The Perfect Life (40 page)

My legs wobbled and my eyes filled with tears, but I held my ground, refusing to back away. Colin would never physically hurt me, and there was nothing he could say that could make me feel any worse than I already did. I’d already hit rock bottom.

“Look, I know you’re mad—” I started.

“
Mad?!”
he shouted, cutting me off. “Monroe,
mad
is only the tip of the iceberg of what I’m feeling right now. If I was just
mad
about something, I’d yell about it for a few minutes, we’d make up, and then we’d go on about our normal lives. But this . . . what you’ve done . . . it’s devastating in the most literal sense of the word. Not only did you lie to me for who knows how long about Oliver, but with your carelessness and irresponsible behavior, you’ve ruined everything we’ve worked for. It’s all gone! Poof! Just like that! And for what? Some guy who is going back to Chicago next month?”

“I did it because I love him!” I yelled back, curling my hands into angry fists at my sides. “I tried to tell you, but you got hurt and went to Miami, and then everything got crazy when you came back. But dammit, I love him so much, and he loves me!”

“
Love?!
Are you serious?
”
Dramatically twisting to look all around the main level of the house, he threw his hands up in the air when he came up empty on his search. “If he loves you so much, then where is he now? Let me guess—he loved you enough to get you naked and take you to bed, but not to stick around when the shit hit the fan, huh?”

“Colin, that’s enough,” Seth—who had stayed surprisingly silent until then—calmly cautioned him.

My husband’s eyes blazed red as he turned to his ex. “This has absolutely nothing to do with you! It’s between me and Monroe. You made the decision to not be a part of this when you stormed out of here a few months ago and wrote me off like I meant nothing.”

“Are you delusional?! Do you even hear the words coming out of your mouth?” Seth took a step forward, and Colin defensively bowed out his chest, but the smaller man was not intimidated nor deterred in his verbal assault. “Since the minute you walked through the door, the entire conversation has revolved around how this fiasco affects
you
. How awful
your
morning has been. How
your
parents are reacting. How it’s ruined
your
goals. That’s always the problem with you, Colin. It’s always about you first and everyone else second. Years and years of being told you’re the best thing since sliced bread has warped your mind, and I don’t even think you realize what a selfish prick you’ve become.”

“I am
not
a selfish prick,” Colin gritted through a clenched jaw.

Unfazed, Seth pointed his finger in Colin’s chest and kept talking. “Have you stopped even once to think about what Monroe must be going through right now? People are saying terrible, nasty things about her, calling her demeaning names and ridiculing her. Doesn’t knowing she’s not any of those horrible things make you want to defend her honor? This could just as easily have been you and me! Those pictures were taken right here in this house. She wasn’t out in public, taking unnecessary chances with your marriage. She was doing the same thing you and I did for years! And then, knowing her past, knowing how big of a deal being intimate with someone must have been for her in the first place, for that private moment she shared with the one person she’s fallen in love with to be broadcasted to the entire world? Do you have any fucking idea how humiliated and violated she must feel again? I’m guessing not, because if you had, when you walked through the door, you would’ve set your own shit aside for at least half a second and checked on her mental wellbeing.”

Colin’s gaze cut to me and he opened his mouth to say something, but I held my hand up in the air and shook my head. “Not now. Not after you were shamed into it. Plus, we need to focus on what happens next. Has Barry put out a press release yet? Allison is waiting for direction from me on what Mending Hearts’ is going to say, and at some point, I need to make sure Oliver has safely made it to his parents’ and check on JoJo. Have you—”

A phone ringing in the kitchen interrupted my thought and Seth took off to grab it, leaving Colin and me alone briefly. For the first time since we’d met, thick tension filled the air between us as we stood in uncomfortable silence. And I hated every second of it.

Thankfully, Seth reappeared after only a minute or so with a small glimmer of hope in his eye. “That was the security firm. They found footage of someone in the backyard earlier in the day yesterday, kneeling down at the back line of shrubbery and apparently cutting out a small opening, which they’re assuming was for the camera lens to stick through. They’re emailing the clips to us now so we can review them and see if we can identify who it was.”

Momentarily forgetting the harsh words that had just been exchanged, we all hurried to the office on the second floor and waited for Colin to start up his computer and open the email. Finding out who was responsible for the nightmare I’d woken up in wouldn’t do anything to make it all disappear, or even help figure out the best way to move forward, but I still wanted to know who had set me up. And I wanted to know how they knew about me and Oliver to begin with, as well as where we would be the previous night.

The video feed they sent was a little over five minutes long, but it was within the first five seconds, when the petite blonde wearing
my
number-three Cassidy jersey walked out of the house and toward the bushes, that all my questions were answered.

“And I don’t

want your Jesus.

I just want to

smoke my cigarettes

and drink my whiskey

and for you to love

me for the monster

I am.”

–Christopher Poindexter

Colin

“WHY?! WHY WOULD
you do this to me? To my family?” I bellowed, running frustrated fingers through my short hair as I paced the parlor floor.

A nervous, defensive Effie was perched on the edge of the couch, her shifty eyes following my every move. “I thought I was helping you. Excuse me for thinking you’d want to know that your wife was cheating on you,” she contended, keeping the attitude she’d had ever since realizing I’d called her over to confront her about what she’d done, and not because I wanted her sympathy and support.

“Helping?! Are you kidding me? How could you have possibly thought what is going on out there,” I scowled and pointed toward the front door to where a reporter from every news station, magazine, and newspaper waited for a comment, “would be helpful for me in any way? I should be preparing for the biggest game of my life right now, but instead, it’s the furthest thing from my mind, because I’ve got the mother of all shitstorms positioned right over my head, and it’s all your doing. Singlehandedly, you’ve managed to ruin every aspect of my life, not to mention what you’ve done to Monroe and her career!”

“Fuck Monroe!” she spat, leaping to her feet as angry tears spilled down her cheeks. “Fuck her and her lying, cheating ass! She’s the one who did this, not me! You may not realize it yet, but I did you and the rest of the world a favor by showing everyone what kind of awful, deceitful person she really is!”

I stilled as rage burned inside of me. “Careful, Effie,” I warned ominously. “She’s still my wife, and you will not disrespect her in our house.”

“No!” she shouted, marching up to me and beating her fists on my chest. “I won’t be careful! This shit needs to be said. She pretends to be Mother Fucking Teresa, helping all the unfortunate kids and putting on this fake-ass act so everybody thinks she’s so wonderful, when the truth is she’s a user and a fame-hungry whore, just like her mother was! How can you sit here and defend her after seeing those pictures? What other evidence do you need, Colin? Your marriage is a sham! I know the timing may be shitty, but you deserved to know the truth so you don’t waste another minute on that bitch and you can move on with someone who truly loves you. Someone like me!”

Grabbing her hands so she couldn’t hit me again, I gently pushed her away from me, exercising every bit of self-control I owned not to explode and say things I couldn’t take back. Her declaration of love wasn’t a big surprise to me; I’d known since we were kids that she always wanted more from our relationship, but never once had I given her any reason to think there would be a chance for that. We were friends, always just friends, and I thought when she finally found someone, she’d realize it had always just been a silly little crush. I never in a million years thought it would come to this.

“Effie, I’m going to say this one time, and one time only, so listen closely,” I stated, my voice eerily calm. “I do not love you like that. I will never love you like that. Before all of this, I valued your friendship very much, and I would’ve been first in line to help or support you. But now . . .” I paused, glancing over at the staircase where I knew Monroe and Seth were eavesdropping from the second floor, and then returned my attention to her. “ . . . now the only thing I feel toward you is disgust and disappointment. In time, I’m sure I’ll find it in my heart to forgive you, but I will never forget the pain you have caused both me and Monroe, nor the destruction your actions have resulted in. If your true goal was to help free me from this ‘sham of a marriage’ as you call it, you should’ve come straight to me and told me what was going on. Instead, not only have you humiliated me and my wife on a global level, but your selfish, thoughtless, inexcusable actions are negatively affecting hundreds of others, including Oliver and his family, the entire Patriots organization, and most importantly, all of the Mending Hearts kids who may no longer have a home to go to.”

Deciding to take a different approach, she reached out to touch my arm and pouted her bottom lip out like a child. “But Colin—”

“No!” I moved away from her, shaking my head emphatically. “We’re through here, Effie. I want you to leave now, and I don’t ever want to discuss this again. Whatever friendship we had is gone, and there is zero percent chance of it ever returning. My parents will know the part you played in this entire debacle, so it’s doubtful you’ll ever be welcomed at my family’s functions again. You can choose how you want to explain that to your own parents. I really don’t care. I think it goes without saying you no longer have a job, and if I were you, I’d probably consider relocating to another city. When this all blows over with me and Monroe, and it
will
blow over, I don’t imagine you’re gonna have a whole lot of people standing in your corner.”

“You asshole!” she spat, staring at me as if she could honestly not believe the words coming out of my mouth. “How could you choose her over me? She’s nothing but a—”

“Leave now!”
I shouted at the top of my lungs, not caring who heard.

The sound of her hand cracking across my cheek echoed through the room moments before the front door opened and slammed shut, but I only felt relief. At least a little bit. The hardest part was still to come.

Later that afternoon, once Effie had left and I’d eaten and showered, I found myself alone in my bedroom while Monroe and Seth holed themselves up in hers, neither of them my biggest fan at the moment. The chaos of the day seemed to finally be winding down a little—at least within the confines of the house, as I knew that wasn’t the case if I stepped outside, or turned on the TV or internet, but at least inside, a temporary reprieve from the pandemonium had settled in.