Mid Life Love (Mid Life Love #1)(3)

It was tattered, forever ruined, and I was the one who emerged with the most cuts...

I sent Sandra a text and made a break for the parking lot, turning down numerous offers to dance on my way out.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Sandra climbed inside the truck and shut the door. “We’ve only been here twenty minutes! Don’t you at least want to stay for the New Year’s countdown?”

“No.”

“Why? What’s wrong? I saw the guy you were talking to in there! He was good-looking!”

“Look Sands, I’m not twenty anymore. I can’t keep coming to these things expecting to meet the love of my life. I met mine already, remember?” My voice cracked. “It didn’t work out...”

I leaned back in my seat and forced a lump down my throat.

The thought of losing my husband to my best friend still hurt to think about. The divorce was long over, but the pain still woke me up some nights, still dragged me out of my sleep and hit me over my heart like a twenty pound sledgehammer.

“You’re thinking about Ryan and Amanda, huh?” She handed me a Kleenex. “You have to stop beating yourself up about it. It wasn’t your fault.”

“I was so blind to it!” I began to cry. “I let her in my house! I trusted her with my kids! I trusted them both with everything!”

“I’m so sorry, Claire...”

My marriage to Ryan Hayes was a fairytale—at least it was to me. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t entirely perfect, but we had far more amazing days than good days, more good days than average days, and hardly any bad days.

Ryan was everything I ever wanted in a man. He was attentive and caring, thoughtful and compassionate, and he always remembered the little things that made me happy: Hot coffee on the rainy days I spent typing away in our home office, a warm blanket when I fell asleep in front of the fireplace, and endless chocolate chip cookies and candy bars whenever it was my time of the month.

Every time he came home from work, he brought me a single red rose and kissed me like his life depended on it. He treated me to the country club’s spa once a month while he volunteered to watch our daughters for the day. He even surprised me sometimes by beating me home and cooking dinner for all of us.

He was my rock. My soul. My everything.

I honestly thought our love would transcend time, that I was one of the lucky ones who would be able to truly uphold the “til death do us part” mantra.

Yet, somewhere between the thirteenth and fourteenth year of our marriage, Ryan began to change.

He started coming home later and later. He didn’t leave his cell phone out like he normally did; he was extremely protective of it and often took calls in another room. He was more elusive—vague, and anytime I said that I needed to run to the store, he would jump up and volunteer to do it for me.

At first, I figured that the late nights had something to do with his new promotion to partner at the law firm; that his recent clingy-ness to his cellphone was just him wanting to be alert should he receive an emergency client call. I couldn’t figure out why he was volunteering to do every single grocery run since he’d always loathed any type of shopping, but I took advantage of not having to do it myself.

I chalked everything up to him wanting to be a “super-husband,” and used my extra free time to hang out with my best friend since high school, Amanda.

Amanda’s vivacious personality could force the most sullen person to smile. Her voluminous auburn hair and naturally toned body could rival most teenagers, and her love for literature was as immense as mine.

At age thirty five, she and her husband Barry were still attempting to have their first baby. They’d attempted everything short of hiring a surrogate, but they hadn’t lost hope.

With each in-vitro fertilization treatment, I would bring her a new baby purchase—booties, bibs, collectible teddy bears, and assure her that the doctors were wrong, that she could and would bring a child into the world.

So, when she called me one afternoon with news that she was finally pregnant, I cancelled my family BBQ and relocated our celebration to her and Barry’s home.

Six months later, Barry called me while I was leaving work. He was talking so fast that I could only make out every other word.

“Barry?” I tried to sound calm. “I can’t...I can’t understand you...Are you crying? Is something wrong with Amanda? Is she okay? Did something happen with the baby?”

“The baby,” he said, and then he was quiet for a while. “The baby...The baby’s not mine. It’s not mine...”

“What? Barry, you’re being ridiculous. You two have been trying to have a baby in every way possible for years. You’re just nervous because he’s almost here. You’re going to be a great father and—”

“I was going back and forth to Texas in May...We might’ve had sex once during that month. Maybe.”

I stilled. I remembered that.

Amanda had been complaining about how little he was at home due to his job. He’d been demoted and his company was making him do all the grunt work, denying his request to attend out-of-state meetings via video chat.

I remembered her crying about how alone she felt, how she didn’t think Barry was as serious about having a natural born baby as she was because he’d started talking about adoption.

Still, I refused to believe that Amanda’s baby wasn’t his. Who else could it have belonged to?