But that didn’t mean that the road from then to now hadn’t been tough.
Made tougher by Joey not pulling his weight.
I often asked myself what the hell I was thinking when I gave him a second chance.
Truthfully, I should’ve listened to my gut and my family and not given in.
But he’d begged and pleaded, and I’d given in.
Mostly because all of our finances were now combined, since we were supposed to get married this fall. We shared bank accounts. We shared cars. We shared everything, because we’d been together for so damn long that we’d probably be considered common law married. I’d refer to him as my husband occasionally, but I had been rethinking this whole idea of getting married.
To make matters worse, along with the tear from hell, I also suffered from postpartum depression.
At least, I’d decided that was what it was.
My mental health could very well be because my fiancé was an asshole and treated me and his son like shit.
From the moment I moved back in with Holt, he’d turned into a different person.
Gone was the sweet guy that I’d thought I had before we’d broken it off about two days before I delivered the baby.
In his place was a man that I didn’t know.
Joey didn’t cheat anymore.
He never left the house to be able to cheat.
One would think that was a good thing, right?
Wrong.
Joey worked from home as a financial planner from nine in the morning to five in the evening.
Once he was done “working,” he immediately moved to gamer mode and started playing with his friends online.
He played in tournaments, and when he wasn’t playing in tournaments, he was ‘practicing.’ And when he wasn’t doing that, he was sleeping.
Meanwhile, I also worked, though in the evenings.
And I had to leave the house because Joey was so damn loud when he gamed.
So I had to take my sleeping child to a coffee shop while I caught up on work for hours and hours.
And I was just…done.
I needed help, and that was why I was going to the doctor’s office today.
“I’m fucking busy, Baker.”
The way he said “Baker” made me want to scream.
Like a curse word, but worse.
“I know you are, but it’ll only be ten minutes, max. And I need to wash up because the doctor will be checking out my downstairs area,” I replied, hoping that for just once, he’d give in without making this a fight.
Which, of course, he didn’t.
So I had to take Holt into the bathroom with me and stick him in the bouncer right outside of the shower door.
