Page 50 of Embracing the Beat
“Not right away. About three years ago. So we’d been living there what, two or three years?”
“Did you guys live together?”
“Yep. Neither of us saw any issues with it. Everything would be official eventually.”
“What happened?”
“We set a date for a year after the engagement, but nothing ever got planned. She’d gotten a promotion and was working anywhere from seventy to eighty hours a week.”
“What did she do?” I ask. If she attended Temple with West, she must be smart.
“She’s an actuarial scientist for an insurance group.”
Called it!
“Ah,” I say, pretending like I understand what that is while making a mental note to Google it later.
“She was put on some big project at work. We hardly saw each other.”
“That must have sucked.”
He shrugs. “It should have, right? But I ignored the fact that I wasn’t as upset as I thought I should be. Ashley was…she was…well, for lack of a better term, she was high maintenance.”
“High maintenance?”
“We needed a house in Shadyside. She had to wear designer clothes to work. She wouldn’t dare be seen in any car more than a year old.” He lists each offense with the tick of a finger. “It was expensive, but she made good money, and it was hers, so I figured, why not? Only it wasn’t just her money. She’d spend hers, and I’d need to cover the mortgage. Or the groceries. Or you name it. And the savings account I had spent years building dwindled to nothing.”
I can’t picture him being very happy with someone like that but keep my comment to myself. “What about the wedding?”
His laugh is devoid of humor. “The project ended, and her hours went back to normal, but she kept finding excuses to put off planning. She wanted to relax after working so hard. She didn’t see why it mattered since we already lived together. She didn’t want to rain on her sister’s parade when her sister got married.”
“So, no wedding?”
He shakes his head. “Nope. But she made some good points, so I assumed we’d get married at some point when life started to slow down a little. I never pictured my fiancée coming to tell me she was pregnant before she was my wife.”
“P-pregnant?” I sputter. “You have a kid?”
So much pain and anger is etched on his face, it makes my heart thump in my chest.
“If I had a kid, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Not what I meant,” I defend. “I didn’t realize you—”
“She’s still pregnant, as far as I know. She came to me with the news three months ago. Only the timing didn’t add up. She got pregnant the weekend I met up with Sawyer for a camping trip. And it had been over a month since we’d had sex prior to that.”
“Oh, shit,” I whisper, fully understanding what he’s saying.
“She had been cheating on me for over a year. With a client.”
“A year?” My stomach bottoms out. “How did you find out?”
“I waited until we got home after the doctor’s appointment and confronted her about the timing before I stormed out of the house. By the time I got back, he was there.”
“What happened?”
“She’d called and told him she was pregnant. With his kid.”
“Holy shit. How did she explain you? You guys were living together!”
