Without a Hitch(107)

“I’m sorry, Tilly.” My voice is weakening, so I reach for another sip of water. I have to get this all out now, regardless of how hard sleep is trying to drag me under. “I’m sorry you were blindsided by Christine. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you I was once married. I don’t know what she told you, but I’d like you to hear the truth from me.”

She lowers herself back into the chair that sits beside my bed. I can see her intelligent mind processing my words. “When you’re feeling better, lover. We can talk about it then.”

“No, Tilly. You have to hear this, and I have to tell you.”

She leans forward on the bed and cradles my hand in hers. Once again, she’s offering me strength.

Encouraging without pushing. Loving without asking for anything in return.

“My mother’s ex-husband Paul introduced me to Christine. He met her at a convention, so they say, and thought she would be a good fit for the events coordinator position that had suddenly opened up with Bryer-Blaine.”

“She’s a wedding planner? Like me?”

“She was an events planner, but nothing like you, darling. Nothing at all. Where she saw dollar signs and opportunities, you see love and life. She has no moral compass, and you are literally my guiding light. The similarities between the two of you stop at event planning.”

Tilly contemplates my words with her bottom lip caught between her teeth. After a minute of reflection, she squares her shoulders and faces me again, so I continue.

“Things were good between us for a couple of years. Then, just when my mother was retiring and handing over the company, things changed. Christine pushed for things I know now she never should have known about. She picked fights and spun them around to make me think I’d started it. She would disappear for hours at a time, then tell me to stop hounding her like a stalker.”

When I find the courage to face Tilly, I’m met with compassion. My heart nearly explodes with love for this woman, but I know she needs the entire story. “I was going to break up with her when she told me she was pregnant. She had ultrasounds and baby books, but I was confused. I felt like a monster, Tilly. I was overjoyed at the thought of having a baby, but tormented by the fact that I’d be tied to her forever. She didn’t even seem to like me most days, so how was I going to get through eighteen years of parenting with her? But I refused to walk away from my child, so I went along with it when she pushed for a quickie wedding.”

A river of tears streams down Tilly’s face as she listens to my tale. A true empath, she feels my heartache as if it were her own. The difference is that she takes it on willingly, so I don’t have to carry the burden alone. I’ve never met anyone like her, and I’m more determined than ever to keep her by my side.

“Things escalated.” I swallow bile that burns my raw throat, but push on. “She was picking fights all the time. I tried to chalk it up to hormones, but we were coming up on five months, and she wasn’t showing. Then I went to my physician for a physical and found out I had chlamydia. I’ve never cheated, Tilly. Never. Not once on anyone. I knew she’d given it to me because we’d both been tested when she moved in.”

“Oh, Lochlan,” she sobs.

I can’t look at her for this next part, so I stare straight ahead at a blank wall as I speak. “I went straight home and asked her about it. She blamed me. Accused me of cheating. She shouted and cried and carried on until I truly thought that I was going crazy. We’d only been married a few months, but at one point, I had to stop and think about it. I questioned myself because she’s so good at turning everything around. I know now that she planned it, but suddenly she was on the floor, clutching her stomach. I rushed her to the hospital, but she said she was too hurt by me. She didn’t want me in the exam room. When she came out, she was so convincing. I thought I was comforting a grieving woman.

What I was doing was comforting a coward who had just weaseled another year out of me to get her claws into what she really wanted. My trust fund.”

Memories attack my vision, and my fists clench.

“How did it end?” she finally asks, pulling me from the darkest depths of my consciousness.

I chuckle roughly. “She just handed me divorce papers one day out of the blue. I couldn’t sign them fast enough. However, she didn’t know that my family had seen through her. I was handed Bryer-Blaine in name only. In every way that mattered, my parents still owned it. She divorced me when she thought she could get half of our empire. She didn’t find out until litigation that it wasn’t mine to give.

She was pissed, and she still worked for me.”

“Bloody fucket,” Tilly curses with my favorite saying, and the monster I’ve become slowly recedes. I can feel my heart growing to match her spirit. “That bitch is going down.”

“Hold on there, slugger. I’m not done yet. Actually, the worst is yet to come.”

“No.”

“Yeah. Legally, I had no grounds to fire her. So even though she got half my trust fund, she still came to work every day to poke at me. Then there was this huge, high-profile wedding at the Gramercy.”

“Where you live?”

“That’s the one. The client used a pseudonym to make sure they weren’t outed, and they requested that my family and I attend. We couldn’t say no.”