Chapter 1

When the phone rang, Rachel expected the call to be from her best friend, Michaela Foster, calling to let her know where they were having dinner that evening.  Michaela had a knack for finding great restaurants off the beaten path.  Rachel’s stomach growled, and she unconsciously licked her lips as she thought about the last place Michaela found.  It was a little Japanese steak house that they had to drive on back roads for what seemed like hours before reaching.  Rachel had never had such a tender, juicy, and flavorful steak in her life.  She knew better than to think there was no way Michaela could find a place better than the last because Michaela always did—and she couldn’t wait to see what Michaela had found for tonight. 

“Hello?”  She answered the phone cheerily.

“Is this Rachel Kincaid?” asked the unfamiliar female voice.

Rachel hesitated.  “Yes, it is.  What can I do for you?”  

 “I think it’s more like what I can do for you.  Your boyfriend Steve hasn’t been faithful to you.”

After a moment of shocked silence, Rachel asked, “Is this a joke?”  Her mouth went dry, and she held her breath as her heartbeat pounded in her ears until the caller spoke again.

“No joke.  My name’s Sheila and I’m pregnant with his baby.  He and I have been seeing each other for four months.  As I understand it, I’m not the first he’s stepped out on you with either.”  The woman said with a smugness that made Rachel want to reach through the phone and choke her.

Rachel’s heart dropped, and her blood ran cold as the caller’s words sunk in.  She paced the living room in the house she shared with Steve, desperately trying to make sense of what was happening.  This can’t be happening, she thought frantically.  “I don’t believe you” was all she could say through clenched teeth.  She looked around at the photographs of her and Steve on the walls and shelves of the room.  They mocked her.  She closed her eyes tightly and sat on the couch.

“Whether you believe me or not is of no concern to me.  I thought you should know your boyfriend is going to be a father.”

“Why would you do this?”

“Why?  You live with him; I figure you should know.  Tell Steve I said this isn’t over, no matter how much he wants to deny this baby,” and the phone went silent.

As Rachel sat on the couch and stared at her phone in disbelief, memories of the times she suspected Steve was keeping things from her over the past few months ran through her mind.  Her vision blurred with tears as she recounted the times he silenced his ringing phone or when he would quickly hang up whenever she entered the room.  Then, there were the more frequent “business” dinners, and all the times he came home late from work.  Like a fool, she believed Steve’s reasonable explanations.  A buddy calling he did not want to talk to, she walked in at the natural end of his phone conversation, meetings with clients, and late nights at the office to get a project done.  With one phone call, all of those little suspicions twisted together to form an undeniable truth—Steve was cheating.  The chaotic wave of emotions made it hard for Rachel to breathe, as if they had taken on a physical presence and sat on her chest.  She looked up as she wiped away her tears and her eyes fixed on a framed photo on a shelf across the room.  She stood up and crossed the living room toward the picture of her and Steve that had been one of her favorites.  In it, she was sitting on his lap, his arms around her and both smiling into each other’s eyes.  She always thought the picture showed how much they loved each other.  Obviously, she was wrong.  She picked up the framed picture and let it fall to the hardwood floor.

As she stared at the shattered glass covered picture, seeing it for the lie it was, her phone rang.  Afraid it might be Sheila again, she hesitated to answer it until she looked at the display and saw Michaela’s number.

She took a deep breath and tried to answer the phone in a calm manner. 

“Hey, Michaela,” her voice broke as she tried to hold back tears.

“Rachel?  What is it?”

“The bastard’s cheating on me!” she screamed into the phone as her anger and frustration took control.

 “What?”  Michaela shrieked.  “Rachel, you’re at home, right?  Stay there.  I’m coming over.” 

Michaela arrived in a matter of minutes.  Rachel was on the couch, slumped over on her side, and crying into a throw pillow.  

“Rachel, I’m here.  Tell me what happened,” she said as she gently shook Rachel’s shoulder and sat down next to her friend.

“He cheated on me and got the woman pregnant.  She called and told me,” she said through sobs as she sat up and looked up at her friend.  “I can’t believe he cheated.”

Michaela moved the pillow, slid closer to her friend, and hugged her.

Rachel weakly returned the hug and then got up to get a tissue.  “It all happened so fast; I’m still trying to process everything.”  She calmed down enough to tell Michaela about the phone call.     

“I don’t even know what to say to that,” Michaela said in a barely audible voice when Rachel finished filling her in.  “I had a feeling this day was going to come.”

“Why do you say that?”  Rachel asked, her stomach clenching against the threat of more bad news.

“I saw Steve sucking face with a woman at Jack’s Steakhouse a few weeks ago.  I wanted to tell you, but he knew I’d tell you and got to you first.  I knew you finding out about him was going to be hard enough on its own.  I didn’t want to make it worse by putting you in the position of having to choose between believing me or believing him.  I’m sorry I didn’t tell you until now.”

The sharp sting of Michaela’s confession caused a new round of tears to well in Rachel’s eyes, but she willed them to stop because she understood the situation Michaela found herself in when she caught Steve.  Rachel admitted to herself that she probably would not have been quick to believe Michaela before this Sheila woman’s phone call.  Not that she had any reason to think Michaela would lie about something like that.

“It’s okay.  I’ve known you’ve had your doubts about him, even if I didn’t know the details.  That is the least of my worries right now.”

“Do you want to come to my house and talk?  Maybe take some time to get your thoughts together and figure out what you’re going to do before you talk to Steve?  He should be home soon, right?”  Michaela asked.

Rachel looked at the clock on the wall.  “Yeah, he’ll probably be home sometime in the next thirty minutes.  I think I should stay here and talk to him as soon as he gets here.”  At Michaela’s doubtful look, she said, “I can’t wait.  I need to look him in the eyes, so I know for sure.”

“I understand.  Do you want me to stay?”

“No.  Thank you for rushing over here; you’re a good friend.”

“Me?  I didn’t do anything,” Michaela shrugged.  “You’d do the same for me.  That’s what best friends are for, right?”

Rachel smiled slightly, “Right.”  She hugged Michaela.  “I’ll call you later.”

“Okay, but make sure you do,” Michaela said as she walked to the front door.  “I’m just a phone call away if you need me.” 

“I know, thank you,” Rachel said as she closed the door.  She leaned against the door as she tried to sort out the tangled mess of thoughts in her mind. 

When she walked toward the couch, Steve’s car pull into the driveway, and instantly her stomach knotted.  The fact he was home early barely registered with her.  She slowed her steps as she desperately tried to get her emotions under control in order to have a conversation with Steve that did not involve hysterical crying or yelling.  Deep breath, Rach.  Maybe there’s a perfectly logical explanation here.  She shut down the little voice in the back of her head that would argue that point.

“Hey, sweetie!  I saw Michaela leaving, and she didn’t look happy.  Is everything all right?”  Steve asked as he walked through the front door.  There was an uncertainty in his voice Rachel doubted had to do with anything other than Sheila.

Turning to face him from the center of the living room, Rachel tried to sound casual as she asked, “Who is Sheila and what does she think is not over?”  Her tone came out much shriller than she planned.

He stopped cold.  As she watched the color drain from his face, the small amount of doubt she clung to evaporated.  In that bloodless look, she saw the truth.  There would be no denials or attempts to make her think this was a misunderstanding.  The room started to spin, and she hurried to the couch before her knees gave out.    

Steve looked to have snapped himself out of his shock as he dropped his briefcase by the door and quickly walked to the couch and sat down next to Rachel.  He tried to put an arm around her shoulders, but she shrugged it away. 

“How could you?” she asked in a surprisingly calm voice.

“I…uh…I don’t know” he stammered.

She laughed bitterly.  “You cheat on me, got this woman pregnant, and you can’t even tell me why?”

“It wasn’t like that…”

“So, you didn’t cheat?  You didn’t get this woman pregnant?”  She asked as her anger and resentment overflowed.

“Well…” he said as he stood up, walked to the window, and stared outside.

With his back turned to her, her resolve to stay strong slipped a notch.  Anger, betrayal, and grief over the loss of what she thought she had with this man wrestled within her.  She stared at him, her heart breaking.  Despair and sadness won out over all of the conflicting emotions churning within her, and she took a deep breath as the resolve of her decision took hold.

“I’m sorry, Steve.  I can’t do this.  I can’t be with you knowing you’ve been with another during our relationship.  I have been faithful to you, and I deserve no less than the same in return.”  She stood and walked to their bedroom to begin the process of packing her things with quiet tears running down her cheeks.

As she placed her clothes in her suitcase, he came to stand in the doorway.  She refused to look at him and kept packing, hoping he could not see the tremor in her hands.

“What are you doing, Rachel?  You and I both know you’re not leaving me,” he said quietly.  “You can’t.  I love you.  I need you.”

“Yes, I am.  If you wanted me to stay, you should have kept it in your pants.  You don’t do this to someone you truly love, Steve.”

“Babe, I’m sorry.  Please don’t throw away all that we have together over this.  Sheila isn’t worth it.  She was a mistake and one I tried to end it with weeks ago.”

Rachel hesitated in her packing as the rawness in his voice pulled at her heart.  For a split second, she allowed herself to consider staying, but she snapped herself back to the task at hand.  “She says it’s not over.”

“I don’t care what she says.  Tell me what you need me to do to prevent you from walking out that door.  You’re my world, and I can’t bear to lose you.  Please, Rach.  I’ll do anything.”  She braced herself against the desperation in his voice.

“It’s too late for that Steve.”

He stalked toward her, placed a hand on her shoulder, and spun her around sharply.  “You will not leave me,” he said through gritted teeth.  At her startled look, he calmed a bit and let his hand drop from her shoulder.  “At least, not until we’ve talked about this,” he said, smoothing his hand over her shoulder.

“So, talk.  I’ll keep packing because there isn’t anything you can say to make this right.”  She turned back to packing her clothes; her hands fumbling to do the job quickly because the violence she saw in his eyes unnerved her.

 “This isn’t what you think it is.  There wasn’t anything with Sheila that warrants the end of our relationship, Rachel.  You’re overreacting.”

“Overreacting?  You can’t be serious?”  She spun around to face him.  

He held the gaze of her blue eyes almost as if he was trying to hypnotize her.  “There’s no reason we can’t work this out.  I understand you’re upset, but it’s not that big of a deal.”

She turned away from his intense green-eyed stare.  She recognized the look on his face as the one she saw whenever she had doubts about their relationship.  She walked around the bed to her dresser, grabbed an armful of clothes from one of the drawers, and returned to the bed.  She glanced at him as she put the clothes on the bed.

“No, Steve.  You got this woman pregnant, which means you weren’t practicing safe sex, or it went horribly wrong.  This means your cheating has put me at risk for who knows what.”  She said as she packed the clothes in her suitcase and made a mental note to make an appointment with her gynecologist.  “You’re going to be a father.  It’s bad enough you cheated, but to have a reminder of it every time I see the child…”  She trailed off with a helpless wave of her hands.  She tried to hold onto her anger to keep the sadness at bay long enough to gather some of her things and get away from him, but her grip was slipping.

When she turned her back on him to return to packing, he grabbed her by both shoulders and pushed her roughly into the hallway.  “You can’t leave—I won’t let you!” he yelled as he slammed the bedroom door shut behind him.

She gasped as the sudden change in his demeanor caused a shiver of panic to run through her.  Her heart raced, and her breath quickened as she backed against the wall and inched toward the living room, eyeing him cautiously.  She had never seen him like this.  He had never been this angry.  Worry and fear of what he might do consumed her and every instinct screamed she needed to get away before she found out.  She looked at his face, contorted with rage, and the urge to flee set her feet in motion.  She ran for the front door, but he caught her by her arm just as she reached the middle of the living room, and he flung her down.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion, as if it were someone else.  First, Rachel was running, with the front door—and safety—in sight and Steve close behind her.  Then, her forward momentum abruptly reversed as Steve grabbed her and flung her to the floor – on the glass coffee table that blocked her path.  She heard the glass break, gasped when the shards cut and scrape her skin like razor blades as she fell through the table, back first.  A long shard pierced her side clean through, and a blinding white light flashed behind her eyes as the pain exploded within her body.  The sticky warmth spread across her back, and her white t-shirt quickly turned crimson as the fibers soaked up the blood.  Steve stood over her with one fist balled and drawn back, and his expression clouded in a murderous rage.  Blackness claimed her.