so as not to strangle her ass. I needed to hear all that she’d done, all that I’d missed, so I bit back my anger and waited for her to go on.
“You’re mad at me now, but I was only doing what was best for you.” As if you’d know what that is.
“Tell me about her mom; how did you find out about her?” It felt surreal having this conversation with her after the one I’d had with Gordon. It’s one of the things I’d left his house wondering about, how had her mother found her? I was almost certain after my conversation with the other man that that’s exactly what had happened. Who knew I was going to find the answers this soon?
“Like I said, I didn’t know about her in the beginning when you two got married. It’s just... one day, I suddenly realized that every time the subject of mothers or family came up in conversation, she’d get this weird look on her face and lose some of the starch in her back.”
“The more she did that, the more I realized there was something there, so I kept digging and digging on my own until I found out the truth. She went to a lot of trouble to hide her real name, but I found it. It just took finding some of her friends from the past who were only too happy to spill what they knew for a few bucks here and there.”
“I didn’t even have to find the whole truth; as soon as I found her mom, she did the rest. I still don’t know who she really is, and neither do you. Did you know she’s changed her name? I’m not sure what her real name is, but I know that Sievers is not the name she was born with.” She rambled on for a bit before turning her attention back to me.
“How did you find out? Her mother promised to make it so that she’d never come back into our lives. She said she knew how to keep her away from you. She promised.” It was then I realized that the woman I’d called a friend for all these years was nuts.
Calen
I just stared at her, reminding myself that my son needed me, that the woman I never stopped seeing as my wife needed me. I’d realized while talking to Gordon earlier that that’s where most of my anger stemmed from, the fact that I never stopped seeing Giselle as mine while she’d found it so easy to just move on with her life.
I used to fool myself into thinking that it was because there was no closure. That I was this angry because she never said a word to me about wanting to leave and, worse, never gave me a chance to fight for us. She was literally here one day and gone the next without explanation. I never got the chance to do anything to hold on to what’s mine.
When I took my vows, I meant for them to last forever. I never would’ve married her otherwise. She was meant to be the one and only Mrs. Calen Addison, the fourth. The divorce papers meant nothing, were no barrier against what I hold dear. The fact that once I put my ring on Giselle’s finger, she was mine and only mine, forever.
I’d spent the past two years being angry at her for walking out on our forever, blaming her for a betrayal that was never her fault. And now that I know the truth, the thought of what she’d been put through right under my nose makes me sick to my stomach. Obviously, we’re going to have to have a talk about trusting her man to protect her from all and sundry, to fight all of her demons for her, including her bitch of a mother.
I have no doubt because of what I’d learned from Gordon that it was her mother who’d sent her scurrying into hiding, and now I know how she’d found her. It hadn’t been hard to fit some of the pieces of the puzzle together once I got a little bit of her history from the older man who was very forthcoming, but there had still been a lot missing.
I’d already figured out that she’d changed her name somehow between the time she’d left the boarding school and when we met and that she’d done it to escape her mother. There didn’t seem to be any other