It felt like my heart was made of glass and she’d just shattered it. “I want to be. But dammit, can’t your person make mistakes?”
“Is that what you call this? A mistake? You lied to me—”
“No, I didn’t!” I closed my eyes, pinching the bridge of my nose. “I didn’t tell you about Kaitlyn being pregnant and I know I should have, but I was scared.” Terrified, actually. “We were just getting close and I didn’t want you to start having second thoughts. I wanted us to be solid before I told you about her.”
“Then you would have told me?”
“Yeah, eventually.”
“If I got pregnant, would you have told me then?”
My eyes fell to her flat stomach. I imagined it swollen with a baby bump. My baby. God, I’d never wanted anything more than a family with this woman. The void in my life, now that I no longer had any family left, had never felt more significant than it did now… when I was staring down the possibility of losing Gia.
“I don’t know when I would have told you, only that I would have. It’s been on my mind. I’ve thought about telling you, I swear I have, I just—”
“Gia!” Elaine was standing at the top of the hill, waving to get Gia’s attention.
“I have to go,” she whispered.
“I know.” I sighed, knowing there was only one thing left to do. The last thing I wanted to do… leave her. “I’ll get out of here. You don’t need me hanging around, making things worse while you’re trying to focus.”
“I’m pissed at you, but having you leave your own home isn’t right.”
“I want to go.” I owed it to her to let her have this time to focus on her new show without having to worry about me or our relationship. “I can’t be around Kaitlyn, and…” I let my thought die, knowing the worse thing I could do was mention the woman driving the wedge between us.
“When will you be back?”
“When the show wraps. We can decide then where we go from here.”
Her jaw dropped before snapping shut. “You’re going away for three months?”
“It’s not like I have a choice.” I felt like a coward, leaving when everything in me wanted to stay and fight for my marriage. But I was trying to put Gia first, and respect her need to focus on her work now, without any distractions.
“You always have a choice.” She closed her eyes. “I have to get up there. Everyone is probably waiting on me to get started and they say time is money in this business.”
I wanted to grab her, kiss her, tell her I loved her. Instead, I watched her walk away, wondering if the next time I saw her she’d be asking for a divorce.
ChapterFifteen
Gia
My heart was broken. It had been two weeks since Joel left and I hadn’t heard a word from him. Not even a lousy text to let me know he was thinking about me. Naturally, Kaitlyn had been planting more seeds of doubt, telling me how wild Joel’s life had been in L.A. and how much he’d liked to party. She told me he was probably re-connecting with old friends, living the bachelor life. The bitch.
I couldn’t imagine what he had ever seen in her. She was fake. Catty. Materialistic. And everything the Joel I thought I knew would have hated, but I was starting to wonder if I’d ever really known him at all.
Today we were shooting in the barn where we’d gotten married, and Joel’s manager, Johnny, had been kind enough to offer to clean it up and get it ready for filming.
“Hi, Johnny.” I smiled when he turned around with a broom in his hand.
He grinned before popping his earbuds out and shoving them in the top pocket of his denim shirt. “Hey, Gia. How’s it going?”
I knew Johnny pretty well. He’d been working for Mr. Wheeler for years and we’d often chat when I came out to the farm to visit. “It’s going okay, I guess.”
Every time I walked into this space I remembered how it felt when Joel held me in his arms during our first dance and I believed maybe we did have a shot at forever.
“You don’t sound too enthused. Show biz not what you thought it would be?”
“Honestly, it’s gruelling. Not that I’m complaining. It’s what I signed up for, right?”
