“No I don’t. You made your choice. The wife and the child you already had weren’t good enough, so you went out and got replacements. That’s on you.”
“She was never pregnant!” he shouted.
The weight of those words slammed into me so hard I stumbled back a step. If it hadn’t been for Micah taking my arms and pressing his chest against my back, I probably would have gone down.
Everything shifted in that moment. The air, the ground beneath my feet, that goddamn organ inside my chest.
“What?” I whispered, finding it hard to breathe all of a sudden.
“She was never pregnant,” he repeated, his voice tortured. “I didn’t know. I thought—I . . . I only just found out there was no baby.”
Krista at least had the good grace to look contrite as I slowly turned my attention to her. “You’re unbelievable,” I started quietly. Then my voice boomed. “God! You fucking bitch! You knew!”
“Hayden, baby—” Micah started, but all I could see was red.
“How many times did we cry together? How many times, Krista?” I shook my head in disgust. “I called you in tears after every miscarriage, after every failed fertility treatment!”
“Oh shit,” I heard grunted, but was too lost in what I’d just discovered to pay attention to anyone else in that room.
“You poured me wine and held me while I broke down. You were the only person I had to talk to. You knew how it broke me every single time I lost a child before finally having Ivy. I lived through that pain for years. And you used a fake pregnancy to steal my husband? How fucking low can you get?”
“That’s absolutely disgusting,” Dani spat, staring daggers at Krista.
Her chest heaved as her gaze darted around at everyone in the shop, taking in each of their disgusted expressions before snapping, “You had everything! You had the perfect house and the perfect husband and the perfect life! You had it all, and you didn’t even care! I didn’t have anything. I was all alone!”
Micah’s voice rumbled from behind me. “Because you’re a miserable cunt.”
My head whipped around, and I looked up at him in shock as Krista snarled, “You can’t talk to me that way.”
“I can talk to you whatever fuckin’ way I want. Had you pegged the moment I saw you. You’re a nasty bitch who wants what everyone around you has, but you’re too damn lazy to work for it. You think, ’cause you got a decent face and probably starve yourself to stay thin, that shit’s just supposed to fall in your lap. Then, when it doesn’t, you blame everyone else. You were alone before because any man with half a brain in his head can see your bullshit from a mile away.”
He tilted his chin in Alex’s direction, adding, “You wised up for a second, got your hooks in a fuckin’ idiot who was stupid enough to think shiny and new was better than what he was lucky enough to already have. But you couldn’t keep the act up forever, and the minute he caught a glimpse of the soul-sucking leech you really are, he bolted.”
Like the Krista I remembered was prone to do when something wasn’t going her way, she covered her face with her hands and burst into tears—or at least pretended to—waiting for someone in the shop to come running to her rescue.
Turning my head, I pressed my face into Micah’s side to stifle my giggle, but it was no use. The giggle turned into a snort, which turned into full blown laughter that lasted a solid minute.
When I finally got a hold of myself and tilted my head back to look up at him, he was already grinning down at me.
“You good, Red?”
I returned his smile, feeling his warm green eyes like a physical caress. “Yeah, sorry, honey. This whole thing is just so ridiculous.”
“Are you fucking kidding me,” Alex barked, ruining the moment. “Hayden, you and I really need to talk. If we could just go somewhere—”
Turning to look at him, I pinned him in place with a flat expression. “No. We aren’t going anywhere to talk, because there’s nothing to talk about. I’m not in love with you anymore, Alex. Stop calling. Stop texting. I honestly don’t give a single shit what happens between you and Krista, but whatever the outcome, it won’t change things between us. We’re done.”
He threw a hand Micah’s way. “This is because of him—”
“You’re absolutely right. It is because of him. It’s because he lets me be me. He’s never once tried to change who I am. It’s also because I like who I am when I’m with him. He’s never made me feel like I’m less than anything if I don’t do something he wants. And it’s because he’s constantly showing me in little ways that he knows he’s lucky to have me, and he doesn’t take that for granted. Even at our best, I never got any of that from you.”
He looked completely ravaged by the time I finished talking, but I didn’t have it in me to care.
“For Ivy’s sake, I’d like it if you and I could get along, but that’s not my call to make. If you can’t give me that, I’ll be disappointed, but make no mistake, it won’t change how I feel. You’re just the man I share a daughter with, Alex. That’s all.”
“You—” He cleared his throat when his voice broke and started again on a pained whisper. “You’re the love of my life.”
I shook my head, looking at my ex-husband with pity. “For your sake, I hope to God that’s not true. Because if that’s how you treat the love of your life, you’re going to be leading a very lonely existence.”
Sensing I was done in more ways than one, Micah spoke next. “The two of you have three seconds to get in your cars and get out of my town, or I’ll arrest you both for trespassing and harrassement.”
Krista proved to be dumber than she looked by attempting to argue. “You can’t do that! We aren’t—”
The look he gave her could have turned lava to ice. “One,” he growled.
She caught on after that and scurried out of Divine Flora.
Alex was slower to go, stopping beside me and staring in my eyes for a few seconds. Apparently, whatever he saw in them backed up everything I’d just said, because his shoulders sunk in defeat, and he left without another word.
With that over, I looked at the uniformed officer and said, “I’m Hayden, by the way. I know we only just met, but I swear, there’s usually not this much drama swirling around me.”
His lips trembled. “Fred Duncan. Nice to meet you.”
“Seeing as you work with Micah, I wish we’d met under better circumstance, but I’ll try to make up for it the second time.”
His smile was genuine as he said, “I’ll look forward to it.” Then, with a tilt of his chin at Leo and Micah, he headed for the door.
“Whoowee!” Sylvia called out, standing tall and slapping the countertop. “Talk about drama. I don’t know about you guys, but I could use a drink after that. I’ll go grab the bottle of gin I keep stashed in the back office.”
Just like that, my aunt managed to break through the tension and make everyone smile.
Chapter Twenty-Three