Page 25 of Well Aware

I scrubbed at my face. “My ex is Eloy Wilkinson.”

He inhaled swiftly. “You were dating the head ref?”

“Was, yes,” I bemoaned. “Fancied myself in love, too. Then Iris happened, and he was all ‘I can’t deal with this’ and took off.”

There was more to the story than that, but it wasn’t something I’d shared with anyone.

Plus, for all intents and purposes, Iris was my child.

The fewer people who knew, the better.

As long as it kept Cain away, I’d do everything all over again.

Even walk away from the man that I loved.

“Sounds like a real prize,” he said. “Iris is a lucky girl to have you.”

I felt something warm inside my cold, dead heart.

“Thanks,” I admitted.

He grinned at me.

The pang in my heart was usually a wild thing.

But in that moment, I realized that that pang that I’d felt after Eloy had left, the one that never really went away, had slowly started to heal.

I thought the worst day of my life was the day that he’d told me that he didn’t want to raise a child with me that wasn’t his. But then my sister took her life, and I realized that life can always get harder, and never to speak as if it couldn’t. Karma was a greedy bitch, and she knew how to humble you.

“Magnolia?”

And the reason behind that healing was currently smiling at me. Unrepentant for helping feed Iris’s ice cream addiction.

I stared at the ceiling and contemplated my life.

I’d loved Eloy fiercely.

I’d thought that he was the endgame for me.

He’d been my ride or die since the moment I entered the professional soccer world at sixteen.

Barely twenty-one himself, he’d been just as green around the edges as I had been.

At first, we’d started out as friends.

We’d seen each other at several soccer games that he’d reffed and I’d played.

Over time, that love had bloomed into something I thought was unbreakable and fierce.

He’d shared that one day, he would ask me to be his wife, and I thought that I’d won the lottery.

He was a man that my parents would approve of.

Then, when Iris came home with me that first day to the apartment I’d contemplated giving up so that I could move in with Eloy, he’d rocked my world.

He’d told me that he didn’t like kids, never really wanted them, and he certainly didn’t want a kid that would one day grow up and have no obligation to take care of him.

When I’d pointed out that not even blood relations had the obligation to take care of him, he’d snorted.