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“You-you’re getting married to this guy?”
“Yes. We plan to get married soon. Within the next month or two.”
His eyes stretched wider. “That soon?”
“Yes.”
He sat back in the chair. He appeared stunned. “Does Theo know?”
“Not yet. I wanted to tell you first,” Marissa said in a soft voice.
“All this time, you really just didn’t want to marry me.” He swallowed, sounding genuinely hurt.
Marissa had assumed Chet didn’t care for her because he had cheated, but in his own way, he did care, and her pending marriage had clearly crushed him.
“This is it then?” he asked with wounded eyes.
“Yes.” Marissa sat with her hands folded in her lap.
“Well, I guess we’re done.” Chet pushed to his feet. “There’s one thing I want to make clear to you and your new fiancé. Theo is my kid. I mean that shit. I’m a good dad.” His voice quivered.
Marissa stood. “Yes, you are. There’s no question about that, and Theo loves you very much. Bruno is another man in his life, but he’ll never replace you.”
His shoulders slumped, and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down as he swallowed. He turned baleful eyes on her. “Why didn’t you give me another chance?” he asked in a hushed voice.
“Our time ended, Chet. You know that.”
“I made one mistake. One. Mistake. She didn’t mean anything to me,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Cheating wasn’t one mistake. You had an affair with someone else for months while I was pregnant. You hurt me deeply. We were never getting back together. I made that clear to you, and I haven’t changed my opinion in all this time.”
He halfway turned away from her, his gaze landing on a framed photo of her and Theo together on the wall. “We were supposed to be a family,” he said in a low voice, almost as if he was talking to himself.
Marissa didn’t want to belabor the point, but he was the reason they weren’t a family. His cheating had driven a shaft through her heart and made her more determined than ever to be independent and depend only on herself. No one else.
The fairy tale she had created in her head about becoming the type of family she didn’t have growing up had been crushed by his callous behavior. He might regret his actions now, but she’d never forget he slept with someone else during one of the most emotional and physically difficult periods in her life.
Chet turned his back on her. “Theo! Get out here, let’s go!” he yelled.
Theo came running out. “I’m ready!”
Marissa handed him his backpack, and Chet grabbed the handle on his small bag.
“Bye, Mommy.”
“Bye-bye, my love. See you Sunday.” She bent and kissed her son.
When she straightened, Chet was looking at her. “He’s a lucky man. I guess that’s one of the perks of being rich. You get the cream of the crop.”
He ushered Theo out the door ahead of him, and he walked behind with slumped shoulders.
Chapter Forty-Three
The sun was shining, and birds were chirping.
Bruno couldn’t have wished for a better wedding day.
He and Marissa didn’t get married on a coveted estate that most people didn’t know about or couldn’t afford, and they weren’t surrounded by hundreds of people. Instead, they tied the knot at the home where he grew up.
