Chapter Nine
My hands were shaking as I fiddled and retrieved the keys from the bottom of my purse. I hadn’t been home since I took off this morning, and a wildly nervous trepidation at returning back to an environment filled my gut, as I wasn’t sure I was ready to handle what lie beyond the door.
My key twisted into the lock, and I swung the door open. A strong floral smell assaulted my nose, but it only took a fraction of a second for my eyes to register the bouquets scattered across the eating area and spilling over into the living room.
“Oh, thank god you’re okay.” Mitch pounced over and enveloped me in a hug, his warm woodsy cologne scent tickling the happier places in my brain.
I pushed back out of the embrace. I wasn’t in the same state of apparent relief as he was. “Of course, I’m okay.”
And the flowers, so many flowers, they all announced his guilt. Mitch only ever bought flowers when he was apologizing for something. He must’ve bought Daisy’s Delights out.
“I tried calling you and calling you.” His face was tight with concern, but he kept his distance to a reasonable four feet. Totally out of arms reach, which was never a bad thing.
However, I doubted his concern and needed to verify at least something of truth, so I pulled out my phone. Indeed, there were several text messages and voicemails.
“I have some explaining to do.”
“Do you ever.” I slammed the door to the apartment and the picture hanging near the door rattled on the wall from my wrath. My arms made a tight knot as I crossed them over my chest. “How could you?”
“I can explain, and you have every right to yell and scream.”
It was going to be that kind of fight, was it? Instantly my blood boiled, and my heart pounded in a rage of anger. He hadn’t even admitted to anything, and I was ready to scream or run as my adrenaline was sky high.
“Can we talk in the living room?”
We were a corner apartment, and that particular room didn’t have the paper-thin walls the kitchen or our bedroom had. We only found out how thin they were when our neighbour called out her lover’s name in throes of passion, and Mitch confirmed the guy’s name when they passed in the hall and wished him a good day.
I marched into the living room and counted three bouquets. One on each of the side tables and a giant one on the coffee table. The couch cushions had all been fluffed and under the floral aroma something else tickled at my nose. It was the cleaner we used. Mitch had entirely scrubbed clean the living room. What was he hiding?
“What’s up with Jasmine?” A woman I didn’t know and yet had such intense hatred of.
“Jasmine is an old friend.”
“How old?” I never checked on her birthdate but pegged her slightly older than us.
“From my high school days.”
Oh, that kind of old. I glared. “You didn’t go to school in Seattle.”
“You’re right, I didn’t. Jasmine used to live here on the island.”
“There was no way that’s possible. She’s as much an urban chick as I am a small-town gal.”
“It’s true.” Mitch sat on the couch. “Won’t you sit down?”
“I’d rather stand.” This way, if I needed to, I could storm out. I still hadn’t set my keys in the bowl and my purse hung across my body.
Mitch nodded and smoothed his hand over the cushion. “Jasmine’s from Campbell River.”
Not big urban like Victoria, but way bigger than Cheshire Bay.
“So what?”
“You asked.”
In a round about way. “Quit stalling.”
My head was pounding and starting to ache, and there wasn’t anything I could take to settle it down. I pinched the bridge of my nose.
“Headache?”
“Yes.”
“Probably from all the flowers?” Rather than wait for the answer, he walked into the kitchen and came back with a can of fresh coffee grounds. “Smell this.”
If the flowers were the cause, the scent of plain old java beans would make it go away. Mitch was sweet in that respect, but I was still mad, even if the pounding was causing me to squint. I gave the container a sniff.
“Better?”
It wasn’t going to be an instant fix, but still I answered. “Yes.” Even if it was a total lie. “So back to Jasmine. Is the child yours?” I held my breath.
“Yes.” He stared into my eyes. “Jackson is my biological son.”
Every molecule in my body screamed at the top of my lungs and the struggle to keep it all contained was one of the hardest things I’d done in my life. “When?”
I’d broken the law by peering into his birthdate, so I could work back the timing all on my own but this time, it needed to come from Mitch.
“A few weeks after we started going out.”
The lid to my anger was no longer contained, and I picked up a nearby pillow and threw it with all my strength. “You bastard.” I missed my target and grabbed another to toss.
“I can explain.”
“You are a jerk of the highest order. How could you?”
Mitch ran to the door ahead of me and blocked me from leaving.
“Get out of my way!”
“NO!” In my years with Mitch, there were only a handful of times he ever raised his voice. I’d add this time to that list. “You are going to sit down and listen to what I’m going to tell you. Then you can leave. I’ll even help you pack.”
Well, that wasn’t promising. “Fine.”
I stormed back over to the living room and waited. As soon as Mitch’s behind hit the couch, I was leaving. But Mitch hadn’t moved. He leaned against the door and inhaled, the expressions morphing across his face as if he were conflicted. Good. He deserved it.
“Yes, it happened back a few years ago. I’m not proud of it.”
“You shouldn’t be. You’ve ruined us.”
A painful sigh breathed out. “You’re probably right.”
“I am right.” My words were clipped and punctuated with venom. I was angry enough to spit nails, if that was even a thing. “Why now? Why is she showing up to ruin our lives? Why couldn’t she have shown up when she was pregnant, and at least prevented us from having some really great years together?”
There was a sheen to Mitch’s eyes, and from the way his shoulders rolled forward and the small of his back pressed into the door, he was defeated. About damn time.
“She came now because I need to sign some documents allowing her to move our son to Seattle. Permanently.”
“So, you knew she had him?”
“Not until she arrived here. No.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Sit, please, and I’ll tell you.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“Then neither am I.” Mitch sighed.
I tapped my foot and waited for him to give in first, even though there wasn’t a prayer of him doing so. He was a fiercely determined man and when he put his mind to it, there was no going back. It was a quality I’d always enjoyed about him, until now. Bastard.
“So, years ago, you and I were freshly dating, and you had recently started working at the airport.”
Yeah, back when I was a fresh twenty-two, and I’d just finished a couple of college-level courses. I’d only received my GED diploma a year before since the commune wasn’t the best at making sure we were educated. After I moved here and joined the staff at the airport, Mitch had been one of the first people I’d met, and he was a sweetheart, always making my day, chatting with me while we waited for inbound flights. I loved how he was the kind of guy who liked to get his hands dirty, and his knowledge on planes was so vast, it made him trustworthy - he’d rather proactively treat issues on a plane, than react to them and was so on top of things. His planes were always the safest to fly in, and everyone knew it.
“Anyways, you and I, we had just come back from a trip to Victoria, where we’d spent the weekend walking along the wharf, and out to Ogden’s Point. We were still so new to each other, and we weren’t yet committed.”
Yeah, I remembered. We had booked separate rooms even as I wasn’t sure how I was feeling about him, other than having mad heat for the guy. It was crazy, but to me, the two of us staying in the same room just had a level of commitment to it I wasn’t ready for. Until after that weekend, when just before Canada Day, I announced over a quiet homemade dinner that I was ready to be his, and we had sex for the first time.
“That time between our weekend away and the one where we consummated our feelings, I had a quick stay in Campbell River.”
I listened with wide ears, but my heart was shutting down with each word he said.
“It was only one night, and it sounds terrible and horribly cliché, but it didn’t really mean anything. Our first weekend together meant way more to me.”
My instinct back then had been right; it was conflicted about Mitch because he was conflicted too. “Yet, you still slept with her.”
“Because I wasn’t sure about the direction we were headed. I wanted more between us. We’d been dating for three months, but it almost felt like you hadn’t moved me out of the friend zone.”
“I’d kissed you, and I can promise you, I’ve never kissed friends like the way I kissed you.”
“What I meant was, we had progressed. Our relationship was physical but limited to kissing and that was about it.”
“So you went and screwed another?”
“Not my finest moment.”
“You think?”
“But the weekend after when you made that wonderful dinner - the bar-be-que steak, baked potatoes, garden fresh salad and wine you’d made yourself, I knew I was yours. Jasmine didn’t matter.”
“Did you ever talk to her after?”
“No. She didn’t know where I was living as I never told her. She’d rambled on about the new job she’d accepted in Vancouver and how eager she was to leave Campbell River and make something out of herself.”
“How did she find you then?”
“A picture on the internet.”
I looked at him like I thought he’d lost his mind. How did a picture on the internet tell her anything she needed to know? I maybe wasn’t the sharpest tack in the drawer, but I wasn’t stupid either.
“Remember when the Prime Minister was here surfing, and the press was taking pictures?”
It was hard to forget. Everywhere we went, the press were taking photo ops. Our little town was full but not from tourists. The airport had been extra busy transporting people in on their private jets, and Eric had even flown the PM’s wife and a friend to another part of the island.
“My picture was in the newspaper.”
“Yeah, I know. It was a write up on the behind the scenes at our airport and how we’d…” Oh. I finally got it. “But that was a local write up.”
“Well, it went on the web.”
“And she Googled your name…” I waited for him to fill in the rest, but he didn’t need to.
A quick search would’ve provided all the information she needed After all, the story was in the Cheshire Bay Gazette. An idiot could’ve connected the dots.
“And now she’s here.” To ruin our lives.
“I didn’t even want kids.” It was said under his breath, but it may as well have been announced on a loudspeaker for the volume it spoke. “In reality though,” his voice gained a bit of strength, “I didn’t really cheat on you.”
“Yeah, you did.” I pulled myself up to my full height. “You so did.”
“We hadn’t committed.”
“But you wanted to. You told me months later that our weekend away, you hoped you’d get me in the sack, so yeah, in your mind you’d already committed. It just took me longer to catch up.” I stormed over to the door. “So now that you’ve admitted to cheating on me, and conceiving a child with another woman, can I go?”
“You’re still leaving?”
“You expected me to stay?”
“But I was honest with you.”
“After the fact.” I was dumbfounded by his words – how did he honestly expect me to stay? That just revealing the truth would undo everything and make things right? “And you even brought her here to chat. In our home.” I put so much emphasis on the last word. “You know, the home you and I made together. There are a hundred other places to go but you had her here. Gross.”
I stomped over to the bedroom and grabbed a weekend bag from the closet, slamming a few random items in before filling the rest of the space with my personal effects from the bathroom.
“Where are you going?” His voice was heavy in worry.
“It doesn’t matter. You lost the ability to have any more information about me when you admitted to cheating. You should have broken up with me on the Monday before you went to go and bang Jasmine.”
“But I didn’t know it was going to happen. It was a fluke thing.”
“And now you’ll be paying for it for the rest of your life. Is she claiming child expenses?”
“She’s not like that. She’s a nice lady when you get to know her.”
“Ugh. I can’t believe you’d think I’d ever consider that. What is wrong with you?”
“Please don’t walk away. Please don’t leave me.” Mitch had stepped to the side; the door was free for me to go through it.
“You don’t get a say in what I do anymore.” My hand wrapped around the doorknob.
“Cedar, please. I love you.”
I loved you too.
But I couldn’t say the words. My heart was breaking into a million pieces. Instead of looking into his eyes, I opened the door and left.