The Space In Between(54)

I looked down at the cash left on the bed—a one hundred dollar bill. Yeah, because everyone spends that kind of money on breakfast, Cooper. Next to the money was a pair of sunglasses—in case I needed to go undercover? As I went to get out of the bed, I paused. A wave of sickness washed over me. I rushed to the bathroom, throwing up.
Something was wrong. I’d never had a hangover that lasted this long. Splashing water across my face, I stared into the bathroom mirror and a level of concern grew in me. My mind mentally started to check the invisible calendar in my head. Crap. No…
I splashed my face again. All color was drained from my body. I couldn’t be. Grabbing the money off of the bed, I tossed on the sunglasses and headed out of the hotel. I needed to find the closest corner store. When I dashed into one, my mind was working faster than my feet could travel. Where was it? I glanced around the space and found the pregnancy tests. I got three—couldn’t hurt.
What if I were pregnant? Crap…I drank so much the other night. I hoped…Stop. I had to slow down my mind. Too much was going on and I wasn’t even sure if I was…
I paid for the tests, and as I walked out, I was shocked to see the paparazzi standing around me. How did they track me down? “Where are you heading? Where’s Cooper?” they hollered. I remembered what Cooper had told me and kept walking with my head down.“Rumor has it Cooper is with Iris right as we speak. How does that make you feel?” one of the paparazzi guys yelled. I paused when I heard it and shook my head. He was meeting with his manager.
The next person’s question freaked me out a bit more. “Is your name Andrea Evans?” They could probably see how stunned I looked through my sunglasses. I turned to go the other way as they began to feed on my sudden nervousness. “How does it feel to be a home wrecker? They are still married, you know.”
“Is it true you are a prostitute?”
What? That’s ridic—I took off my sunglasses as I saw the photo the fat paparazzi man was holding in his hand. It was a photo of me almost taking taxi money from Cooper the first night at his hotel, but for some reason, that photo made the exchange look a lot shadier than it was.
My heart started to race. I couldn’t go back to the hotel. Instead, I broke into a run. As fast as I could. My eyes filled with tears as I found my way back to my apartment building.
Opening my apartment door, I rushed in, slammed the door, and approached the couch. Next to it was Derrick’s cologne, and I sobbed as I sprayed it into the air. The smell of Derrick filled my body, and I slipped a few inches closer to Chaos. How could this be happening? Where did those pictures come from? Why was Cooper with Iris?
My mind was flashing recent memories of Cooper and me. Within an instant, flashes of Derrick and I appeared. My past was once again controlling my present, with its hands wrapped brutally around my heart. Squeezing it with so many doubts. Filling it with so much sadness that I was almost certain I was dead. There was no way my heart was strong enough to deal with the memories and questions that my brain was dishing out.
My teeth bit down on my tongue as I dumped out the contents of my purse onto the ground. Shifting through it, I allowed the tears to fall, not taking time to breathe, not taking time to feel. I saw it glimmering under a pen and picked it up. My engagement ring was staring me down and I sobbed into my hands, knowing I didn’t deserve the right to ever wear it again.
Everything hurt, nothing made sense. Just last night everything seemed so perfect. Last night everything was right. And this morning…this morning I couldn’t breathe.



Chapter Thirty-Six

I DIDN’T KNOW why, but Kyle had made it completely clear I had to meet with Iris. He said I needed to clear some things up before he and I could start handling the big issues.
I sat in the chair across from her in the apartment. As far away as possible. The last time I saw her, she was blackmailing me to stay married to her, so I had enough reasons to doubt this was going to be a pleasant visit. “What’s going on?” I said with a dark tone. I didn’t have any need to be polite to her.
“I need you…” she said, looking down towards her hands resting on her ever-growing belly.
“Iris, seriously.”
“You never asked me,” she whispered as she looked up at me. “You never asked me how it was after the miscarriages.”
I hadn’t. But I hadn’t been able to bring myself to talk about it. It hurt too f*cking much. We dived into work, wrapped our worlds around material things, and forgot—together. Iris never showed any signs of breaking. She kept going strong. Doing her job. Holding up her appearance.
“How was I supposed to know? You never cried, you never talked, you never said…”
“I’m your wife!” she bellowed. “Did it really need to be stated that I was broken? That the one thing I knew you wanted more than anything in this world, I couldn’t give to you?”
I thought of what Walter had told me during ‘Thanksgiving’ dinner—what it took to make a marriage work. The secret is to listen to what she doesn’t say. Iris had been crying out to be heard. She’d been screaming, and I hadn’t noticed. She buried herself into the reality show, never talking about our loss.
See what she doesn’t do. I hadn’t seen her. I had been so wrapped up in my own grief that I didn’t think I could have seen her. How did I not see she was not falling apart? That should have been the first warning sign. No one that went through having two children in their body and having them ripped away could be all right.