Chapter 3

I questioned, "So you built a second family with her back home?"

Gavin nodded.

"Sienna, you have to believe me. You're the only one I love. If I had feelings for her, I would've been with her from the start. Why would I have chosen you?"

He was desperate to prove his loyalty, but all I felt was revulsion. I stared at him coldly. Was this really the same man I'd fallen in love with?

After we got married, he'd treated me so well. He knew I didn't like spending time with his parents, so he never once pressured me to visit his hometown. He was always trying to smooth things over between the two of them and me.

If either of them said a single bad word about me, he'd shut it down immediately. He'd even spent three straight years celebrating the holidays with my parents instead of his, and he didn't care when his own mother and father called him in a fury over it.

I would never forget how he'd stood in front of my parents and sworn, with absolute conviction, that he would never let me down and never let me be hurt.

And the entire time he was making those promises, he'd had another family waiting for him back home. He'd lied to me for five full years. Every trip back was to see his other wife and daughter. He'd even gotten his childhood sweetheart pregnant a second time.

The happiness I thought I had was nothing but a joke, something I'd invented in my own head.

"Sienna..." Gavin reached for my hand. "I'm begging you. Don't leave me."

I shook him off in disgust, swallowing down the nausea rising in my throat. "You don't want a divorce?"

Hope flickered across his face.

"Then what about your sweetheart and your daughter?"

"She doesn't care about any of that. All she wants is stability. She has my parents and the kids. She doesn't care who I come home to, as long as you don't make a scene back there and embarrass her.

"She'll take care of my parents, and it'll be one less thing you have to worry about."

I couldn't hold it in anymore. I grabbed the trash can next to me and threw up. "So what, she's your mistress tucked away in the countryside? You're both disgusting."

I slapped him across the face, got to my feet, and shoved him out the door. He knelt outside, begging and pleading, and it went on for what felt like forever until his tone suddenly shifted to panic.

"Sienna, my daughter's being bullied by the kids at her preschool. I have to go check on her." And then he was gone.

I stared at my reflection in the mirror. My face was as white as a sheet, and my eyes were bloodshot. My head was pounding so badly that I collapsed onto the bed and passed out.

I slept until the middle of the night, and Gavin still wasn't home. But my mind was sharper than it had been in days. I couldn't keep living like this. I needed to divorce him.

I dug up the phone number I'd saved from Gavin's phone, the one belonging to Elise, and sent her a message.

"I'd like to talk to you about Gavin's bigamy."

Her reply came almost immediately.

"Okay."

We met at a KFC near his hometown. I looked up at Elise, and my heart ached for her despite everything. I told her the whole truth, every last detail, and held nothing back.

"I've already talked to a lawyer. What he's done is bigamy. We can press charges."

Elise's expression stayed perfectly calm. "And then what?

"Sienna, you don't actually think I had no idea he married you, do you?"

I froze, and a chill crawled down my spine.

Elise let out a mocking little laugh. "I've known since college that he fell for you and married you."

"Then why did you still—"

"Because I don't care. Everyone back home knows that we grew up together. As far as they're concerned, we're the real couple, and you're the shameless homewrecker who broke up a family.

"And here's something you probably don't know. Your marriage certificate is fake. I'm the one on his real marriage license. I'm his legal wife, and I'm not about to help you prove that he committed bigamy."

For a moment, I couldn't speak. "Regardless of all that, he still cheated on you."

She shrugged like it meant nothing. "He doesn't even have real feelings for you. Why would I care? He was only doing it so that our daughter and I could have a better life."