a woman under you. Maybe even two.”
With a forced laugh, I replied, “Roger that.”
“Now, make sure your loadouts are ready. We jump in less than an hour.”
With a nod, I quickly cleared my head and stood. “Roger that, sir.”
Willa
Present day – Nine years later
“How does it feel to be a free woman?” Brighton, my oldest and dearest friend—who also happened to be my divorce lawyer—asked as we walked out of the courthouse.
“Amazing. Liberating. Exciting. Do you want me to keep going on?” I asked, drawing in a deep breath of the cool air. Late September in New Hampshire was one of my favorite times of the year. With the daytime temperatures in the mid-sixties, it felt like fall, yet we could still cling to summer a bit longer. “I’m also a bit worried.”
“I was on the same page until you said worried. About what?”
With a shrug, I started down the steps of the courthouse. “I don’t know. I have a feeling Brian isn’t going to be a part of Ben’s life, simply by how absent he’s been this past year. How do you explain to a child that his father doesn’t care about him?”
Brighton gave me a warm smile. “Okay, I’m going to take off my lawyer hat now. You’ve been through a lot in the last few months. It’s been a long battle, with Brian trying to get custody of Ben at first just to be spiteful. Just be thankful that we won, you got full custody, and he’s out of your life—because we both know when it comes down to it, he’ll never take advantage of the visitation rights the judge gave him. He wasn’t even at the hospital when Ben was born.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed lately, but Boggy Creek is a small town. He’s always going to be in my life.”
“Not because of the small town, Willa. Because you share a son with him,” she stated matter-of-factly.
I wrapped my arms around my body when a sudden chill raced through me. “Ugh. He’s hardly seen Ben since the day he was born. This whole marriage has been a joke from the get-go.”
She laughed. “I know. How do you think you were granted full custody? It didn’t help his case any that your brother Hunter was in the delivery room with you while Brian was out of town with She Who Shall Not Be Named.”
At that very moment, Brian walked out of the courthouse, his lawyer trailing behind, and Ellen—my ex-best friend and current girlfriend of my now ex-husband—walking beside him.
Brian and Ellen. It even sounded better than Brian and Willamina. I hated them both, although I didn’t hate that my marriage was over. It sounded bad, but the only reason I married Brian was because I’d stupidly found myself pregnant with his baby.
My marriage to Brian was doomed from the very beginning. The late nights working at the office. The weekend hunting trips with one of the guys. The extended business trips. I had ignored every last sign that things were not right.
I’d longed for someone to want me, and in the beginning, Brian had played the role perfectly. He’d known all the right things to say. He was romantic and knew how to sweep me off my feet.
The girl who had once dreamed of a very different life, with a very different man, was now a divorced, single mother.
Brian had known I still pined over Aiden. Known I had dreamed of another life, and sometimes I felt like it had been a game to him. His only goal was to get me to the altar before Aiden could.
He wasn’t the first guy I’d had sex with. I had waited pretty much all through college—until my senior year—when it started to become clear to me that Aiden wasn’t going to change his mind. And to be honest, I was growing tired of waiting. I knew I would never love a man like I loved Aiden, but one night, I gave in and had a one-night stand. It wasn’t anything like Bree and Ellen said it would be. It hurt like a bitch, and he was done before he even got me off.
Brian came into the picture a few years after I’d graduated college and moved back to Boggy Creek. He worked so hard to get me to go out with him, and, truth be told, it had been nice to have a man want me like that. Especially since the man I