A Million Different Ways to Lose You (Horn Duet 2)

“Let’s play nice, folks.” A deep baritone bellowed from a few feet away. We both turned in its direction. Sebastian leveled Bear with a glare that should’ve turned him to a pillar of salt, while Bear, standing next to the SUV under an umbrella, simply smiled back at him.

“Get in the car,” he had the nerve to order.

“No.”

“Vera––get in the car. We’re soaked. It’s cold. I don’t want you getting sick.”

My mouth went slack in disbelief. “You certainly didn’t care what happened to me last night!”

“Last night? What about last night?”

“Stay the hell away from me! I trusted you! You asked me to trust you and I did and look at where it got me!”

The look of utter confusion on his face didn’t earn him any points. He managed to get a hold on it before I walked on.

“Why did you sign the prenup?” Those words stopped me dead in my tracks. The impact was like getting hit by freight train, devastating, knocking all the wind out of my lungs at once. “I saw David.”

Oh my God. Did he want a divorce?

I turned then, slowly, my heart beating viciously, my knees turning to jelly while my eyes reflected all the pain I was feeling. His watched me expectantly.

“Did you think I wouldn’t? Did you think I ever cared about any of this? This––” I said, waving my arm around like a crazy person. “Is half the problem. I never wanted any of it…I just wanted you.” And with that, I turned and ran, disappearing into the night, into the rain, leaving everything that I loved behind.

The next day I received an unexpected visit. I won’t deny that when the doorbell rang a burst of hope swept through me. Even after everything, I missed him like crazy. There was a black hole where my heart had once been. I opened the studio door to find Marianne standing there dressed in a stylish grey swing coat, holding a pastry box.

I took one look at her face and burst into tears. Not the cute kind either––the ugly, body racking kind that makes your face look like a tomato on steroids. She wrapped her free arm around me as we made our way to the tiny kitchen table. Twenty minutes later, the tears were mostly dry and my stomach was filled with three quarters of a large raspberry tart.

“He left with her,” I said, my cheeks stuffed. “He went home with her.”

Marianne’s sympathetic gaze held mine. “Are you certain? It doesn’t sound like him. Caroline has been sniffing around him for years. He was never interested in her.”

“I know. That’s why I wasn’t worried when I overheard her in the lingerie store…but then Bear told me he left with her.”

“You need to ask him. I’m turning sixty-six this year, and if I’ve learned anything it’s to be direct––subtly and insinuations will get you nowhere good.” Taking a long gulp of tea, I swallowed the dessert stuck in my throat and told her the rest of the story.

“He went to see David…I think he wants a divorce.” A fresh set of tears surged up as the words left my lips. She frowned, her plump lips pursed tightly. I wiped the moisture away with the heel of my hand.

“Did he say so?”

“He said he went to see David.”

“But did he say he wants a divorce?”

“Well…no, not exactly.” Any more of her interrogation and she would have me doubting my own name.

“You’re jumping to conclusions, chérie. I suggest you ask him plainly. I suspect you will get a very different answer than the one you are presuming.”

Her words gave birth to a new sense of hope…maybe I had jumped to conclusions. In truth, I was scared of the answer. Because what would I do if she was wrong?

“Have you heard from Charlotte?”

The troubled look on her face gave her thoughts away. “No––you?”

“Nothing,” I said, head shaking. “When should we start to worry?”

Her round blue eyes moved away from me in a contemplative gesture. “Soon.”

One day rolled into another. Before I had a chance to sort out what to do next, another ten days had past. Work kept me busy. Therefore I didn’t have much time to think until I went upstairs and got in the shower. Every evening the hot water washed away my armor, leaving me naked and exposed, vulnerable. And each night, I cried myself to sleep; I didn’t get a minute of sleep otherwise. My imagination ran wild, conjuring a million dreadful scenarios of what he was doing and with whom.

I was paralyzed by indecision. My answer came in the form of one tall, busty redhead.

“What the fuck,” she exclaimed––it was definitely an exclamation. Wearing a black Jill Sanders suit and a look of total determination, she stood near the front desk of the clinic with her finely manicured short, red nails tapping on her curvy hips.