Somehow she’d figured out it was Adriana and then met her at work in the parking lot, very similar to this. Adriana had broken it off with Spencer the day she found out about his wife. It had come as a complete shock when the woman confronted her days later.
“But I told Brenda it was over. I’ve been telling her for years.”
Brenda, that was the wife’s name. Adriana had been in such a haze of fury that it never registered with her. All she knew was the guy she’d thought she was in love with had been living another life all along and she’d been such an idiot she never saw it.
“Yet she moved to San Diego with you. I’m not buying it now any more than I did back then.”
She should just leave, but there was so much she wanted to make sure he was clear on. As if she hadn’t been before.
“She had no one. I told her she could to get established with me and then she had to move out. It was only supposed to be a few months.”
Adriana crossed her arms. “Does she still live with you, Spencer? Has she lived with you in the same bedroom all this time?”
His face flushed briefly and she turned to leave. “It’s hard to explain.”
“I don’t care how hard it is. We are done. We’ve been done for months. There is no going back for me.”
“Please,” he said. “I love you.”
“I don’t love you. That love was shattered to a million pieces the minute I found out you were married. There is no reason and no excuse. No justification for any of your lies. Leave now before I call security.”
She marched away from him to her car and pulled out, looking in her review mirror to make sure he wasn’t following her.
Not that it mattered because if her mother told him where she worked then she probably told him where she lived.
There was going to be hell to pay for that.
The minute she got home the first thing she did was call her mother. She would have done it in the car, but she was shaking so much and she needed to get home safely.
“Hello, darling. Are you just getting out of work? It’s so beautiful here. I’m sitting by the pool.”
“What the hell is wrong with you telling Spencer where I was?!”
There was silence on the other end. “He said he knew you were in North Carolina. I thought maybe he’d found you and he kept saying how much he still loved you. It was such a sweet story. Everyone should have a man want them that much.”
“You’ve got issues. You want a man to love you like that. To give you that attention. I don’t. I don’t need it. I don’t want it.”
“That’s because you’ve always been a Daddy’s girl. He never did that to me.”
She wasn’t going there right now. It was probably the last thing in the world her mother could have brought up to her.
“Your insecurities aren’t mine. I don’t like liars or cheaters and you know that. I think you thought I’d take Spencer back and then you could throw it in my face how much I was like you.”
More silence on the other end. “He means well. You should at least hear him out and give him a chance. It’s not like you are doing anything there. You’re too young to be single.”
“I’m not single,” she shouted. “I’m in a relationship and have been for months. And you and your petty ways are trying to make my life miserable. You’re nothing but an energy vampire. You just suck the life right out of me and don’t even care.”
“That’s a little dramatic, Adriana,” her mother said, letting out a huff. “You’ve never been like that before. And you never said you were dating someone. Who is it?”
Now her mother was all interested in her life. “There was no need to tell you. We don’t talk often and don’t have much in common. I’m not sharing my dating life with you when it’s still new.”
“I bet your father knows,” her mother said sarcastically.
“Yes, he does. He met Wyatt and he likes him. And I’m happy. I don’t need you meddling in my life. I don’t need you getting involved and making things hard for me. I walked away from Spencer and moved to the East Coast because he wouldn’t leave me alone and yet you just brought him back in my life. Didn’t it ever occur to you there was a reason I left so fast?”
“You never tell me anything,” her mother said.
Her father knew that Spencer just wouldn’t leave her alone. He was never violent. He was never mean, but he was persistent.
At first it was annoying but then it bordered on creepy to the point of being uncomfortable.
It wasn’t just him waiting for her at work in all different places, it was him trying to enlist her coworkers to do what her mother did.
Some thought it was sweet like her mother. Others called her a homewrecker.
There had been no getting away from any of it.
Flowers showing up at her apartment on what would have been an eight-month anniversary told her the guy was delusional.
She called her father. The one person she’d been able to talk to about this whole thing and he’d said he’d been worried and already started to look for places for her. He sent her the links, she signed a lease and put her two-week notice in, then packed up and left without telling anyone.
“There is a reason for that. You think you’re my friend. A parent wouldn’t have done what you did. A friend of mine wouldn’t either. Not a true friend. Mom, don’t contact me again.”
“You can’t mean
