“I love you. You’ll see.” I promised and stepped out of the room into the hallway where my firing squad awaited. Mr. and Mrs. Walsh were having a tense, whispered conversation a few feet down the hall. Kyle was staring down at his phone and rapidly typing to someone, but Griffin... Griffin's eyes had been on the door the entire time. Watching and waiting.
“She’s ready for you guys to go back in.” I stared at Mr. and Mrs. Walsh and tried to ignore the deep ache of regret that was throbbing in my chest. The kind that comes from not knowing what you’ve got until you’ve lost it.
Kyle stalked past me with a dark glower and let his silence speak for him. Mrs. Walsh paused, briefly, with tears in her eyes, and whispered goodbye. A muffled whimper escaped from me, and she winced.
I cleared my throat and whispered back a weak apology.
I’m sorry. I’ll miss you. Forgive me.I internally screamed.
Mr. Walsh was next, and his eyes held none of the grief that Mrs. Walsh’s had; instead, I looked into the eyes of the man who had tried to teach me how to be a man and saw nothingbut disappointment looking back at me. The weight of his stare made me want to curl in on myself.
“You'll leave her alone.” He said without emotion.
“I told her I’ll sign.” I croaked out.
He looked surprised and then nodded. Then, to my surprise, he placed one hand on my shoulder and gave a light squeeze. “That… Benjamin, is what putting someone else first looks like. It may hurt right now, but in the long run, I hope you find that it encourages you to become a better man.” He didn’t wait for my reply before he rejoined his family. A family that no longer included me. A family that, based on their reactions, wasn't quite as far out of my reach as I had originally feared.
Griffin stood before me and watched as I pulled myself together. He was the last person I wanted as an audience to my downfall.
“What?” I snapped.
“If you get home and start to think to yourself that maybe you can change her mind… just know, I personally went through all of the security footage, backed up, decrypted, and re-encrypted all of the files on the household electronics, and updated the security systems to better protect private communications, images, and banking information.” He let the words hang in the air as the meaning behind them sank in.
He had just told me that, without doing anything illegal, he had hacked into everything that he could and protected any evidence of my wrongdoings. Once he knew that I had read between the lines, he continued, “Melanie has no need to keepany of it once the divorce is finalized. But, if for some reason this got messy, and she was forced to go to court, then she would need to turn over anything that we had found in order to protect herself.”
“Are you threatening me?” I growled and stepped into his personal space.
“Me?” Griffin feigned shock, “What could I possibly be threatening you with?” He smirked and stepped around me. “Get home safely, Benjamin. We will be waiting to hear from your lawyer. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you soon.”
I stood frozen in place as the door to my wife’s room clicked shut once again behind me.
How the fuck did everything get so out of control?
It took me several beats to force myself to move. I passed by the nurse’s station in a daze as they wished me a good day.
“I can’t believe they got Dr. Teller to come in on his day off.” I vaguely heard a nurse say.
“I know, I never thought I’d see the day when the Chief of Obstetrics and Gynecology would be dragged in because a pregnant woman fainted.” The second voice giggled.
Pregnant woman…
33-Angela
So, she’s pregnant.
I thought to myself as I watched Ben freeze when he overheard the nurses gossiping.
I’d been parked down the road from her house, working up the courage to go and knock on their door when the ambulance had pulled up in front of it.
All day, I had hovered nearby and waited for one of these nurses to let something slip about the precious Mrs. Landon, but the first shift had been nothing but professional. Apparently, the second shift of nurses had a few gossips, loud ones at that.
I pulled the magazine I was reading up a little higher to make sure he couldn’t see my face when he spun around and looked back down to her room. The nurses seemed oblivious to his angst and started talking about a different patient.
I watched, amused, as Ben continued to stand there looking like he’d seen a ghost. Gone was the confidant, self-declared 'king of finance'. Instead, he seemed to be fighting withhimself on whether he should storm back in there or if he should walk away.
This must be what being cast in a telenovela feels like.
After a moment, a dark smile lit up his face, and he hurried out of the building with his cell phone held to his ear.
