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But I moved to Brooklyn first, because of a stupid hope that Deacon would change his mind.
Now I realized that wasn’t going to happen.
My apartment was basically a four-hundred-square-foot room, with a single window, a kitchen and a living room combined into one, and my bed took up most of the space because it was a single room. All the furniture I had bought was expensive and gorgeous, and I’d put it in storage in the hope I could pull it out again someday.
But now I knew I’d have to sell it.
I’d have to sell everything so I could move back to the West Coast and start over.
As a thirty-year-old woman.
Sometimes I couldn’t believe this was real, that I’d had the perfect life…and now it was gone. I’d had the perfect man, the perfect job, a little boy I loved like my own, when I wasn’t even his stepmother. I had coworkers I adored, clients I cared about, a legacy I was proud of.
But it was like it had never happened.
Now, I had no one…at all.
Fifteen
Deacon
It’d been almost a month since the shit hit the fan.
Valerie was still being difficult by not responding to my messages. She’d reverted back to her old ways, keeping Derek from me as punishment. But since this crime was worse than any other I’d ever committed, the punishment would be the most severe.
But I couldn’t be patient anymore.
I took the elevator to her floor and pounded my fist against the door.
Her heels were audible on the other side. She stopped when she looked through the peephole.
“We can’t do this forever, Valerie.” I hadn’t heard about my son’s first month of school because of this drama. I wasn’t myself because I was still upset, but I couldn’t continue to miss these precious moments of his life.
She unlocked the bolt and opened the door, looking at me as if she despised me.
“I want to see Derek.”
She opened the door wider and let me inside.
I moved into the living room, relieved she didn’t put up a fight in the hallway so the other residents could hear us. “Where is he?”
“In his room.” She shut the door and looked at me, her arms across her chest.
I felt her hostility and knew it needed to be tamped down. “I know you’re upset with me, but don’t take it out on Derek.”
“I’m not taking it out on him. I’m taking it out on you.”
“And that affects our son, so stop it.”
She shook her head as she stared me down. “I can’t believe you fell for a piece of trash like her—let alone, the help. Really?”
My eyes narrowed. “Don’t call her that.”
“I’m perfect, but you’d rather be with that?”
“You aren’t perfect, Valerie. No one is perfect.”
“Even so, I still can’t believe it. I’m glad she’s gone.”
I didn’t know Valerie knew we’d stopped seeing each other, but she was nosy, so she’d probably figured it out somehow. “She’s not a bad person, Valerie. And you’re one to talk. You cheated on me how many times?”
“But I never lied about it. I said it to your face.”
“She didn’t know he was married, alright?”
“And you believe that?” she asked incredulously.
I didn’t need to think about it. “Yes.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I admit what she did was wrong, but no, I don’t believe she’s lying. She didn’t steal from her clients or kill anybody, so your response is harsh. She’s a person, Valerie. A human being.” I knew I should take my own advice because I was so aggressive with Cleo, but her crimes against me were different from everyone else.
“Whatever,” she said. “I never have to see her again, so it doesn’t matter.”
My eyes narrowed. “I don’t know about never…”
“Well, not in this building, at least.”
Now, I was even more confused. “What do you mean by that?”
Her eyes searched mine, as if she was just as perplexed by my question as I was by her comment. “You don’t know? Well, I guess I know you aren’t seeing her anymore…which is nice.”
“Know what?”
“She was fired almost a month ago.”
I stared at her blankly, needing time to break down the simple sentence. A new kind of pain entered my body, a pain that wasn’t caused by my own misfortune…but someone else’s. “What?” She’d been let go, and she didn’t tell me?
“The owner got rid of her.”
“Why?” I demanded. “I asked you not to say anything.”
“And I didn’t,” she snapped.
“Then what the fuck happened?” Now, I didn’t even care about Derek being here. I didn’t care if he overheard me.
“Jake did.”
My eyes widened, and the anger quickly followed. “Why?” Why the fuck would he throw her under the bus like that? She risked her job to have a relationship with him, and that was his response? What kind of integrity was that?
She shrugged. “I told him the two of you were seeing each other, and then he decided to tell the owner.”
