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“This is different.”
“Yeah, how so?”
“She’s not my wife,” I point out.
“But you’d want her to be.”
His words bring the image of Rebecca walking down thataisle back to front and center in my mind, only this time she’s walking to me.
My wife.
The intensity of it, knocks all the air out of my lungs. He’s right, and until this very moment, I didn’t even realize how much I wanted that very thing.
Sure, it was something that occasionally crossed my mind back in the day, when we were first dating. Not as much about how I wanted to marry her, but that she was my person. Then she was gone, and now… Now, we had a chance to be together, only to be torn apart again, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it. About her. I couldn’t stop wanting her.
Rebecca Williams was mine, and I wanted to make it official.
“Don’t even bother to deny it. It’s all over your face. That woman has you wound up so tight, it’d be funny to watch if you weren’t messing your career up for it. Why not just go back and ask her to forgive your sorry ass for whatever you did?”
“Why do you think I was the one who did something?”
He lets out a sigh and rubs his hand over his face. “Trust me, Rookie. It’s always something that we did. One way or the other, we’re always to blame.”
The way he says it, I know he’s not talking just about Rebecca and me.
“What happened with Reina?” I ask, changing the subject.
He lifts his shoulders. “She left. She just packed her bags, and when I came home from the gym, I found a note on the fridge and all of her things were gone.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. She left, and the boys were here. Not that I’m surprised. It was just a matter of time, I guess. She wasn’t happy, and she made that loud and clear any chance she got.”
I only knew Blake for a little over a year, and I knew Reinaeven less, but I’d heard the stories. They used to date in college, and Reina got pregnant her freshman year. They decided to get married and keep the baby, so she dropped out of classes to take care of their son, which quickly changed after Blake signed for the NFL straight out of college.
I don’t know how things used to be between them before, but since I’ve joined the team, I’ve seen Reina on just a handful of occasions, mostly when I would come to their house, and she was… unpleasant, to say the least.
“When did that happen?”
“At the beginning of the summer, shortly after you left, actually.”
After I left?
“But that was weeks ago! Why didn’t you say something?”
Walker shrugs. “What was the point? She was gone, and there was no getting her back. Not that I wanted to, not really. Reina and I might have been married on paper, but we weren’t an actual couple for years. The only thing that bothers me is how she managed the whole situation with the boys. Daniel blames me for what happened. He’s been a nightmare to deal with, constantly trying to push my limits. And Levi…” He lets out another sigh. “He’s been extremely anxious every time I leave. Mrs. Maxwell keeps telling me that he constantly looks out the window when I’m gone. It’s like he’s afraid I won’t show up.”
“That’s fucked up on so many levels.”
He takes a pull from his beer, a dark expression crossing his face. “When she left, she didn’t just leave me. She left them. And that’s one thing I’ll never be able to forgive her for.”
“Has she tried to contact them?”
Blake shakes his head. “Not a peep from her. How fucked up is it that I’m not even surprised? She barely talked to them even before, but to just up and leave?”
He was right, it was messed up. The boys did nothing to deserve something like that, and I couldn’t even imagine what it must have felt like to be suddenly abandoned by their mother like that. No matter how sorry of an excuse of a mother she used to be before, at least she was present.
“I’m so sorry, Walker.”
