Page 65 of His Secret Virgin
Feeling more myself, I picked up my phone to call Christopher to see what was going on in his head. Before I could make the call, the phone rang and it was the man himself.
“Hello?” I asked, trying for a neutral tone; I didn’t know how he’d be feeling after his chat with my parents, or if my mother had been telling me the truth. I tried to brace myself for his reply.
But no reply came. “Hello, Christopher?” I asked again. The sound on the other end was a little scratchy, as if something was covering the mic.
Had the man butt-dialed me? Just as I was about to hang up so I could call him for real, I heard the faint sound of a woman’s voice on the other end. I couldn’t quite make out what she was saying, but I was soon able to make out bits of Christopher’s reply.
“…you know she’s pregnant…leave her…I don’t care…children.”
So, he was clearly talking to someone about me. But who? After the call from Mom, I didn’t think he’d still be at my parents’ place. I heard the woman’s voice again, but couldn’t make anything out of what she was saying. Did she say something about him coming back? Her voice was too far away to really tell.
But when I finally picked out Christopher’s voice again, my heart stopped. “Lisa…” I couldn’t make out anything more, as the rushing in my ears made me deaf to everything around me.
Shaking my head to clear my mind of the shock of hearing Christopher speak his ex-wife’s name, I was finally able to make out what the woman—Lisa—was saying.
“Please…father of my children…Christopher…with me.” By how clear her voice now sounded, I could only guess that she had moved closer to Christopher—close enough that his phone was now able to pick up her words as well as Christopher’s.
What the hell was Christopher doing with his ex? It didn’t sound like they were arguing, and from the way he had described her, he had made it clear that was the only way their conversations ever went.
But Lisa hadn’t sounded angry—neither had Christopher, for that matter. She had sounded like she was trying to soothe him.
Had he gone to his ex for comfort?
And what was that bit she’d said about him being the father of her children? I couldn’t help thinking that he was also the father of my child—a little, helpless baby who needed his father more than any grown daughters did. I wished I could tell that to his ex-wife, this woman whom he now seemed to be confiding in, maybe even asking for help.
“Lisa…love you,” I heard Christopher reply. Without any instruction from my brain, my hand hung up the phone, and I threw it in the back seat at those words.
I couldn’t have just heard Christopher tell his ex that he loves her?But that’s exactly what it had sounded like.
Slumping over the steering wheel, I was so shocked I couldn’t even cry. Not only was Christopher with his ex-wife, he was having a level-headed conversation with her—which he’d told me he hadn’t been able to manage once in the last five years—and he was telling her he loved her?
And all this after my mom told me that Christopher had agreed to leave me.
Everything seemed to crumble before my eyes. Had I been played by an older man? Used and then left to tend to things on my own?
I didn’t know what to do. If Christopher had lied to me about his relationship with his ex, and about staying with me and the baby, then he would he tell me the truth if I confronted him? And Mom had tried to make it clear that he’d already decided to leave me, and that I should go back home. The truth was that I didn’t want to go home. I didn’t want to let my parents take care of me and my baby. I wanted Christopher. And not just to take care of me, but to be my partner in life and the raising of our baby.
But if Mom had been telling the truth, then that wasn’t going to happen now, was it?
Coming to Manchester, New Hampshire, had been the best thing to ever happen to me and the worst thing to ever happen to me. How could that be?
Nothing made sense to me. Why had Christopher come to New York to get me if he wasn’t going to do what he and I had agreed was the right thing to do? Why had he told his daughters about us and our baby? He had practically kicked his daughters out of their home for my sake.
How could he have changed his mind about so much in such a short amount of time?
My head hurt with all the questions. And all I wanted was at least some closure with the man. Not a call from my mother telling me things were over between us.
As I sat in the company car, anger started to take over instead of hurt. That man owed me more than what I’d been given. He owed me an explanation. He owed me a turn to speak. And he owed our child, too.
I had to blame my parents for somehow getting into his head and telling him God knows what. But as much as I could blame them, it still hurt that Christopher had been so easily manipulated by them. And it still didn’t explain why he’d gone straight to his ex after speaking with my parents. It made me think he had doubts about his love for me.
I had no doubts where he was concerned. I loved him. Even after this hellish morning, I still did.
That kind of love couldn’t be shut off. And it hurt me to think that people were making him feel bad about himself for loving me. And what was worse, some of those people claimed to love me. My own parents had played a part in this.
But as the dust settled on that revelation, another thing popped up.
He’d gone to his ex-wife.
Why her, of all people?
Perhaps I didn’t know Christopher as well as I’d thought. Maybe he hadn’t been as honest with me as he should have been. Perhaps this whole thing had been a lie all along.
Maybe I will be better off without him.
