Stay with Me

I’ve been fucking a married woman.

“ . . . and I thought it was over. I mean, I left him years ago . . .”

She’s not divorced. She said she was divorced.

“ . . . party and everything. I mean, how humiliating is that, right? But then . . .”

She’s been cheating on her husband. With me.

“ . . . he just wants the money. Money that he’s not entitled to, but I’m sure I’ll write a hefty check. Are you still listening?” she asks with a smile, and then the smile fades when she gets a good look at my face. “Wyatt?”

“Let me get this straight. You’re not legally divorced.”

“Well, I was, but—”

“Answer me. It’s a simple yes or no, Amelia.”

“No.” Her eyes narrow. “That’s what’s happening when I go to L.A. next week.”

I lean on the countertop, hang my head, and do my best to not punch a wall.

“I fell in love with a fucking married woman.”

“I don’t understand—”

“Exactly. You don’t understand. Amelia, I’ve told you that I love you. I have molded you into my life so completely, I can’t even look around my house without seeing you there. And I loved that. I was high on it. I couldn’t wait to have you there permanently. But now it’s going to torment me for the rest of my fucking life.”

“What are you talking—”

“I was ready to build a life with you.” I pace away and stare out the glass door to the pool. “I was committed to you. Completely. I would have died to keep you safe.”

“Why are you speaking in the past tense?”

I turn to look at her and see all of my hopes and dreams evaporate. “Because this was a deal-breaker for me from the beginning, and you fucking knew that, Amelia. You’re not divorced.”

“It’s a technicality, Wyatt.” She shakes her head and rubs her hand down her clean, naked face. “I was divorced, and he contested it. It’s not like I have a lovesick husband sitting around somewhere. I didn’t leave him yesterday.”

“I don’t care when you left him,” I yell and turn away from her. “It doesn’t matter when you left him. You didn’t divorce him.”

“Yes, I did.”

I shake my head. “If it was as simple as a technicality, you would have told me, yet you managed to avoid that little piece of information for almost two months. Jesus, I’ve been inside you for two months.”

“Don’t you dare make our relationship out to be dirty.”

“We don’t have a relationship, Amelia. We’ve been committing adultery.”

Her face goes red. “Get the fuck out of my house.”

“Gladly.” I walk past her, careful not to touch her. When I get to the door, I stop and look back at her. She hasn’t turned around. “Did you do this on purpose? Were you just playing with me? Or did you think I wouldn’t care?”

She spins, fury all over her face. “Get the fuck out!”

I nod and leave, shutting the door behind me, and get in my car. Rather than go home, I speed away, not sure where I’m going. I just know that I can’t be close to her right now.

I’m numb. Every part of me is numb.

Well, every part but my heart. That seems to be a bloody mess. Unfortunately, Jace can’t fix this one.

No one can fix it.

I’ve done the one thing that I swore I would never do. I started a relationship with a woman who was already tied to another man. I know what it is to be on the receiving end of that, and I wouldn’t ever want to put anyone through that. It’s agony.

It seems both sides are fucking agony.

I pull into Jace’s driveway and bang on his door. He opens it, blinking sleep out of his eyes, and takes one look at me, scowls, and stands back, silently inviting me inside.

“What’s wrong?” he asks immediately.

“She’s married,” I reply and pace his living room.

“I’m sorry, what?”

“Amelia is married.”

“Not to you.”

I laugh humorlessly and then look at him like he’s an idiot. “You’re still half asleep. No, not to me. If she were married to me, and yes, I’d planned that she would be at some point in the not so distant future, I wouldn’t be standing here wanting to punch the fuck out of someone.”

“Hey.” He raises his hands in surrender. “Don’t punch me. I don’t even know what’s going on.”

I rub my hand over my mouth and walk to the window. Jace has a view of the city. People are driving, working. Living their lives.

And mine is falling apart.

“I loved her,” I say. “Fuck me, I still love her, and she destroyed me with one sentence. ‘So ready for my divorce to be final.’”

“I’m going to go out on a limb—precariously, by the way, because I don’t want to get decked—and guess that you didn’t know that.”

I shake my head. “No. She said she was divorced.”

I turn and look at Jace. “She said that? She didn’t say separated?”

I shake my head again. “Not long after we met, we were having lunch, and she said she was divorced. You know me, man. I never would have pursued her if I knew she was still married to someone else.”

“He’s not here,” he points out, and I just glare at him.

“Jace.”

“I know. Jesus, Cruella did a number on you.”

“And now Amelia is doing a number on someone else.”

“Hey, you don’t know that. Did you ask for specifics? Circumstances?”

“It doesn’t matter.” The fight is leaving me, and I’m just left with despair. “She’s married, Jace. And that’s a deal-breaker for me.”

“It’s a deal-breaker for most of us,” he says softly. “I’m sorry, Wyatt.”

“What is it with me and women?” I ask him. “That’s not rhetorical, I’d really like an answer.”

“You love hard,” he says and then scratches the back of his head. “But I don’t think you’re blind. You want to believe the best in people, and you can’t blame yourself for trusting.”

“That’s just it, I don’t trust. Not easily.”

“I know.”

“But I trusted her.”

“Yeah. You did.”

~Amelia~

Two days. It’s been two damn days since the fiasco in the kitchen. I’ve cried.

Okay, let’s be real, I’m still crying. I don’t quite remember what my face looked like before. Now it’s red, and my eyes are swollen with bruises around them. My lips are even puffy from blowing my nose so much.

I didn’t know that could happen.

I also didn’t know that my heart could hurt like this. Like someone has stabbed it a thousand times, and my chest is a bloody, gaping hole.

I love him, and I know that if he’d just listen to me, we could work this out.

But he won’t answer me. I’ve texted a dozen times, I’ve called.

Shit, I even stood on his doorstep and knocked on the door for a good thirty minutes yesterday. His car was in the driveway. I sound like a crazy woman.

Yeah, not my finest hour.

He won’t talk to me.

That might be what hurts most of all. He won’t let me explain.