Page 46 of One More Chance
I’d given her that sweater casually, thinking it was just another soft thing to warm her. But she had treasured it for years. Hell, she'd worn it through everything.
“She wears it when she cries,” Angie went on, savoring the words. “Did you know that, Levi? Last night, she curled up on the couch in it. The poor thing was shaking. Whispering your name like it hurts her.” Angie let out a soft, mockingtsk. “Then she tossed it out in the garage like it was trash. That pathetic little cunt.”
My vision went red and the line went dead before I could respond. To hear her disparage my wife, to call one of the most selfless and thoughtful people I'd ever known a cunt? If Angie had been in front of me, I would have ripped her to bloody pieces. A decade of therapy would not have saved her from my bloody knuckled rage.
Deep breaths, big guy. In and out.
I forced myself to breathe, to slow my heartrate. Anger was what Angie wanted me to feel. Anger meant I would do something rash, something stupid. I waited until I'd calmed myself before I sat on the bed to think.
The garage. Obviously, Angie had gotten into our garage. It wouldn't be that hard to slip in for someone as unhinged as she was. The garage was where we kept the things too sentimental to throw out, but too painful to keep close. The in-between space. Our memories in storage bins. Sloane's childhood keepsakes, the kids’ old toys, that damn sweater folded neatly beside a box of anniversary cards we'd stopped reading years ago.
It's also where we keep the trashcan, smart ass. Maybe she was throwing it out.
In the wake of her taunting phone call, a suffocating silence settled over me. I'd heard her words, but it was what Angie didn't say, what she'd left unsaid, that I kept playing over and over in my head: "I'm watching her Levi and there's nothing you can do about it."
A deep ache gnawed at my chest, threatening to consume me.
Angie had gone too far. The thought of her filthy, greedy hands touching anything of Sloane's disgusted me, of course. But the worry that Angie might be dangerous? That she might actually try to hurt Sloane? I hadn't considered that a real possibility until then. Something about Angie breaking into our garage made me realize that she wasn’t just a scorned lover anymore. She was a genuine threat.
Sloane deserved better than this. She deserved to feel safe, to feel secure,and I wasn’t going to let some psychopath ruin that.
This bitch doesn't realize who she’s dealing with.
No one hurt Sloane. I would bury Angie under concrete if she did.
I let out a breath through clenched teeth. I shot a text to Sloane, my fingers zipping over the screen.
Do you still have your gray sweater with the torn sleeve?
I was met with silence.Obviously, you idiot. It's past midnight.I doubted Slone was awake.
Desperate for an ounce of control, I paced the room while I cataloged the years I could remember I'd spent with Angie.
She'd left me two years into our relationship, right around the time mine and Sloane's divorce had settled. Master Builders Inc. and ourhome had been sold, the proceeds split down the middle, and I paid a lump sum of alimony towards Sloane.
I had tried to start anew with Angie. She was already gorgeous when I'd met her, but she'd transformed herself into an absolute bombshell. Her body was built in a surgeon’s office: carved, sculpted, and suctioned into existence with my money I pissed away. Every time we fought, I imagined those stacks of cash I’d burned to pump fat into her ass and freeze it under her skin. Her forged beauty became a grotesque monument to every stupid, disgusting choice I’d ever made. Her fake lashes fanned dramatically, drowning her eyes in plastic glamour. She became a parody of seduction.
Was she always this fucking crazy, though?
Had there been signs? I ran through every moment, every interaction I could recall with Angie. The flirtation, the smiles, the fights, the hints that I was too blind to see her for what she was. In my previous life, was she really this unhinged and the Old Me had never noticed? Or had some fragile thing snapped in her after I woke up in this new life? Is she this insanely obsessed because of how I fled, terrified, from her?
I couldn’t shake the unease gnawing at me. The pieces were all there, scattered and jagged, coming together in a way I could no longer ignore.
Our last interaction burned in my memory, sharp and unforgiving. We were staying at her Dad’s place in preparation for a party. Angie had lost her shit on me because I couldn’t take her to Key West for our anniversary. After two years of gifting her with anything and everything she'd ever asked for, with that one cancelled trip the carefully painted facade of our relationship cracked open to reveal what had always beenunderneath: sex, control, and money. I gave her what she wanted, when she wanted it, and if I couldn't? What use was I, then?
We screamed at each other, her mascara streaming black tears down her face as rage coiled in every syllable. That fight stripped everything between us bare. I saw myself in the shattered mirror of that moment, standing in the wreckage of a life I had built on ego and lies. I had nothing. No dignity. No home. No family that trusted me.
But it was her final words that branded themselves into my spine.
“You are nothing without me, Levi,” she spat. Her voice shook with a furious hunger. “You are mine and if I can’t have you, then believe me… no one will.”
She slammed the door on her way out. I stared at it for a long time, listening to the silence crawl in around me before I packed my stuff and left. I blocked her, cut her out of my life, and made sure I would never hear from her again.
After Angie, I abstained from alcohol and other women. That's around the same time I'd started therapy. Hell, I did everything I could to turn my life around.
I finally saw Sloane for the miracle that she was and, for the first time in a long time, I tried to live a life worth living. After I'd lost Violet and watched Liam bounce in and out of juvenile detention centers, I'd desperately wanted to lead a more selfless life.
There were a few women who came and quickly went for the remainder of my years, but never more than one or two dates at the most. It was as if they could sense the rot within me, the sins I'd committed, the wreckage I'd left in my wake. If there had been a world record for 'number of times ghosted' I would surely have held it.
