Page 80 of Fierce-Baker

“That is how I look at things now. I would have been settling for Alexa. She actually did me a favor, but it took me years to realize it.”

She drew in a steadying breath, her fingers lacing together so tightly her knuckles cracked. “But James wasn’t the one who really screwed me up. With him, that was on me. But Micah’s dad. Sorry, just the sperm donor in my mind.”

He didn’t move, didn’t flinch, didn’t shift in his chair. He just watched her patiently and openly, completely focused on her words. It gave her the smallest bit of courage to keep going.

“What was his name?”

“Shane,” she said. “Someone I didn’t tell anyone about. Not my parents, not my friends… barely even myself.”

It all made her feel like such a fool looking back.

That she had wanted something for so long and took what she thought was perfect.

Well, perfect never was because it didn’t exist.

“Why not?”

She forced herself to meet Baker’s eyes. “For a while, I thought he was everything I’d been missing. Charming. Attentive. Funny in all the ways James wasn’t. In all the ways no one was. I thought he was the man I was waiting for even though there were signs I should have seen he wasn’t. But when we were together, he made me feel as if I was his everything.”

Her chest tightened. God, she hated thinking about this.

“I learned the hard way that it’s just not possible for that to happen. You end up killing a little of yourself in the process.”

She blew out a breath. “You don’t know the half of it.” She steadied herself to continue. “When he traveled for work, I couldn’t reach him at night. When he was home, the calls were rushed. He’d text me when it was convenient for him, and stupidly… I accepted it. I thought I was overreacting. I should mention that he lived in Atlanta. He worked for his uncle who had a business in Charlotte and stayed at the company apartment two weeks at a time, then returned home and came back again.”

“That fucker was married, wasn’t he?” he asked.

Her gaze lifted to his furious one. She swallowed the lump in her throat, blinked the tears out of her eyes and nodded her head.

She needed a moment to gather herself. To continue.

To know that Baker wasn’t assuming she was the other woman that she feared many would do if they found out Micah’s dad was married to someone else at the time.

“He was. And the way I found out—it was horrible.”

His hand reached for hers, his strength and comfort exactly what she needed.

“Any way of finding out that news hurts. I’ve seen it with my mother, but I’m positive those women my father was with knew he was married and didn’t care. My mother almost searches for it now. She knows it will happen, it’s just a matter of when.”

“I never expected it and should have. The signs were there when I look back, but I was too lost in it. It’s not like we hid being out together.”

“There’d be no reason for it if no one knew him in the area.”

“Exactly. He never wore a wedding band that I saw. Not even the markings of one. When he was talking to people at work, he left the room. I know it was work related, it’s not like he hid it. Then one day, we were in the bedroom. Just finished having sex. I’m thinking to myself, I’m going to tell him I love him. I’ve never felt like this before and I was already trying to decide if I could make the move to Atlanta to be by him.”

“I hope you didn’t tell him you loved him.”

“No. His phone rings. He rolls over to get it, leaves the room, then the apartment to take the call. It’s not like I made noise when he was on the phone, but I guess he didn’t want to take that chance. I get dressed and I hear this vibration in the room and am looking everywhere for it. In his dresser, there was another phone upside down under clothes. I told myself don’t do it. Don’t look.”

“But you couldn’t not look either.”

She was shaking her head as she’d done that day when it was happening.

It almost felt as if she were in that room again.

“I flipped it over and the picture on the screen was Shane and a woman, two young kids, and the name at the top said ‘wifey’.”

“I hope you confronted him.”