Rift 59_The Abandoned Wife's Second Chance

(Jasper’s POV)

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 I lean against the closed door, my whole body trembling as Virginia’s footsteps fade down the driveway. The house stretches out around me, every corner holding memories I’m not ready to face.

 But Scarlett’s ghost is everywhere. In the way the afternoon light hits the kitchen counter where she used to make me coffee. In the decorations of the house that carry her traces. In the empty spaces where her pictures used to hang.

 I try to shake off the encroaching thoughts. It’s not possible.

 It’s just not possible.

 Virginia doesn’t have the means to temper with the DNA results. It’s not only money, she would need connections, powerful connections in the medical field, to aplish such a

 feat.

 Stumbling across the room, I enter the room next to the study, a small bar I set up three years ago when the loneliness got too heavy to bear. I’d thought having a ce to drink alone was better than going out and risking running into someone who knew me. Someone who might

 ask about Scarlett.

 My hands shake as I reach for the crystal decanter of whiskey, something to help me numb the pain. But before I can pour myself a drink, my eyesnd on something I’d forgotten was

 there.

 A photo. Wedged behind the bottles, almost hidden, like I’d tried to bury it but couldn’t quite make myself throw it away. The edges are worn from handling, the colors slightly faded.

 Scarlett and me. Seven years ago.

 She’sughing at something off–camera, her head thrown back, dark hair catching the light. Her hand rests on my chest, and I’m looking down at her like she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

 And she was.

 The photo trembles in my grip as the memory crashes over me.

 Jimmy’s Bar. Freshman year of college. 

 I’m working the </ite shift, trying to scrape together money for textbooks. The ce is a dive, but 

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 it pays better than the campus jobs, and I need every dor I can get. 

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 She walks in at almost midnight, and the entire room seems to shift. Scarlett Stone, the most popr girl on campus, slumming it in a ce like Jimmy’s. 

 But she’s not slumming. She’s running.

 I can see it in her eyes–the same desperation I recognize in my own mirror. The need to be somewhere no one expects you, somewhere you can breathe.

 “What can I get you?” I ask, and she looks up at me like she’s surprised to find me. 

 “Something strong,” she says.

 I pour her a whiskey, and watch her drain it in one shot. She doesn’t flinch.

 “Rough night?”

 She <iughs, but there’s no humor in it. “Rough day.” 

 And just like that, I’m lost. 

 The memory shifts, changes.

 Two weeks <iter, she’s back. This time there are three guys at her table, getting louder and more aggressive as the night wears on.

 “Come on, sweetheart,” one of them slurs, his hand sliding up her thigh. “Stop ying hard to 

 get.”

 She tries to move away, but he grabs her wrist.

 I’m flipping over the counter before I even realize I’m moving.

 “Get your hands off her.” 

 The guy looks up at me, takes in my height, the muscle I’ve built from years of construction work to pay for school.

 “This your girlfriend, pretty boy?” 

 “She said no. That’s all you need to know.”

 It takes three of us to throw them out, and when the dust settles, Scarlett’s still sitting at the table, shaking.

 “You okay?”

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 She looks up at me with tears in her eyes. “Yes? You?” 

 “I’m fine.”

 “No. I mean, I know you. Jasper, right?”

 “Yes…but how do 

 you know 

 my 

 name?”

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 The photo blurs as tears I didn’t know I was shedding hit the ss. I set it down carefully, like it might shatter if I’m not gentle enough.

 That was the beginning. The night I fell in love with Scarlett Stone without even realizing it.

 She came back every week after that. At first, I told myself she was just another customer. Then I told myself she was a friend. Then I stopped lying to myself altogether.

 She was everything I’d never dared to want. Beautiful, brilliant, kind in ways that took my breath away. She’d slip me her homework when I was too exhausted from work to keep up with my sses. Buy me coffee during my breaks and pretend it was just because she happened to have an extra cup.

 She didn’t see me the way most girls looked at me. Stared at me for my looks, butmented behind my back that it’s a pity that I’m a poor orphan.

 That is, until the day James Stone found me.

 I threw her away because as Virginia said, we weren’t from the same world. I couldn’t believe someone like her could want someone like me. It was just impossible.

 And because of that I couldn’t admit, in fact, I was too proud to admit that marrying her was above my status many times over–that I could merely be a toy her father bought her for her

 amusement.

 The whiskey burns as it goes down, but it doesn’t touch the pain in my chest.

 The DNA results swim in my vision, the numbers blurring together. But even through the alcohol and the grief, the knowledge that Scarlett doesn’t love me, that same feeling of something being off, the voice I’ve been trying so hard to silence in my head…roars back with a vicious edge.

 Scarlett isn’t that kind of woman. Though I kept her at a distance, it doesn’t mean I stopped paying attention to her.

 All those years together, all the times we spent together…they couldn’t be faked.

 In the time I’ve known her, I never saw her talking to a man other than her father and me, let

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 alone have an affair. So where would this Doriane from?

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 How would I have failed to notice him, when I knew Scarlett’s schedule at the back of my

 head?

 My insecurity, my male pride blinded me to her sincerity in the past, yes. It made me unable to believe someone of her league could truly love an orphan like me. But looking back now, Scarlett never gave me a reason to doubt her faithfulness, to question her fidelity.

 And her love, that needed no saying. Even when I tried to convince myself otherwise, I felt her love. I can’t deny it.

 It was the reason why I couldn’t bring myself to leave her even after knowing we didn’t belong together, that our worlds were different. That Virginia has been waiting for me to marry her

 for years.

 And Lily…she’s nothing like Dorian. Her eyes, her small habits, they all scream me.

 If I’m not Lily’s father…why would Scarlett let me spend time with her? Why risk me getting attached, risk Lily getting attached, risk theplications that woulde with a custody battle if the child isn’t mine?

 “f**k! The report is fake!”

 Violet Moon

 M

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Rift 59