Carter Maddox had once loved her past all reason.
He'd told her, more times than she could count:
"Erica is the most important person in my life. Anyone who makes you unhappy, even a little, I'll never let them get away with it."
And now here he was, laying down a threat like this to her, all to protect another woman and her child.
Tears rose in her eyes. Erica forced them down.
She stared at him.
"We were together five years. You said you'd marry me this fall. Carter, what was I ever to you?"
Carter lowered his lashes and wouldn't look at her.
"I'm sorry. Let's break up."
Break up?
The two words landed like a shove into an ice cellar, and Erica felt the blood in her whole body turn solid.
She fixed her eyes on the man she'd loved for five years, and the tears finally spilled over.
"Carter, do you have any conscience left?"
"Do you even remember? Junior year, you fell into the campus lake. I can't swim, and I jumped in after you without thinking twice. I spent three days in the ICU. The doctors said the cold did too much damage, that I'd never be able to have children. Have you forgotten all of that?"
His throat worked, but he said nothing.
"And your parents!" The tears wouldn't stop now. "The year they were in that car accident, who stayed at the hospital for a whole month without so much as changing out of her clothes? Your mother lost control of her bladder and bowels, and I was the one who cleaned her. Your father spiked a fever in the middle of the night. Where were you? You were pulling overtime at the office. I was the one being a good child in your place!"
She closed the distance between them, step by step.
"I gave you everything in me. I gave you the best years of my life. Carter, can you look me in the eye and say you did right by me?"
At last he raised his head and met her eyes.
"I know. Everything you've said, I know. I loved you too, Erica. I really did love you."
"Loved?" Erica let out a cold laugh.
"And now? What is this now?"
Carter drew a deep breath.
"Laura is… different. She's simple. She doesn't understand anything, like a blank sheet of paper. She isn't strong and independent the way you are. Without me, she can't survive."
He paused, and his voice dropped lower.
"But you're different. Without me, you'll still be just fine."
Erica stood frozen, as if he'd slapped her hard across the face.
She understood at last. Some people never intended to walk with you all the way to the end.
And she was nothing more than a side character in someone else's story.
Her lips trembled.
"So because I'm strong, I deserve to be betrayed? Because I'm independent, I deserve to be thrown away? Carter, what kind of garbage logic is that?"
Carter frowned, a trace of helplessness in his voice.
"Don't be like this. That's not what I meant."
"Then what did you mean?" Erica was nearly screaming now. "Say it! Tell me, where exactly do I fall short of her? Is it because she's younger and prettier than me? Or because she can give you children?"
The instant the words left her mouth, she froze herself.
Because she can give you children.
The sentence went in like a needle, straight into the softest place in her heart.
She thought of the afternoon she woke from the ICU.
Carter had held her hand, his eyes rimmed red, kissing her forehead again and again, saying:
"Ricky, you scared me half to death. Don't you ever do that again. I won't have you risking your life for me."
Later, when she found out she could never carry a child, she'd hidden on the hospital rooftop and cried the whole afternoon.
Carter had searched the entire building, and when he finally found her on the roof, he'd pulled her tight against him and said:
"It doesn't matter. We won't have children. Having you is enough. You're the most important family I'll ever have in this life."
And now?
Now he had his arm around another woman, one carrying his child.
And for her sake, he was threatening Erica, telling her they were through.
Erica felt her heart torn clean in two.
All at once she thought herself an utter fool.
She remembered last winter, one of Terence Donaldson's dinners, everyone crowded around a big shared meal.
Mavis James had raised her glass, grinning.
"Ricky and Carter are just meant for each other. I saw it back in high school! So when are you two getting married? I'm waiting to drink at the wedding!"
Terence had chimed in from the side.
"Exactly. If you two don't get married, none of us are ever going to believe in love again."
Carter had smiled then, draped an arm over her shoulders, dipped his head, and pressed a kiss to her forehead.
"Soon. Once I've got things settled at the company, I'll marry her this fall."
That night, home again, she'd been too happy to sleep, turning it over and over in her mind: where the wedding should be, what style of gown to choose, what color paper for the invitations.
She'd even gone to look at baby things. She knew she couldn't have her own, but she'd thought maybe they could adopt. Carter loved children so much, he'd surely make a wonderful father.
Thinking of it now, by then Carter was probably already making a baby with Laura.
Coaxing her with promises of marrying her in the fall, and turning around to marry someone else and have a child.
While she, like an idiot, had been kept completely in the dark.
"Terence and Mavis, they both knew, didn't they?"
Carter's eyes flickered.
"They…"
"They knew you were already married, didn't they?" Erica cut him off. "They watched me circle around you like a fool for two years, watched me eagerly planning our wedding, and not one of them said a single word to me."
The tears came again.
"I treated them as my best friends. This is how they treated me."
Erica started to laugh.
"Fine. If this is how all of you want to play it, then I'll go tell Laura right now that her husband has a girlfriend of five years on the side!"
"Erica!" Carter's face changed in an instant. He grabbed her arm, gripping hard enough to hurt. "Don't you dare!"
Just then a timid voice came from behind them.
"Carter… the two of you… you know each other?"
Both of them went rigid at the same moment.
