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He lunges and grabs me, clutching me tight to him, his mouth to my ear. “I love you. I love you so, so much. I want a family with you. I want you tied to me for the rest of your life and want you to love me. I wanted to give you a baby. I want you to give me a family. The kind of family I know we can make. A beautiful family.”
“Derek…” Tears stream down my cheeks.
He loosens his grip just enough to look at my face, to assess it.
“I love you,” he repeats, swiping tears away with his thumbs.
I’m shaking my head, bawling, crushed.
“Talk to me, baby,” he requests.
“You fucked up, Derek. You really fucked up here.”
He swallows.
“Do you have any idea how big of a breach of trust this is? All the things you’ve done to me, all the choices you took away, all the heinous things…”
He flinches again.
“Now you’ve gone and done this? Fucked with my choices like this? This is betrayal.”
“No,” he says gruffly and points at me. “I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. You use a word like heinous when describing having a family with me? No.”
“Heinous,” I repeat. “Yes, this is heinous. You knew what you were doing last night, didn’t you? You were determined to fuck me last night hoping I’d get pregnant because I’m a week into fake pills which is perfect timing and… and… what? Knocking me up would magically make me agree to be your wife?”
“You are my wife.”
“Until yesterday afternoon, that was in name only. It was blackmail, plain and simple. I was married to you only because I was terrified of what you’d do, what you threatened to do.”
“Baby…”
“You fucked up, Derek. You can’t sweet-talk me into being okay with this. You can’t fuck me into submission here. You switched my birth control pills!” I can’t even fathom this. “You manipulative asshole.” I shove him. He doesn’t budge. “How can you think I’d be okay with this? How can you think I would ever get past this sort of deceit?”
“You’re angry with me, but baby, I’ll take care of you. I’ll be a good father. We might have made a person sometime within the last day and that beautiful little person is me and you and-”
“And maybe genetically predisposed to being a fucking psychopath!”
He jerks back like I’ve struck him across the face.
“How dare you? I can’t believe I let myself believe for even five minutes that giving in to you wasn’t insane.” I back away. “I can’t believe you. There’s zero hope for us.” I dash tears off my face with my sleeves. “Zero. I’m done, Derek. I’m so, so fucking done.” I pull the rings off my fingers and throw them at him. They bounce off him and fall to the floor.
He squats to pick them up and I grab my purse, find my phone on the other counter, and storm away. I look over my shoulder and he’s leaned against the wall, slowly sliding down, face full of remorse.
I walk out, not even shutting the door behind myself.
My phone is ringing, Derek is calling and I’m ignoring it. I’m pulling out of the Walgreens. I know Ken is following. I also know Ken saw what I bought because he followed me into the drug store.
I told him to go away, and he said, “You know there are security concerns. Can you please drive home? I’ll follow you back. Not comfortable out here with everything that happened at the funeral, Mrs. Steele.”
Where am I going? Where the fuck do I go?
I can’t believe I thought this might actually work. That I had any power here. A marriage with a crazy, unhinged psychopath.
As soon as my phone stops ringing, it starts up again.
“Sorry to tell you this, boss, but she bought a box of Plan B and a sports drink.”
My chest hurts.
