I’m physically shaking.

My hands are trembling so bad that Noah has to drive. Nothing should surprise me anymore, but this seems insane.

We sit outside the address, staring at the red door belonging to the person who Jackson claims his people traced the sender to.

“Are you sure you want to do this?”

“What choice do I have?” I ask, turning to look at Noah.

His eyes find mine, and he gives a sad smile. “We can move on. We can know what we know and be happy together. None of it changes how I feel about you.” He takes my hand.

I appreciate that he feels that way. God knows I was in no way prepared for the information Jackson gave me. It still doesn’t make sense. How did Scott even find out any of this? I’ve never breathed a word of Noah’s past. I thought the person behind everything was on Noah’s side, not mine.

Yet, here I sit, having to confront someone I loved. There’s no way I can let this go and pretend it didn’t happen.

“Noah, you flew to France because of this. You left me because someone hates us enough to do this. Someone used my name to publish that, and I’m not going to just sit back and let it slide. I want to know why. I want to know how. And I want to see his face when I tell him none of it matters because I have you anyway.”

He leans over the console and kisses me. “I want to know it, too, but I believe you when you say you didn’t tell anyone. I don’t need anything else. This can go in our past and stay there.”

“I appreciate that, but I need this. I’ve allowed him to control my life, to try to destroy me, and it ends now. I have to confront him and stand my ground.”

I hope he understands what I’m asking. I’ve spent most of my life cowering, that isn’t happening ever again. If I were to sweep this under the rug, he would win. This time, the victory is mine.

His lips touch mine again. “I’ll follow your lead, sweetheart.”

“I love you.”

“I love you.”

Noah was incredible through the whole conversation. Jackson explained that we couldn’t use the information he obtained—illegally—for anything other than confronting Scott. We had to swear we’d never breathe a word about how he got it, which we don’t know the logistics anyway. All he said was he has someone in his office who is very good at getting things without a subpoena. So, really, this is for Noah and me . . . well, me.

“Let’s go.” I release a heavy sigh and exit the car.

Noah meets me up front and takes my hand. We walk up the path while my stomach does flips. I’m not sure how I’m going to get through this, but I know I have to. I choke back the bile that rises as I ring the doorbell.

The door opens, and there’s no turning back.

“Kristin?” Scott’s voice is full of confusion. “What are you doing here? You said you were sick, and I told you I’d bring the kids around six.”

“I needed to talk to you, and it couldn’t wait.” I try to hold back the anger threatening to escape. “Are the kids still with your parents?”

He takes a step outside, pulling the door closed behind him. “Yes, I told you they were twenty minutes ago, why?”

Scott looks to Noah with a scowl and then back to me. “Do you know what an IP address is?” I ask.

“Of course I do.” He crosses his arms over his chest. “I work for a technology company. I’m a little surprised you know what it is, though.”

Yes, the pathetic housewife who knows nothing learned a lot in a few months. Jackass.

I continue on with my questioning as if his comment didn’t happen.

“So, you know they’re traceable?”

“No, Kristin, I must’ve missed that part in my fifteen years with the company.” He huffs. “Is this something your new boyfriend taught you? Are you really here when you’re supposed to be on your deathbed to ask me about an IP address? If you wanted a few extra days with him—”

“Shut up, Scott.”

“I’m in the middle of something. Why don’t you tell me what was so urgent you had to run here right this minute so we can move on?”

Noah squeezes my hand when I move forward, but Scott thinking he can talk to me this way makes me want to choke him. I don’t need his condescending bullshit. “Don’t push me, Scott. I’m doing the best I can not to flip the fuck out.”

“Over what?” He drops his arms and spits the words. “You’re the one who’s acting like a psycho.”

“Watch yourself,” Noah warns, placing his hands on my shoulders.

“Or what? You come to my house and threaten me? Give me a break with this bullshit.” Scott laughs.

Noah has about six inches and thirty pounds of pure muscle on Scott. He’d crush him like a bug. “Talk to her like that again, and you’ll find out.”

Scott blows him off, but I see the flash of fear in his eyes. He turns back to me and huffs. “Now, tell me what the hell you think I’ve done so I can get back to my second mistake inside.”

The fact that he’s going to stand here and try to play stupid and call me names is all I need to go over the edge. I pull out of Noah’s grip and move closer to the man I had children with. The man that I loved against my better judgment. I’ve put up with a lot of shit, but this is the end of the damn road.

“Mistake? I was a mistake? Whatever.”

“I have a fucking headache. Could you get on with it?” He grumbles.

He’s about to have a much bigger one.

“I know, Scott! I know what you did to me! I can’t believe you!” I lose it. “If you know that IP addresses are traceable, how did you think you’d get away with it, huh? Did you think Noah and I would sit back and let you try to ruin us?”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Scott steps toward me. “I don’t care about you and your fucking love life. I’m waiting for you to marry your stupid boyfriend so I can stop paying you monthly.”

He’s so concerned about the money all the time, what does he think will happen when I lose my job? Does he think he’ll suddenly pay less? Idiot. “Getting me fired wasn’t the smartest move then, was it? How do you think the courts are going to like it when I have no income and they make you increase the checks each month?”

Didn’t think about that, did he? I’m not stupid. My lawyer told me we could re-file if he gets a raise or I do. And as far as marrying Noah, I have no plans on that until I bleed Scott for every penny he owes me. I’ve earned it for all the hell he put me through.

“Fired? Kristin, I don’t have a clue what the hell you think I’ve done, but you’re clearly in need of therapy.” Scott runs his hand down his face.

“Oh, I need therapy? That’s rich. Says the man who spent fourteen years making me feel small in order to make himself feel better.”

“Can you control your girlfriend?” Scott says to Noah.

“Don’t fucking talk to me,” Noah warns. “I assure you, I’m doing just about everything I can not to lay your worthless ass out. It’s only because of Kristin and those kids that you aren’t already bleeding. But if you touch her, I’ll enjoy pummeling you.”

Scott laughs. “Right. Lay me out. Whatever you say, dickhead. Why don’t you spit out what I did already so we can let your theatrics play out?”

I take a step back and stare at him. I’ve known him a long time. Scott has a tell when he lies. He rubs his nose and sniffs. It was how I always knew in the back of my mind what was going on, but I never would accept it.

He hasn’t done it once.

He’s actually confused.

“You really don’t know?”

“No, I have no clue what the hell you’re doing yelling at me about IP addresses and whatever other bullshit you’re accusing me of.”

“You didn’t do it.” I breathe and look back at Noah.

Noah’s green eyes fill with concern. “You’re sure? We know . . .”

I shake my head.

The last few weeks things have been good between us. Scott and I have been able to speak calmly, do a semi-decent job at co-parenting, and he was nice enough to keep the kids for me.

It’s what is confusing me. If he is willing to try to be civil, why he’d do this. And then there was the fact that I couldn’t figure out how he found out about Noah’s past.

It doesn’t make sense.

“Jesus Christ, Kris! I don’t even know what—” Scott yells and the door opens.

“What is going on out here? I’d like our neighbors not to think things have gone downhill since I moved in.” Jillian puts her hands on her hips.

And then it hits me.

It wasn’t Scott.

Scott isn’t stupid enough to jeopardize the relationship with his kids and not smart enough to go through the trouble of hiding his tracks. He’s too narcissistic to think he’d ever be caught. He always had Jillian handle things for him. She was the mastermind who helped him get around things with me.

This reeks of this bitch.

“I was just telling Scott something, and then it occurred to me that you should probably be here anyway.”

Jillian jerks her head back. “Me?”

“You are marrying him, aren’t you?”

She smiles and touches her stomach. “I am.”

Scott rolls his eyes.

“First, tell me, how did you do it?” I ask her.

Noah’s hand tightens minutely on my shoulder.

“Do what?” she asks.

I can’t fucking stand her. She’s an even bigger idiot than Scott is if she thinks she has this all figured out. If she ever thought I was a bitch before, she’s about to see what happens when I no longer care about upsetting Scott.

“How did you manage to get all the information on Noah and send the email to my editor?” I watch her, waiting for the tiniest sign. “Did you somehow hack my laptop? Put some sort of device in my house? Are you that obsessed with me that you had to go through all the trouble to try to hurt me, or are you really in love with Noah and just want what you can’t have?”

“Fuck you, Kristin.”

I laugh. “No, honey, you fucked yourself. You see, I know what you did, and the sad part is that it’s all under Scott’s name, so he’ll go down for your crime. It’s fraud and identity theft to name two,” I bluff. There’s no crime, but I’m hoping they don’t know that.

Scott’s head jerks to her and her jaw drops a smidge before she catches herself.

“Excuse me? Scott, you’re going to let your ex-wife accuse me of this? At our house?”

“What exactly are you talking about, Kristin?” Scott turns back to me. “What information and email?”

I summarize the article and then tell him that someone accessed my email and sent it as though it were me who had written it. Scott’s eyes widen when I tell him how Jackson—who he’s terrified of—was informed by law enforcement that it was able to be traced back to Scott’s home.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Scott bellows. “Tell me you didn’t do this, Jillian! Tell me you didn’t—” He clenches his fists.

I give her a small smirk, knowing she has no way out.

It’s the straw that broke the bitch’s back, too. I can almost see the steam coming out of her ears when Scott reprimands her in front of me.

“You know nothing.” Jillian sneers at me. Her hands rise, and in an instant, Noah has me pulled back and he’s shielding me. “You think you’re so smart! You think you’ve got it all figured out, huh? All it took was one phone call, and I had every detail I needed.”

“Unreal!” Scott throws his hands up.

“You called who?” Noah asks. “How did you even get details?”

She rolls her eyes. “Scott had a monitoring software installed on her phone. It’s how we were able to sneak around without you knowing. You sent your little text exchange about Noah’s real name and I knew there was something there.”

I gasp. “What? You had that installed on my phone?”

He was tracking me? Was there no limit to what he was willing to do? I feel as though I’m living in the Twilight Zone. These people are out of their freaking minds. I’m truly stunned and feel a little stupid. All this time I’ve been living away from him, but he’s been monitoring me?

“This is fucking crazy!” Noah raises his voice. “Let’s go, sweetheart. This is illegal, and we’re going to my lawyer.”

Scott grabs my arm to stop me. “Kristin, please.”

“Don’t fucking touch her.” Noah puts himself in front of me again, almost chest to chest with Scott, who releases me immediately.

“It was what we got for Finn when we gave him a phone. I didn’t know it was on yours.”

Jillian snorts. “Yeah, right. Anyway, I have access. I got his real name and the rest was cake. Your dead girlfriend’s parents were all too willing to talk to your new girlfriend.” She grins at Noah.

Holy shit. She really is unglued. She called Tanya’s parents, said God knows what, and then sent the article. I have never in my entire life wanted to physically harm someone as much as I want to hurt her right now. I wish I had been diabolical enough to record this. Then maybe we could’ve done something legally against her. But we came here thinking it was Scott. And for better or worse, he’s Aubrey and Finn’s father, taking him down only hurts them.

But this is a horse of a different crazy . . . the certifiable kind. She needs a straightjacket with her next OBGYN visit.

“Are you insane? What the hell is wrong with you?” Scott screams at her.

The list is endless.

“You pushed the wedding back after seeing her with him one time!” She yells back in his face while pointing to Noah. “I know you still love her! You love her, and you’re going to leave me!”

“So, you go through my text messages and decide to fake an article? Do you even understand how irrational this is? You got him! You won, Jillian!” I shake my head. Scott isn’t a prize, but she clearly thinks he is. “He’s all yours, I’ve got the man I want, and it is not Scott. But what more do you want? You slept with my husband and got knocked up by him, but yet, you still have to find a way to make my life miserable? Why? What did you think you were going to gain by doing this?”

She rolls her eyes and ignores me.

“Answer me!” I yell.

She turns to Scott and glares. “I didn’t wait two years for you to get rid of her to be second place!”

Maybe if she went after, oh, I don’t know, a single man, she wouldn’t have had to wait at all. Instead, she chose a man with a wife and kids. She’s a real peach.

Jillian’s eyes meet mine, and I clench my fists. “He picks your stupid kids over me. He picks you over me.” Her voice is dripping with disdain, and I lose it. It’s time for Mama Bear to come out. No one talks about my babies like that.

I move closer to her, keeping my hand in Noah’s. I might need him to restrain me. “Don’t you ever talk about my children. You’re a homewrecker that will never be happy in your life. You want what other people have but don’t take care of what you do have. You see, I’ve won and you’ve lost. Noah is still right here, and now Scott sees you for what you are—a spiteful bitch.”

I will never understand someone capable of doing this. I turn to my ex-husband, a forty-one-year-old grown man who is allowing a twenty-four-year-old to ruin his life, and throw out my demands, “She is to be nowhere near my kids. If you want me not to call my lawyer, then you better figure out how to make that happen because I won’t allow her to be part of their lives or mine.”

“You’re not going to have to worry about that. She won’t be around anyone for much longer.”

There are consequences to every choice we make, some are positive, like leaving Scott and finding Noah. Others are negative, like choosing to be a sneaky, paranoid, whore and ending up with nothing. I’d say I’ve made some of the better decisions.

Noah is the treasure chest after the shipwreck of my marriage. We may not have had a map leading us to the X that marks the spot, but we have one another as guides.

I look back at him and smile.

“Ready, sweetheart?” Noah grins.

There’s nothing else that they can do to me. I’m not the girl I was all those years ago. I don’t play games or allow people to run my life. I’m stronger with Noah beside me, but I’m also strong on my own. Standing here, watching these two, makes me realize how much better my life is. My relationship isn’t perfect, no one’s is, but Noah and I don’t want to hurt one another.

Even when we were tested, we found our way through it. He flew thousands of miles just to work it out.

I love him more than I knew I could love another man.

“I’m ready. Everything is behind us now.”

He leans in and kisses my lips. “Damn right it is.”