Chapter 22
“Lindsey!!! Open up!” Brody pounded on my door, not giving up.
For the last week, he had come here every day, trying to talk to me. “Go away!” I screamed at the door as I contemplated what the hell to do with him.
Brody begged, sounding like he was in so much pain, just like the one I was in. “Let’s talk, please. I’ll do anything—just hear me out, Linds.”
Gripping the door handle, I pried it open enough to speak. “Promise me that you’ll leave me alone when I tell you to?”
“I hope you won’t do that… but if it’s the only option, then yes, I promise you.” Brody made a regretful sigh, desperate.
Opening the door to let him through, I stared at my foot so I didn’t have to see him enter. This man only brought pain and sadness to me, even though he hadn’t been mine then.
“You’re not going to forgive me, are you?” he whispered, standing at the foot of my bed. I still wouldn’t look at his face.
“No, I just can’t.” Too much had happened. I gave up too much, thinking this was what I wanted—that it was him I wanted, that it was him I loved—but I was merely blinded by my past, confusing things for what they truly were.
My blindness caused me to lose my marriage.
My deafness caused me to lose my husband.
My stupidity caused me to lose the man that I loved.
So, no, I can’t forgive Brody for not telling me the truth—for hiding that essential fact that would’ve opened my eyes to see him for what he truly was. Most of all, I couldn’t forgive myself for letting Dimitris go, thinking it was for the best.
“But you love me, Linds. Can’t you at least find it in you to forgive me? Make me go through all sorts of punishment, I don’t care, just as long as you’ll be mine and won’t leave me. I love you, pookie. I f*cking love you so much. I need you to give me a chance. We’ve barely just begun.”
Smiling sadly, I looked at him through my tears. “I was married once, to this beautiful, kind man. He never held back in loving me. He wanted me—ME—and no other woman. When I was around, no one existed for him. He didn’t need to take months, years or a f*cking decade to know if he loved me or not. He just knew that he did and married me two weeks later.” I sniffed, wiping my tears. “He worshipped me, but it was sad because I wasn’t used to being treated like that—being treated like I was the only one… because I was used to chasing and loving a man like you, Brody. My idiocy chased him away… you and I have made our bed of problems. There’s nothing left except to lie in our coffins and die in it, because that’s what I am right now. I’m dead inside.”
“You’re married?” Brody asked, flabbergasted.
I wished. “I was.”
“Where’s he now?”
Claudine. “With his future, where he should be. Where he belongs.”
~L~
“There’s mail for you.” Trista handed me an envelope before opening her purchases from her lavish online addiction.
There was no return address so I didn’t know where it had come from. My curiosity about the sender didn’t last long because when I opened the letter, it brought more ugliness. It was my finalization of the dissolution to my marriage with Dimitris.
My hands shook as I shoved the papers back in. I ran towards my room, locking the door before I buried it in the bottom of a drawer, wishing it away, wishing it gone.
No more Dimitris.
The thought of him brought new sadness, washing me with memories of him again. His easy laughter and his kind heart—he was so good to others—loved me even if I was ugly inside. I was a rotten person, only beautiful from the outside, however I was purely rotten to the core, like my mother.
I was just like her.
Hurting the only men that ever loved us—our husbands.