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resolved.”
    “When’s the wedding?” I asked.
    He smiled and I wanted to knock every pretentious tooth out of his mouth. “Soon,” he replied.
    I stared at him for a second and debated whether to say anything or not. Fuck it. He deserved to know. “Quick warning for you, buddy. You’d better put a lock on that cheating snatch of yours and throw away the key. Otherwise it’s going to be a long hard road for you.” I stepped away from the door and started down the stairs. When I reached the bottom, I turned back and said, “Don’t bother telling your woman I stopped by.” My heart was pounding so hard I could hear the whoosh of it in my ears. The entire drive home, I kept thinking, she played me . Never again would I let a woman play me the way Isabella did…never.

Chapter Three
    Isabella
    ‡
    Three months later
    “I t’s time,” Sally declared from my bedroom doorway.
    “No, it’s not.” I had been lying in bed for the past hour listening to Amy Winehouse and trying not to throw up…In and out, in and out, I breathed. Brutus, who was parked on the bed next to me, stared at Sally.
    “Yes. It. Is. And you know it. In fact, if you ask me, it is way past time,” she dryly stated.
    “Funny, I don’t recall asking you.”
    “Has the nausea gone away, yet? No. It has only gotten worse, correct?” I blinked at her. “You are correct, Sally,” she answered for me. Back to Black came on and I turned it up, just to tweak her. “It’s so past time, Izzy, that I’m contemplating calling your uncle and having a chat with him!” she shouted over the music.
    This got my attention. I turned down the music and glared at her. “You wouldn’t dare.”
    “Izzy, you have to do this.” Her pleading tone made my eyes well. I knew what I had to do. I just didn’t want to. I could see the cogs in her brain turning as she eyed me from across the room. “You know, you could actually be causing irreparable damage by waiting so long. Is that what you want?”
    I had been thinking along those same lines for the past few days. Damn! I let out a deep sigh and she knew she had me. “This is the easy part,” she assured, as if she’d done it before. “The hard part comes much later.” Nodding my head in consent, she walked over and held out her hand. I took it and allowed her to slowly pulled me to a sitting position and help me off the bed. As soon as she wrapped her arms around me, I broke into deep wracking sobs. Brutus whined and licked the back of my left knee. He hated when Sally and I were sad. I stroked my fingers through his thick coat to let him know I was okay.
    Less than a month after my amazing night with Dillon, I missed my period. At first, I didn’t tell anyone. I had missed my period before when I had been under a lot of stress, and I most definitely was stressed. Jimmy had been pestering me to get back together, the bar had been slammed and bills were piling up. You name it, I was stressed about it. When it didn’t appear by month two, I knew… However, I buried my head in the sand and pretended it wasn’t so. When it failed to make its third appearance, I panicked and told Sally. That was four days ago.
    “I’m scared, Sal.”
    “I know you are honey, but you have to do this.” She led me to the bathroom and held out the stick. “I opened it for you. Now, all you have to do is pee on it.”
    The whole process was awful. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to have children. I did. I just didn’t want to do it alone. I wanted a husband. I wanted someone who would love me and our child unconditionally… someone who would give our children all the things I never had, such as stability and structure. After what felt like an hour or three, the timer went off.
    “You look,” I whispered. She stared down at the test and paused for a beat before looking back up at me. Her facial expression said it all. I’m pregnant . Bowing my head, I sobbed into my hands. She wrapped me in her arms and let me