Page 74 of Vengeful Seduction
Loved?
Past tense.
She had loved me, which seemed to imply, with the way she said it, that she didn’t love me any longer.
I think I knew then. Deep down, in a place I didn’t acknowledge at the time, I knew that she knew. I didn’t know how, but what else could it be? What else could have taken my devoted wife from me?
“I’m going to file for divorce.” Kaye’s voice was still so terrifyingly cold and calm, and her words stabbed into my brain. “I know, David. I know what you were trying to do to me, and since money is all you care about, it should really hurt you to know I’m going to get all of it. Every last penny.”
“How?” The rage was gone and I stammered out the one word. How had this all happened, was what I meant to ask, but Brent didn’t take it the way I intended.
“If you think she can’t make it happen,” he told me firmly, “he can. If you fight this, I am more than happy to tell a judge what we had planned. I can’t do it anymore, David, and I won’t let you do it either.”
My whole body clenched with agony, as though all of my nerves sang with the pain of my sudden realization.
It was over.
Oh, it had been over either way, because I had come to the same conclusion as Brent had. But my way, Kaye never would have known and I could have kept her. I would have stayed wealthy, and I would have had everything Kaye had been offering me—stability and a real family. They were things I’d never had before and hadn’t known how much I’d wanted until they were abruptly taken away.
I stood there, frozen, the icicles of her words having paralyzed me to the ground. I couldn’t even open my mouth and my throat refused to work. I just stared at my former best friend and my wife, no hint of the heat of rage anywhere in my body anymore.
My wife--soon to be ex-wife—looked at me with cold eyes that told me what we had was over. I had ruined it. It was entirely my fault. The woman would take me to the cleaners for hurting her like this, and she deserved every fucking penny I had. I knew that then. I wouldn’t even fight her. I was a bastard, I didn’t deserve one God damned thing, and I knew it.
But was it really all my fault? Hadn’t Brent been the one to come up with this plan? Wasn’t Kaye a smart woman, capable of seeing through things like this?
No matter how much I tried to convince myself that this wasn’t all my fault, I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t. I could talk about building a grand legacy in my grandfather’s name, I could mention my mother and how faithless she’d been, but none of it mattered.
My grandfather had wanted the money to go to Kaye. It hurt to accept it, but it was nothing but the truth. And that, too, was my fault, for my inability to handle my father’s death.
In that one moment, it all became clear to me—all the things I had been trying to deny, and not just over the last few months, either. Hindsight, they say, is a bitch. I could vouch for the statement.
Just as I was paralyzed now, so had I been for the last decade. More than a decade—ever since my father had died, yes, but even before. Ever since my mother had left me.
I’d let it shape my view of women. All women. I had been too wrapped up in my pain. It all seemed so shallow as I looked at the face of the only woman who had ever broken through all of it—the walls I’d put around myself, the pain, the sorrow, and the distrust.
“Oh my God,” I whispered, barely audible enough for me to hear my own voice. There was no way she would be able to pick any of it up. “I’m an idiot.”
Such a ridiculous idiot.
Yes, bad things had happened to me, but they had happened to Kaye, too. She had been just as alone as I was, but she’d been willing to let herself fall in love without reservation.
She trusted too much, and now she was paying the price. I wished to God I hadn’t been the one to demand it of her.
Maybe it would be the biggest tragedy of this whole thing. Kaye would lose some of her innocence because I hadn’t been willing to just call this off sooner. No, even calling it off wouldn’t have been enough.
I should have been brave enough to tell her about it myself so Brent wouldn’t have had any chance to.
Now I’d lost everything because of my greed and my cowardice. I’d lost the money, yes, but somehow it seemed the least important thing.
I’d also lost my best friend, which stung. Brent had done the right thing before I had, and I felt even more like an asshole knowing that. Of course, he’d gotten drunk to do it, which must have made it easier.
The biggest blow was Kaye.
I’d lost her. The only woman I had ever loved and the only woman loyal enough to stand by me even when I was deliberately being a dick to her—she was gone. I could see in her eyes the distance that had widened between us.
We were strangers.
No. We were less than strangers, because I had hurt her. I didn’t have her trust, and I didn’t have her love.
