It had taken me a lot longer to get home than it usually did. It was hard to drive with shaking hands and the tears filling my eyes.

I was still having a hard time processing everything that had happened. It caught me off guard, and I was finding it especially difficult to wrap my head around it.

As I pulled into my parking lot, the tears had finally stopped, but my head continued to spin.

A million thoughts ran through my mind. Was any of this actually happening? Was it all a bad dream? Was I going to wake up relieved that none of it actually happened? As lovely as that would have been, I knew better. My world was being turned upside down.

How could Nick hide something like that from me? He seemed so real. He seemed so trustworthy. He seemed so genuine.

When he told me he loved me, I was dumb enough to believe him. Instead, he made me out to look like a fool. I should have been used to that. He sure as hell wasn’t the first person to do that to me.

There I was, being the naive, trusting girl that I always was. I was a fool who was willing to give myself completely to someone who didn’t deserve it. I gave him the best of me, and all he did was lie to me and manipulate me so he could get what he wanted.

He told me what I wanted to hear so he could get into my panties and I let him. He used me for his own benefit. I thought he was different but in reality, he was just like any of the other assholes that I’d been with in the past.

I went inside my apartment and didn’t even bother to take a shower. All I wanted to do was go to bed and put an end to the horrible day I’d just had.

I didn’t even bother to take off anything other than my shoes. I crawled into bed, buried my face into my pillows and closed my eyes.

I intended to sleep until morning, but that ended up being much more complicated than I’d expected. Instead of resting up, I laid there, replaying the day’s events.

The day was going fine. I was going through his apartment and organizing it for him. Early in the afternoon, I noticed the mailman out the window and figured I’d grab his mail for him so he wouldn’t have to do it later.

I didn’t figure he’d have a problem with it. He left the key sitting on the kitchen counter and as far as I knew, we didn’t have any secrets to keep from one another.

I never even intended to go through his mail. I had just placed it down on the counter when a return address caught my eye.

It was from the Minnesota Department of Corrections.

I knew that meant it was from a jail or prison in the state and figured it was probably put into the wrong mailbox. I was looking to see who it was addressed to so I could get it to the right person when I saw that it was actually sent to Nick.

I spent the next few minutes being very conflicted.

Why would Nick be getting something from the Minnesota Department of Corrections?

It didn’t make any sense. I made the decision to open it. It wasn’t a decision that I’m particularly proud of, but I made it, and there was no turning back. I had to know what it was.

Why would it matter anyway? If Nick didn’t have anything to hide, me opening it would have been no big deal. Instead of the letter being something harmless, it was a letter from his parole officer, letting him know when and where Nick needed to come in and meet with him.

My mind spun, and I was in shock. I felt like I had tunnel vision as I stared at the paper, not being able to see anything but the white sheet in front of me.

Had Nick been in prison without bothering to tell me? The letter referred to the Ramsey County Correctional Facility, which was about an hour from where we lived.

How was it possible that he could have been at the Ramsey County Prison in Minnesota? Nick and Curtis had both said that he’d lived in California before coming to work at the construction company Curtis owned. Surely he would have mentioned being in prison, wouldn’t he? Everything was starting to sink in as I sat in his kitchen.

Nick had never been in California.

That was just a big line of bullshit that he fed to me. He lied to my face. All of the things that he’d told me he’d done had all been lies. Everything he said about his life had been lies.

All of the stories about his childhood and his family, none of them made sense. None of them seemed to add up over time. Even something as simple as what he used to call grandma changed with the stories. Sometimes he would refer to her as Granny and other times he called her maw-maw.

It was odd that he didn’t have a specific thing he called her all the time. I remember thinking it was weird before but it never seemed like something that was worth questioning him about.

One thing I did notice was that when Nick would tell me about his past, specifically anything about his family, he never showed any emotion whatsoever.

He wasn’t happy or sad when he told me about them. The stories were just empty. It was different when he told me stories about Curtis.

The two of them obviously had a solid bond. They each thought of the other as their brother. That was evident from the way they both spoke of one another, but none of that emotion was ever present when he talked about family.

I wondered if any of the things he told me about his family were true at all.

I have no clue how long I sat at his kitchen table, waiting for him to come home. I just remember sitting there, wondering what was going to happen when he got there.

I didn’t know if I should leave before he got there, especially since I didn’t know what he’d gone to prison for.

Would I be in danger if I stayed there? Was Nick a dangerous man? Was he a violent offender of some sort? Did he kill someone? Did he do something to a woman he was dating?

He had never done anything to me in the time we’d been together. Hell, he had never cursed at me or even so much as yelled at me. For our entire relationship, he always treated me so well. He always acted like a total gentleman. He was a sweetheart.

How much of that was an act, though?

Maybe the way he was treating me was all a cover-up. Perhaps it was to hide the person he really was. I was so deep in thought, I didn’t even hear my cell phone ringing over and over.

The true panic didn’t set in, however, until Nick walked into his apartment. I’d lost all track of time and didn’t realize that it was already time for him to be home.

He appeared in front of me before I’d had a chance to decide how I wanted to handle the situation. I was still trying to wrap my head around everything when he appeared next to me, touching my shoulder. That touch was more than I could handle. That was when I lost it.

I couldn’t put up with a man who had lied to me every day. I couldn’t endure the betrayal and the deceit. When I walked out the door, I had already made the decision that I was never going to see him again.

I didn’t care that he had a bunch of his things at my apartment. I didn’t want to think about that. I could get his things back to him somehow.

At the moment, however, I needed to get in contact with Kim and Curtis because Nick hadn’t been the only person who was being dishonest.