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When Jensen swooped in and claimed responsibility, all of my good intentions to come clean and tell Chase were flushed, but my father calmed down. Everyone ended up paying a huge price. If only I could go back in time, I’d be honest with Chase, lying on the bed in that hotel room in Philadelphia, the consequences be damned. My heart knew that’s what I should have done.
My father finally knew the truth, because Jensen spilled it all in a drunken haze after a trip back to Rochester. It was a tortured confession, and it turned uglier when my father railed at me that I was a selfish brat letting Jensen clean up the mess I’d made of my own life. He didn’t want to hear my reasons for any of it and especially how he was a big part of the decision.
But, you can’t rewind your life just because you know you made the wrong choices. My dad always said hindsight was 20/20 but it didn’t do anyone any good to think about what might have been, or what should have been. I’d wanted to make it right a million times in the years since, but how? How could I hurt Jensen after all he’d done, and how could I face Chase, and admit what I’d kept from him? But, Remi might need him and now, I had no choice.
I put on a strong front, but there were times, in private, when I let myself wallow in a pit of self-pity and despair, knowing every bit of it was my fault. No one saw me fall apart anymore, but it still happened. I used to pray that the deep-seated loss would go away, but over time, it became part of me that I needed to survive. The pain and our daughter, who looked so much like him, were the only tangible proof he and I ever existed at all. Every little piece of happiness that I was ever granted had become smeared with guilt, pain, and loss… first Chase, now Remi and Jensen.
In the weak moments when I still thought about Chase, or I saw his expressions on Remi’s beautiful little face, I felt like I’d die; as if a giant vacuum sucked all the air out of the atmosphere to suffocate me. It hurt like hell, real physical pain, but as much as I suffered, I knew it didn’t compare to what Chase went through when I left him, and what Jensen had suffered since. God, I hated myself and I’d give anything to make her well, and to fix things for Chase, and Jensen.
About a year after my horrific break-up with Chase, and my quickie wedding at the Clemson Municipal Courthouse, Kathryn confronted me with what I’d done. Chase was still destroyed, and she wanted answers. She, along with her entire family, expected Chase and me to live happily ever after. I couldn’t blame her for being hurt and confused. After listening to how much he was still suffering, I broke down in a sobbing heap and revealed the entire sordid thing. At first, she was furious and threatened to get on a plane to England to tell Chase. The memory and the misery that went with it were still as vivid as the day it happened.
I had fallen to the floor, while she loomed over me with disgust on her face. “How could you do that to him, Teagan?”
I was crying so hard I could hardly speak, my body shaking violently. “Puh-please, do-don’t! Do you thu-think it will he-help Chase?” I begged in ragged gasps. “It won’t. Telling him won’t change anything. It won’t change the fact that he’s there and I’m here, or that I’m married. Don’t make him suffer more by making him relive it.” I reached up and grabbed her hand, my eyes pleading with her. “Please, Kat.”
“You selfish bitch!” she screamed at me. “Do you understand what he’s gone through not knowing why you dumped him? Don’t you know what you’ve done?”
My heart was already shredded but somehow managed to break even more. I did understand. I played it over and over in my head since the day it happened. “It’s not that simple!” I pleaded. “Do you thinkthis has been easy for me? Do you think I haven’t regretted it every second of every day? Chase wouldn’t have gone to London. He wouldn’t have his career if I told him I was pregnant.” I bowed my head and cried like I’d never cried, leaning over my knees and the pain in my torso threating to rip me open. “Then when my father found out he threatened to drag Chase through the mud. Like he knocked me up and left because he cared more about his career than he did me, because, God forbid, his only child would do something so irresponsible to sully the family name. I was going to risk it anyway, Kat. I bought a plane ticket, but before I could leave, Jensen went to my dad behind my back and claimed the baby was his and my father suddenly backed off Chase.”
“So what? What could your father have done to him? I don’t understand you!”
“I was stupid and scared. Playing professionally was all Chase ever wanted, I couldn’t take a chance he’d lose what might be his only chance. I couldn’t tell him about the baby.”
She shook her head angrily, her blonde hair whooshing around her slender shoulders. “Do you think he can’t count?”
I lifted my hands and let them fall to my sides in defeat. “I wasn’t thinking straight and I just shut myself in. I didn’t think he’d find out.”
“So, instead, you let him think you screwed his best friend the moment he left?”
“It was better than letting him think I betrayed him before he left, wasn’t it? If he found out about the pregnancy and at the same time it became known I married Jensen, he’d think we were fooling around before he left.”
“No! I saw what he went through!”
“No? Are you kidding? I know him better than anyone and I know what he wanted and I know what would hurt him the least!”
“Nothing could have been worse for him than thinking he meant so little to you, or to Jensen that you’d both betrayed him. Except this. This is a million times worse!”
“No, it isn’t. He’s got his career, and he’s rocking it. The whole world calls him ACE. He’s dating. He seems happy. Kat, please don’ttell him in a fit of rage. Please, just think about the repercussions before you do something that will only hurt him more.”
“You have no right to lecture me on the rights and wrongs of hurting Chase! You should tell him the truth!” She pointed her finger at me, her voice dripping venom as she paused to consider my words. I deserved her hatred and I nodded in defeat.
“You’re right. I should. I want to… but would it take away anything he suffered?” I pushed off my knees and landed on my butt, leaning up against the couch in defeat. My eyes were tired, and tears still leaked out, but I shrugged. “Would it change anything? It would only make him relive it, and you know it. He’d throw away his career, the whole thing would be a scandal in the papers, and he’d still hate me.”
She sucked in her breath and her head fell back as both hands went to grasp her hair. “What the fuck am I supposed to do? He’s my brother! I have to tell him! He deserves to know about his daughter.”
I shrugged again, pushing back the long strands of hair that were stuck to my face by the saltiness of dried tears. “I understand, but why? If you think it will help him or make his life easier, then tell him. But please, not if it will only hurt him. Do you think the headlines will be kind to him? It will sell more magazines and get more hits if they paint him as deserting his baby mama for his career. The media only cares about hits, not the truth! Jesus, think about it!! I know he’s moved on. Just let him be. I’ve wanted to go to him a hundred times. I’ve died over this, but I know it’s too late! He’ll never forgive me, now, and he’s the star of Arsenal, he’s always traveling… do you think he has time for Remi now?”
“Teagan, he’d want his child.”
I knew she was right, but I said the only thing l could think of; what I knew would make Kat pause. “Would he? It was his decision to go! I didn’t tell him to leave.” I knew I was twisting the truth, but I didn’t know how else to make her see my side of it.
What I didn’t tell Kat that day was that I’d already decided to drop out of Clemson and go to London to tell Chase the truth, to let my father do his worst to both of us, political and professional football careers aside, but a woman answered his phone when I called to tell him my flight number, and I learned a few things that I didn’t want to know. Against all I believed about Chase and me, it was clear that he’d already moved on. The woman left me in no doubt of her relationship with him.
After that, what options did I have? Chase was screwing some bimbo in London, and Jensen had offered to stand by me. Next to Chase, he was my closest friend. After that conversation, Kathryn didn’t contact me for months, and I was scared every day that I’d get a knock on the door and it would be Chase, standing there, muscles coiled with hate simmering in his green eyes. Living without him was hard, but living with his hatred would be worse, and it wouldn’t help Remi. That’s how I fooled myself, how I justified it in the time since.
I followed Chase’s career like gospel and used my sporadic contact with Kathryn to fill in any blanks though I barely asked, and she didn’t volunteer very much. At first it was awkward and painful, but I just wanted to know he was okay. From the little she said, he struggled for months, but then, maybe she didn’t know about the woman who’d told me they were lovers.
Ugh! It was all so fucked up. I should have still gone to London to confront him, but I was so fragile, heartbroken, and physically sick being pregnant, I didn’t have the strength, but more, I was afraid I’d get there and he’d tell me he didn’t want me to be tied down. I didn’t care if I lived or died, and if it weren’t for the baby I was carrying, Chase’s baby, I might have done something stupid to end the incredible pain.
