“I thought you didn’t want to be petty. I don’t want to be petty either.” I hold out the ultrasound picture to show her so she knows I knew exactly what I was doing when I came here. “I just want to talk. For our child.”
“You thought I cheated on you, Brock, and you wouldn’t even listen to me.”
“I was stubborn. I was a pig. I know that now. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”
“Bad? You made me feel a million times worse than bad. Bad doesn’t even begin to cover it. You basically yelled at me like I was a school child, not even giving me a chance to explain, and then you stormed off. After firing me, by the way. You left me with no job, no money, and a whole heap of medical bills.”
I leap in quickly, spotting a solution. “I’ll pay them. Yep, I’ll pay them, and whatever other bills need covering. It’s the least I can do after everything I’ve put you through. I feel like a real jerk.”
“You’re a fucking asshole, Brock, don’t you understand that? You can’t come back and throw money at me. That doesn’t cover up all the hurt, all the pain. Couldn’t you see what you did to me?”
This isn’t going according to plan at all. I can’t seem to say anything right. I want to reach out to Jodi, to touch her, to make her see that I’m just trying to do right by her, but I can’t. She’s so blocked off to me it’s agony.
“Please, Jodi. Please just talk to me. Let me inside and let’s have a conversation about it. I don’t want to yell out here in public with the whole apartment block looking in on us.”
Those words seem to be magical. She realizes that everyone can hear us, so for that one reason alone, she steps aside and lets me in. The place is still just as bare as the first time I came here. She doesn’t even seem to have any baby stuff, which is strange considering how far along she is. Except that she doesn’t seem to have any money.
“Right, Brock, you’re in, so why don’t you just tell me what you want to say then get out.”
“I just want to talk to you, Jodi, to talk about everything. Don’t shut me out like you always do.”
“Always do? You’re the one who didn’t ever call me back. How can you say that about me?”
“Before then, you never really let me in. I wanted to get to know you, but you wouldn’t let me. That’s how I didn’t know about Lucas before, because you decided to deal with the problem yourself.”
“I . . . I . . .” She looks a bit blown away by my words. “That isn’t true. I just take a while—”
“Well, it’s been a while. It’s been a while, and it’s tearing us apart.”
“No, your issues are tearing us apart. You and your issues because of your ex-wife. Just because she cheated on you doesn’t mean everyone else in your life is going to hurt you. How do you not get that? I’m not her. I’m nothing like her. I never would have done that to you. I loved you . . .”
“Loved?” I ask softly. “Does that mean you don’t feel that way anymore?”
“I . . . I don’t know,” she admits. “I don’t know what I feel. I hate you for giving up on me, for not listening to me, for turning your back on me and then rejecting me over and over again.”
“I know. I understand that. I shouldn’t have acted like an asshole.”
“And you think you can come here now and just pave over the cracks? Just make things right again?”
“No, that’s not what I want to do. I want to rebuild things properly. I want to be with you.”
“You don’t want to be with me. That isn’t what this is. I know it. I seem to have this effect on guys where they become psychotic about me, and it’s obviously something that I’m doing wrong—”
“Are you talking about Lucas here?”
“Fucking Lucas. I don’t know. Not really. His problem isn’t really me. I’m just his meal ticket.”
“Thomas then? You never really finished that story.”
“No, I suppose I didn’t.” She blows out a giant breath. “We got distracted, didn’t we?”
“We did, and I didn’t want to push you at the time because I knew it was hard, but now . . .”
“Now you need to know?”
“Yes. Now I think I really need to know. I’m sorry, Jodi, but I do.”
“Well, I must have told you things were really bad at work?” I nod. “Okay . . . well, then it began to happen outside of work. Letters, constant gifts, him everywhere. He would turn up at my house at first, but then it got worse and worse. He was everywhere. I was scared. It’s silly because even though he never hurt me, I was scared. Really freaked out all the time. I stopped doing things, I stayed in all the time, I even quit my job just to get away from him, but that made him worse, more desperate to get to me. He got crazier and started coming into my home—he somehow got a key. It was a nightmare . . .” She shakes, and I see the tremble racing through her entire body. “I couldn’t get on a train without being scared that he’d push me. I was always afraid in the dark that he’d take what he wanted from me—he always made it very clear that he could have me if he wanted me, even if it wasn’t something that I wanted to do. He didn’t care what he did do to me as long as he had control so he could call me his own.”