More Than Protect You (More Than Words #6.5) - Shayla Black Page 0,42
me that if we were going to have a future, shouldn’t we start telling the people in our lives about us? He just kept brushing me off, saying it wasn’t the right time. And before you comment, yes, I should have known by then he had no intention of marrying me, but I didn’t know how to stop hoping. I believed with all my heart that I loved him.”
“What ended it?”
“I got pregnant. He claimed he’d had a vasectomy…so I went off the pill. What was the point of taking it if I didn’t need to actually prevent pregnancy? My periods had always been regular…but I missed my first one after that. At first I told myself that my body was taking a while to restart normally, but when I vaulted out of bed one morning because I had to throw up, I knew.”
“And you told him?”
“Immediately. In a way, I was relieved. I’d been stunned when he told me he’d gotten fixed. How were we going to have kids in the future if he’d had a vasectomy? Yes, he had children with Linda, but I was going to be his new wife and I wanted kids.” She scoffs at herself. “When I told him I was pregnant, his first reaction was to grin, so I thought he was happy. Then he literally patted himself on the back and said he still ‘had it.’”
Just when I’m convinced Reed couldn’t be any worse, she proves me wrong. “What an asshole.”
“And I really didn’t figure that out until I asked him what we were going to do about Linda, his divorce, our future… He looked at me as if I was an idiot and told me he wasn’t planning on doing a damn thing. He would leave Linda on his timetable, not mine. Then he said he’d been trying to figure out when I’d catch on to the fact that I was just a convenient hole. He’d enjoyed getting me pregnant, but he had enjoyed knocking up more than one of his assistants in the past, too. He, Byron, and some of the other managers even had a betting pool on me, and he won because he’d managed the feat so quickly. But he didn’t want me anymore, especially since he hated fucking pregnant women. And he’d never loved me anyway. It probably sounds stupid, but I was shocked.”
“Not stupid. Horrifying. Calling him an asshole is too nice.”
“You’re right. But I was still gaping and reeling when he told me I should consider our time together a life lesson, that I should think more critically and be far less gullible before I climbed between the sheets with someone else. And, by the way, I was fired. If I went quietly, he would give me six months’ severance and pay me for the rest of my unused vacation time. If I thought about doing something silly like hiring a lawyer, going public, or telling my dad who’d fathered my baby…well, he already had an insurance policy. About a month prior, he’d asked me to grab the office’s petty cash fund and stash it at home because, according to him, someone had been stealing from him. I did what he asked, and he made sure the office surveillance captured me ’stealing’ so the police and the public would know I was accusing him of inappropriate behavior in the office to sling mud and cover my tracks.” She folds her hands together. “Apparently, he’d run this same scam on several of his other assistants. It always worked.”
I can’t even understand Reed’s depravity and I don’t want to waste time trying. Instead, I take her hand in mine, doing my best not to betray the depth of my anger. “I don’t even have a word low or filthy enough to call that man. Really, if he wasn’t already dead, I’d be hard pressed not to hunt him down and pull the trigger myself.”
“Thank you for taking my side, but it’s hard not to feel like the blame is half mine. I wanted so badly for the shimmering future I could picture with him to be real that I gave myself easily, made excuses, and overlooked obvious red flags.” She sighs. “So trust is hard for me now. I especially have a hard time trusting myself.”
And that’s the biggest problem. She wants to believe we have a potential future, but she’s afraid to take that leap of faith. I still sense hesitation. Shit. I can’t push her.