than pushing me to seek help and become the man I wanted to be, the man a woman could be proud to call hers. One of the choices I had to make was whether or not Lacey was the sort of woman that would stand by my side, push me to grow, call me out on my bullshit. Did I even want her to be that person for me?

The verdict was made when I realized the thought of walking away from her didn’t break me; it lightened the weight off my shoulders. I didn’t relish the notion of coming home to her on a daily basis. Our marriage wasn’t well thought out, but instead a quick commitment we both made without seriously considering what it meant. What made me propose? Fear.

Joining the Marines was frightening as it was, but doing it without having someone to come back to would’ve been incredibly lonely. Most of us, not just in the Marines but all branches of the military, married young. For some it was true love. You could see that in some of the guys. They weren’t just getting married for shits; they were getting married because they knew they would eventually marry that girl anyway. I got married, like others, because Lacey was there. She wrote me, answered my calls, and wanted to be with me even through the distance.

There were good times between us, to be fair. She started out as my friend. We lost touch, and then that night of my farewell party happened and it sort of took off from there. She got along with my parents, she was a tiger in the sheets, and she was a looker. The only problem: she never owned me. Not one bit of me belonged to her because I already belonged to someone else. Not to sound like a dick, she wasn’t my Plan A, and she never would be. There are few people in this life that when someone says, “If you had to pick one single person to spend every day with, every hour, every minute, every damned second with for the rest of your life, who would you choose?” that could answer that question truthfully, without thought, without second guessing. I could do that. And her name didn’t start with an “L.”



“We need to have a paternity test done. Now,” I said coarsely to Lacey as I stared at the door that slammed behind Briar.

The universe screwed us over again, and Lacey was going to receive the brunt of my anger from it. The way she talked to Briar did not go unnoticed on my part, and there would be words had about that.

“Why? You’re the father, Arrow.” She walked into my line of sight so I couldn’t stare at the place that last held Briar. “All of this for her?” Lacey made the “her” sound less than her, like a piece of garbage instead of the woman I wanted in my bed and in my life forever.

“Her name is Briar, and you know that,” I grumbled. “And I want a test done. Let’s go.” I grabbed my coat from the hanger by the front door.

Lacey didn’t move from her stance. She folded her arms across her chest and stood there staring at me like I lost my mind. “It doesn’t work that way. I’m not having the kind of test they do while the baby is still inside of me. It isn’t completely safe, and I’m not taking that risk.”

Shit. I couldn’t very well tell her to do something that wasn’t healthy for her child. It didn’t matter that not knowing if that kid was mine was ruining my chances with Briar; putting her baby in jeopardy wasn’t an option. Rubbing roughly at my eyes and beating a fist on my forehead, I tried to think of what I could do.

I didn’t think Briar would fault me for having a child with my wife before Briar and I even reconnected. It would be difficult to get through. It would hurt like hell. I could only imagine the pain that she felt hearing those words out of Lacey’s mouth. The ache in my chest grew as I imagined the night spent with Briar. The night before had been the best night of my life with her, and we woke up to a nightmare being delivered by the one person Briar couldn’t stand. Shit, the mere idea of Briar having a child with another man sent me into crazy town.

Maybe she wouldn’t be able to get over that. My teeth grinded painfully together. How did I go about explaining all of this to her?

“Lace, you have to sign those papers…” I winced at the pleading quality to my voice. But I didn’t know what else to do besides beg her to let me go. She needed to sign her name, let me file the papers, let us both move on and find the happiness we both deserved.