With shaking hands, I re-read her letter for the hundredth time since she’d gone away, while in the background Katelyn—my new wife—complained about how with all my money I should live in a better house in a better part of town. Apparently, my house sucked. Correction: our house sucked. Because it was hers now as much as it was mine. All of it was.

I flopped back on the mattress and stared up at the ceiling. Blowing out a frustrated sigh, I tried to figure out where everything had gone wrong. How things had turned out so spectacularly different from how I’d always pictured.

This wasn’t how my story with Tanya was supposed to end. I’d always assumed that someday she’d come to her senses—that she’d wake up one day and realize what we had was special, and we were meant to be together. Instead, she’d told me it was time for me to move on, to find someone else to make me happy. That we were never going to happen.

And what had I done? After years of holding out for her—after going so goddamn long without sex I wasn’t sure my dick worked anymore—I’d fucked the first sure thing I could find. The two most important rules of a one-night stand? Always wear a condom, and don’t get the girl pregnant. Only, I did wear a condom and Katelyn got pregnant anyway.

So now I had a wife I didn’t particularly like, and a kid I hadn’t wanted but who I loved from the very first moment I’d seen his squinty, angry red face in the hospital room on the day he was born. In that second, I’d known I’d marry Katelyn; there’d been no way I’d let the woman I’d accidentally knocked up raise our kid alone.

It had nearly killed me to tell Tanya what had happened, but I was a man who took responsibility for his actions, and that included marrying the woman who was going to be the mother of my child, putting a roof over her head, and making sure she never wanted for anything.

Except she did—all the damn time. Every day was a new exercise in patience as I tried in vain to explain why we couldn’t afford some new gorgeous purse or fancy car. Needless to say, our marriage had been difficult from day one. Before then, really. From the moment I’d told her I couldn’t afford to splash out on some giant affair at The K Club, Katelyn had been lamenting my financial shortcomings—loudly and often.

Which I could hear her doing from the kitchen—again. It seemed a semi-detached townhouse in Ranelagh wasn’t good enough for my wife. Never mind this place had cost me over half a million fucking euro. Never mind that I’d blown my entire life’s savings on it because my old place—a two bedroom apartment—hadn’t been suitable to raise a baby.

Apparently, rugby players weren’t as wealthy as Katelyn had assumed. Or at least this one wasn’t.

Not for the first time I wished she’d gotten her claws into someone like Declan instead. He was one of my best friends, and I loved him like a brother—loved his wife Sophie like my own sister, too—but goddamn it if I couldn’t use some of the fucker’s cash right about now.

I sat up and ran a shaking hand through my hair, letting my eyes skim over Tanya’s words one last time. Folding the piece of paper in thirds, I shoved it into the inner pocket of my blazer, slapped my palms onto my thighs and stood.

Enough, I told myself. You have to let her go now.

This may not have been the life I’d pictured, but it was the one I’d been given, and I wasn’t going to fuck it up any more than I already had. I was going to give my relationship with Katelyn my all, and try to salvage some good from this whole sordid mess. Because while I may not have been sure of much, there was one thing I did know: I was never going to be like my old man. My kid was never going to wonder where daddy was or why he never came home.

I needed to put my feelings for Tanya aside—forget them altogether if I could—and focus on the most important person in my life now: my son.