Page 31 of Tormented Bastard
The Storm Within
Chase
Eden’s eyes widened at my statement. I broke the stare and looked down at my fisted hand. We didn’t owe each other anything, but I cared for Eden—far more than I should—and she deserved to know why I wouldn’t, couldn’t, help her with such a big favor.
“Things between Heather and me weren’t good.”
Eden jerked her head back. “Really? You guys always looked happy in the papers and on TV.”
I scoffed. “It was all bullshit. It was for the great All-American image the clubhouse wanted me to portray. I mean, I played America’s game. My wife was a former beauty queen.” I raised my gaze to Eden and found her staring down at her bottle. I swallowed before continuing. “Anyway, we weren’t happy. Heather was…”
How did one speak ill of the dead? Even if it was the truth? I was going to hell for the next words, but they were truthful words. “Heather was a demanding, spiteful bitch.”
Eden’s jaw dropped. “Wow. That isn’t at all how any of that came across.”
I nodded my head once. “Yeah, the PR department for the clubhouse certainly earns their salary.”
“I guess so.”
I sighed. “Anyway, things weren’t great. I wanted a divorce, but I had to be careful. Stupidly I didn’t have a prenup—don’t ask—and I knew she’d try to take me to the cleaners. So I had to play my cards carefully.” I paused and unfisted my hands. Hands that had once held a baseball like an extension of them. But would never hold one in quite the same way ever again. “Then she told me she was pregnant. I was happy and yet I also felt…trapped. And I can remember thinking to myself that it seemed odd since by this point, we didn’t sleep together much anymore. But there had been one random night…”
Eden cleared her throat and shifted in her seat. I glanced up and grimaced. Her lips were pursed together as though she’d tasted something sour. Yeah, I can’t say I blame her. If she started to talk about any of the guys she’d been with since me, I’d lose my shit, no doubt about it.
Hypocrite much, Hanover?
“The point is, I knew I couldn’t divorce her at that point. I mean, she was about to have my child. She said she was about two months or so along. I went with her to the doctor’s appointment, heard the heartbeat, and…” I cleared the emotion from my throat. “I knew without a doubt I had to try and make it work for the sake of the tiny peanut on the screen whose heartbeat raced in my ears.”
I paused, swallowing hard. I hadn’t thought about that ultrasound in a while. I tried to take a sip of my beer but came up empty. I stood. “I need more beer. Want one?”
She nodded without a word and stood as well, picking up our plates. “How about we get this cleaned up before you continue?”
I nodded and picked up the empty beer bottles. It was as though she sensed that what came next would be hard. She didn’t know the half of it. I’d never told a soul what I was about to tell her. The strange thing was that I trusted Eden implicitly, despite the fact we hadn’t talked in the last four years at all. Prior to that we didn’t do a ton of talking except on texts on our birthdays and holidays.
We cleaned up the dishes and kitchen in silence. But I needed to hurry the hell up and get this off my chest before I slid all the way back to that dark place I’d been in right after the accident. I grabbed the last two bottles of Pacifico, and in silent accord, we went into the living room.
In spite of one wall of the room overlooking the back of the house and the ocean beyond it, the large, open room was cast in shadow as the storm raged outside. Eden turned on a lamp, casting a warm glow in the room. She sat on one end of the oversized sofa, tucking those long legs up underneath her. I set the beer on the coffee table and took up the spot at the end opposite her. I opened the bottles and handed her one before taking one for myself. We sipped for a moment before she said, “So you heard your baby’s heartbeat.”
I nodded, my elbows on my knees, both hands wrapped around the bottle. The cold glass under my palms was a welcome sensation to the emotions running riot under my skin. “About two weeks later, we went to dinner. I’d been on a long road trip, one of the longest stretches since we got married, and we hadn’t talked much either. Kept missing each other on the phone. She said she had something she wanted to talk about.”
I rubbed my hands up and down my thighs, my palms damp. “It was summer, and Heather was out at the Hamptons house. When I got back to New York, I had the car service take me out there, since I didn’t keep my car in the city. We went into the village, had a nice dinner, at least for a little while. Then she started in on me about being gone so much, but what the hell was I supposed to do? It was my job, for Christ’s sake. And God knows she loved the lifestyle my job brought her.” I rambled, but I couldn’t seem to stop myself from these little tangents of frustration that came out.
I glanced over at Eden to find her watching me quietly but with no judgment in her eyes. She lowered her chin as though to say “go on” but never verbally pushed. “Anyway, I ended up drinking too much, and she’d still never gotten to her point. I decided it was better for her to drive us home. She threw a fit because she hated driving, but there was no way I was leaving my Ferrari there in town.” I shook my head, a humorless smile on my lips. How different life would have turned out if I’d just left the car there.
“It was the worst decision I could have made. Heather ended up driving us home, and we argued. She was so angry with me for a number of things. Drinking too much that night, being gone…you name it, she was pissed about it. And that’s when she told me. Not only did she never love me, but she also wanted a divorce. She’d been seeing someone else nearly our entire marriage, which was short, but she’d been sleeping with him the whole time.”
Eden gasped softly. “Oh no. Chase, don’t tell me…”
I nodded and sipped my beer. “Yep, the kid wasn’t mine. It was the guy she’d been fucking around with behind my back.” She closed her eyes but didn’t say anything, and I was grateful for it. I couldn’t tolerate pity. I’d seen enough of it after Heather died. I wouldn’t be able to take it from Eden of all people.
“Long story short, we started yelling at each other. And I asked her…” I swallowed against the lump in my throat. “I asked her who the poor fucker was that she’d suckered into her web of lies. She looked over at me, took her eyes off the road, and told me who it was just as a flash of something caught my eye in front of the car. All I remember is yelling at her to watch out and then we were spinning. After that, I woke up in a tangle of metal.”
My vision went hazy and I was back on that dark road, the smell of earth mixed with gasoline, smoke, and blood all around me. I let out a breath before I continued.
“I looked over at Heather and saw that she was…dead. Her side of the car had taken the brunt of force when we hit the tree. I kept passing out and waking up. My arm was bleeding. I felt it, but I couldn’t move to see how bad it was. The last time I passed out and woke up, I was being lifted into an ambulance.”
I rubbed my bicep over my T-shirt, brushing over the scars. “I had the surgery on my shoulder, and they put some pins in it. The next day I woke up, and the police came in to get the story of what happened, what I could remember. I never told them about our argument. I just told them that Heather swerved to miss a deer—at least I think that’s what it was—and we hit a tree. And they confirmed she’d died at the scene.” I fisted my hand, regret coursing through me. “The baby died too, of course.”
I turned my head when I heard a sniffle. Tears coursed down Eden’s face, but when our eyes met, she wiped them away. “Chase, I had no idea. I’m so sorry.”
