“Why not just tell them?” she finally asked.
“Because if I tell them, then I have to tell my brother that I slept with his wife, which will inevitably cause him to beat the shit out of me. It’s bad enough already. I need you to be the buffer,” Eugene admitted reluctantly.
I licked my lips and turned my gaze to the tabletop.
“I still don’t understand why you think I can help,” I told my cousin, who was sitting there looking so forlorn that it was sad.
I was literally sad for the man and what he had to endure.
But I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do. It wasn’t my kid. Wasn’t my wife nor my girlfriend, and Kenneth wasn’t my brother. He was my cousin…a cousin who I despised.
So yeah, I couldn’t really see it. And honestly, I felt no sympathy for the two outside.
The one inside, however, yeah—I didn’t even know what to say to that. You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that Destiny had taken advantage of him.
How, I wasn’t sure, but I would be figuring that out.
“I want you to tell him.”
It came out so fast, that I had to slow down and think about what he just said.
“You want me to tell your brother that you slept with his wife, my ex-girlfriend, the woman who cheated on me with him. Do I have that correct?” I asked slowly.
Verity started to snicker from beside me, and she quickly turned to busy herself at the sink again.
She was peeling potatoes, and from what I could tell, doing a piss poor job at it since her hands and shoulders were starting to shake.
I leaned back in my chair to see what she was doing, and frowned when I saw frozen chicken thawing in the sink.
I didn’t bother to ask her what she was doing, especially since I could hear my cousin’s sniffles across from me.
I wanted to throw up.
“You still have crabs?” was the smart thing that came out of my mouth next.
Eugene gulped.
“No.” He shook his head. “Thank God.”
Verity dropped something into the sink.
I ignored her and continued to stare at my cousin.
“Are you sure that the kid’s yours?”
He nodded miserably.
“Whose else could it be?”
That was when I laughed.
***
Two hours later, plenty of crying, bitching, moaning and generally bad moods around, my family left—leaving me with one last thing to deal with.
I stomped into my house, in a much worse mood than I’d been in when I’d left it two hours before, and found myself staring at a meal spread out across my dinner table and no Verity in sight.
I prowled through the house, and growled her name. “Verity!”
She didn’t answer, but I knew she was here…somewhere.
Because her car was still here, and because she’d spent the last two hours silently watching the spectacle on the front porch with a look of glee on her face.
Though, it didn’t matter if she had left. I would’ve tracked her down.
Mostly because I wanted to know why the fuck she was wearing a wedding ring on her finger—one that I sure as hell didn’t give her.
She either got married in the short time since I’d last seen her, or there were some other reasons for her to be wearing it. A reason that I didn’t yet understand.
“Verity!” I bellowed when I didn’t find her in the bedroom or bathroom, either.
There was one last place to look, and that was my workshop.
And as I prowled down the steps and opened the door to my office, I was stunned to see it brimming with shit.
A lot of shit.
It hadn’t escaped my attention that she’d moved other shit in, too.
I’d seen the new couch—and had idly wondered what she’d done with my old one.
I’d also made note of the new bed, the clothes of hers hanging in the closet, the bras hanging from the shower rod, and the new fucking ugly ass rug on the living room floor.
The big ass TV, however, was a welcome addition.
I didn’t often watch TV, but when I did, I’d hated watching it on my television.
But you used what you had, and I was too cheap to go buy a new one when I could wait a couple of months and get one on sale on Black Friday.
So I’d ignored the fact that half of my TV was pixelated and shitty, and I hadn’t realized how much I hated it until I’d gotten a brand new one that sat in its place.
The shop, however, was pushing things.
Her shit was shoved in there with my shit, and I could tell immediately it wasn’t going to work.
She was even using my forge!
“What are you doing?” I bellowed. “Get out!”
Verity didn’t bother to look over her shoulder at me. Instead, she continued to do something with the glass she had on the end of one of my goddamned pieces of metal tubing—the ones that I used to shape my swords—and stuck it back into the fire.
“You can’t be here,” I tried for reason. “It’s not safe.”
“Marriage is a matter of public record,” she said bluntly to me without so much as a flinch. “All he would need to do is run a search on you, and he’ll find my named linked to yours…in marriage.”
“We’re not married!” I barked, worry making me say it a little more harshly than I would have normally.
She smiled sympathetically at me.
“Unfortunately for you, we are,” she said, getting up and emptying her pockets.
She came up with a folded piece of white computer paper, handing it to me with an apologetic look.
I opened it and froze, seeing the marriage certificate in all its glory.
“When…how…where…”
She started to laugh, then.
“Vegas, baby,” was her answer. “Apparently, what happens in Vegas, doesn’t always stay in Vegas.”
My jaw clenched.
Her eyes studied my angry face.
“At least I’m not pregnant,” she offered, thinking it’d diffuse the situation.
But the only thing it did was make my mind go wild with possibilities. If she was pregnant, I’d be ecstatic. At least until I thought about all the ugly possibilities that could happen to a child—and a wife—of mine.
“We have to get it annulled,” I shook my head.
“No.”
“Verity,” I growled, taking a menacing step forward.
She took one of her own toward me, and then threw herself into my arms.
“I won’t leave you,” she said. “You could take your name back, but that would only hurt me. And you don’t want to hurt me. That’s what all of this is about, isn’t it? You don’t want me to get hurt.” She leaned forward until her forehead touched mine. “You take your name from me, and that’ll hurt me worse than anything you, or anyone, could ever do to me. It’ll rip my heart out, and leave me bleeding and vulnerable.”
Chapter 15
If you love someone, just tell them. Or text them eighteen times. It’s the same thing.
-Verity’s secret thoughts
Verity
I’d been living with my husband—and yes, I still couldn’t believe that I was calling him that, let alone that he actually was—now for a week.
I’d realized a few things.
One, he was messy.
Two, he was bossy.
Three, he was noisy.