"I'm at your mother's house."
The call goes quiet. Good. I want her to know this is not some fucking joke. This is my life, my heart. I wanted to give her all of it.
"Why are you there, Landon?" Her voice is soft, scared.
I'm pacing the concrete lot; my shoulders are tense, my mind racing. "I'm here because I came to in Vegas to get us a fucking house. To find a proper job. To ask your mother for your bloody hand in marriage."
I hear her sharp intake of breath, as if she's trying to control her tears, but I don't care about her tears right now. I just want to bloody understand.
"And do you know what your mother told me?" I ask. "When I asked to marry you, her only daughter?"
"Oh, God."
"What the fuck, Claire? I love you. And you have a husband?" I punch the brick wall in front of me, and my hand comes away bloodied, my heart bruised. But I don't fucking care. I just need to understand.
"I'm sorry," she says, but everything sounds like a sharp metallic buzz. My hand is numb, my head on fire. "I wanted to tell you. But it isn't like it sounds."
"Then how is it? How is the woman I love married?"
"I haven't seen him in five years. I never want to see him again. I should have told you, but I'm so ashamed.... And I can't. I can't, Landon. I can't have you hate me for this. I never expected to fall in love. With you. I was going to tell you. You have to believe me."
"Believe you? Trust you? I'm not sure you know what that means, Claire."
"Listen, I should have dealt with this, but I don't even know where he is."
"That's a fucking excuse."
"No, it isn't. I tried to get a divorce-I got papers made up, signed and everything-but then I just got so scared to face it all again. So I pretended it wasn't real. Pretended he and I never got married. Pretended he wasn't Sophia's father."
I don't want to punch something. I want to punch someone. The person who did this to her.
"He hurt you? I'll fucking kill him."
"Landon, it's not that easy."
I snort. "Perfect. You don't want me to off him. Sounds like maybe you're secretly in love with him, and that's why you've never cut things off."
"I swear that's not it," she says, her words fierce. "I want a life with you, Landon. You're all I want."
"I want to believe you, Claire, but right now I feel like I would be a fool to."
"Don't say that."
"I gotta go."
"Don't hang up like this," she begs.
"I don't think I have a choice."
I hang up the phone, completely destroyed by this woman.
Claire
When he hangs up the phone, I start sobbing.
Like, heaving sobs.
I can't believe Landon found out this way. That he found out my painful past over the phone.
I can't believe that Landon doesn't believe me when I say my husband means nothing. When I say Landon means the world.
Emmy and Tess must hear my crying from down the hall, because they're in my bedroom in minutes.
"Sweetie, what the heck is happening?" Tess asks, sitting next to me on the bed, rubbing my back as I cry into my hands.
Emmy sits on the other side of me. "Claire, what is going on?"
"I just-I just spoke with .... Landon. And he knows everything." I can't control my crying. I don't even try.
"Everything what?" Emmy asks.
I sit up, shaking my head, tears streaming down my cheeks.
"I'm married. And Landon just found out."
I press my hand to my forehead, ashamed of my past, of my story. Wanting it to disappear. Not wanting it to be known. It's safer to hide, to keep secrets. Because then there's no judgment, no definitions of who you are or what you're worth.
"What?" Tess asks, gasping. "Claire ... you have a husband?"
Emmy looks at me in shock.
I understand their surprise. I've never said those words aloud in my entire life. I could never even get myself to utter them to my own mother.
I take a deep breath, knowing I need to tell them the entire story.
"When I was eighteen and living with some friends, I met a man ... he wasn't from Vegas, but was here for business. We went out a few times, and I don't know why I ever agreed. From the start he was always rough with me, really demanding. I was too naive to realize it was abuse. I slept with him a lot over the course of a week, and one night we got really drunk, and ended up in a wedding chapel."
"Oh, shit," Emmy says.
"Yeah, I know. It was stupid, but he promised to take care of me. He had money and seemed so confident and in charge-that was what drew me to him. He lived and worked in Utah, but after the wedding, he got me an apartment here in Vegas. He'd fly in on the weekend, and I thought that was enough, that he loved me. But he didn't.
"My mom was totally MIA back then, because she was basically a mess over my dad's death, so I become really isolated. I didn't even tell her I had gotten married. I wasn't working, obviously. I didn't even have a phone.
"I stopped everything, really, because he always wanted me to be in the apartment in case he decided on a whim to visit. Like, one time I was in the laundry room when he showed up at our place unexpectedly, and when I came back in, carrying a basket of clothes, he beat me up so bad I couldn't stand for three days."
"Claire, what are you talking about? Why are you still married to him?" Tess asks.
"It got worse. I was totally isolated. I wasn't a prisoner; I was just so freaking stupid. He was my husband, right? We'd made a vow, no matter how drunk or dumb it was. Six months passed and he kept coming every weekend, and I thought things would get better-that if I was better in bed, or cooked him better meals, or kept the apartment spotless, then he'd be nice to me. But it didn't work that way."
"Then what happened?" Emmy asks. Her face is full of empathy, and that gives me the courage to keep talking.
"I got pregnant. For me, that was the turning point. The moment I took a pregnancy test, I knew I needed to leave. He was so brutal with me-I didn't want him to hurt the baby."
"Oh, Claire, that was so brave," Tess says.
"It wasn't. If I was brave I'd have left a long time before that. If I was brave, when I finally crawled home to my mothers' house I would have let her call the police. I would have hired an attorney and gotten a divorce. But I didn't do any of that."
"You were terrified," Emmy says adamantly. "And you wanted to keep Sophia safe. Claire, you were being brave."
I start crying again. "No, I was being weak. And I've stayed weak for five years. It was only this year, with kindergarten starting, that I even let Sophia out of my sight. I've kept our profile so low because I was always scared he'd come looking for me."
"Claire, you did nothing wrong," Emmy says, bringing me tissues. "And Landon understands that. He loves you."
"I know he loves me, I'm just so ashamed. I wish I were like you, Emmy-a girl who really was tough and strong. A girl who could take on a man like Grotto, and not let it break her.
"But I let my husband hold me captive for five years. I've never been brave enough to even go to the court and file the stupid papers. I just pushed the whole thing out of my mind and pretended it wasn't real. A strong woman wouldn't have pretended."
Tess shakes her head. "Claire, maybe you just needed to meet Landon first. Maybe you needed to meet the man who could help you be the best possible version of yourself. And you have. You have him now. And he's going to help set things straight." She pulls me into a hug, and lets me sob into her shoulder.
"I don't know if I have Landon." I wipe my face with a tissue, my body shaking at the realization. "When I spoke with him, he was so pissed off. He doesn't trust me."
"He'll come around," Tess says.
I want to believe her … but she doesn't know about the lies Landon and I built our relationship on.
"And besides Landon, maybe you needed to wait until you had us. Friends, real friends, you could confide in," Emmy says, wrapping her arms around both of us, into a three-way hug.
"I don't deserve you."
"Oh, sweetie, you deserve all this and more," Emmy says as we all sit back up.
"So is next week's wedding cancelled?" Tess asks once my tears have stopped flowing so forcefully.
"Besides the fact that I'm still married, I really don't know where things stand with Landon."
"If that's really how you feel, maybe hold off talking to him on the phone," Emmy says. "Sometimes phone calls make everything worse. And especially don't text him. That's, like, asking for crossed lines of communication."
"I can't bear to talk to him anyway. What if he … doesn't want me? I can't live without him."
"Oh, sweetie, I'm sure he has a plan," Tess says. "I bet he's already filing the divorce papers."
Emmy agrees, "Yeah, Jack and McQueen are with him, Claire. There's no way in hell that guy who hurt you is still going to be your husband after today."