I can’t stop myself from scanning the page and reading about how Aiden left me for another woman and we never consummated the marriage. I hear more giggles behind me and I look up to see the barista staring at me and then down at my phone.
I hold my phone against my chest as I back out of the coffee shop and run to my car. Hot tears sting my eyes as I fumble with my keys. I shouldn’t care what people think, but that comment stung. Yes, I’m a virgin, but so was Aiden. He just doesn’t have a medical record to prove it.
I drive out the parking lot too fast and my tires screech as I make the turn towards Wyatt’s office. I don’t know where else to go or what to do, but I don’t want to talk to Aiden. He’s just going to feel sorry for me and I don’t need that right now. I want to make sure I’m split from him and there’s nothing else tying us together. The last thing I want right now is sympathy for the life I had to choose.
Nothing about what I’ve wanted has ever come into play. I didn’t get to go to the schools I wanted, or choose the major I wanted, or even marry the person I wanted. I was forced into this and people think they know the whole story, but they don’t know anything about me.
When I get to Wyatt’s office I park my car and take a deep breath before I wipe away any remaining tears and square my shoulders. I’m ready to face whatever is in front of me, and that includes an asshole with the ability to make me weak in every part of my soul.
I just need to make it through this meeting and Wyatt Carmichael will be out of my life forever.
It’s too bad he has other plans.
2
Wyatt
I hang up the phone when I hear Savannah enter my office. One look at her and I’m transported back to the first time I saw her.
I was fourteen and it was my first day at a new school. I was accepted after the school year had already begun, so it was two months in and everyone already knew one another. I had applied for a scholarship and was denied, but then another scholarship student dropped out and they told me I could have the spot. I jumped at the chance because it was the best school in the state and one of the top schools in the entire country.
The terms of the scholarship constituted a work-study program where I had to work in the kitchens during lunch and stay after school to help maintain the pool for the swim team. I agreed to it because I would have agreed to anything that would help me get out of my situation at home.
I lived with my uncle in a trailer park on the outskirts of town. It was over an hour’s bus ride to get to school and took almost double that in the afternoons to get back home. My uncle was a drunk who managed to stay sober long enough to work a few hours a day hanging sheetrock. I worked nights at the convenience store near the trailer park because they didn’t care how old I was. They knew they could get me to work the shifts nobody wanted and pay me cash and I wouldn’t complain. I found out early on that I didn’t need much sleep and napped on the bus when it got bad. I did what I had to.
The worst part about where we lived was the school district was shit. I knew I was smart and that I was going to make something of myself, but I had to get out of there to do it. When my uncle saw me filling out the application he made fun of me for days. It was better than when he used to knock me around, but he stopped doing that when I got bigger than him.
When I didn’t get accepted right away I was already thinking about how I could get the money to get out of town and try to make a life somewhere else. I don’t like to think about what I would have done to get it, but it never came to that, thankfully.
I’d been up all night before the first day, going over all the work I needed to make up. It had been a long day with classes and learning what I had to do in the kitchen and I was exhausted by the time I had to report to the pool.
The student aquatics director Brad was showing me the chemicals and how to clean out the filtration system when the swim team came in. I was horny as shit when I was fourteen and could hardly keep my hand off my dick when I had four seconds to myself. But real-life girls were never on my radar. I was a dirty kid from the wrong side of town and I knew my place in the world. I had big dreams of one day breaking out, but I was aware at a young age that some people would never see the real me while I was dressed in rags. That is, until she looked at me.