A Wife To The SEALs

I sat in what appeared to be a board room. Well, that is what the sign on the door said as we entered. In had my drink in hand, then I heard my phone chime. I was about to look at it, but then the receptionist came to my side.

“Take as long as you like, just leave the drink and the elevator will take you to the ground floor. Buena suerte, Maite.”

Then she kissed me on the cheek, I was taken aback by her kindness. I’d done nothing to deserve it, but I needed it more than she’d ever know. I hadn’t slept all night because I was nervous about the meeting. I'd spent more time getting ready and preparing myself mentally for being here today than I should have, and in the space of a few seconds I’d been made to feel so insignificant and as if my one wish, to be with my babies, was something I’d given up the right to as soon as I'd left them in Rick’s building.

I made a note to find out her name and somehow pay her back for her kindness. There was only one thing I did well, one skill I was proud of, and that was cooking. I would make her a Tinga de Pollo once I got back home and bring it to her the next day. I didn’t have much money, but I knew how to cook. It was something personal, so I hoped she would appreciate it more than if I’d bought her a donut or something.

My eyes darted to my phone where I noticed a message from Rick.

Meet me in Starbucks, 555 W 5th St in twenty. Rick

I used to hate his impersonal messages, they always felt as if they were commanding me to do something. No questions asked: Rick calls, and you go running. I hated his attitude at times. That’s the crazy thing about being in love. Sometimes I would think of it as being so s*xy, I would be like, Oh, how I love how he takes charge! Now the very thing I had deemed as s*xy was just plain rude. We weren’t together anymore, so I didn’t have to accept it.

Yet, as much as I was telling myself that, realistically I was kidding myself. I had to be on his good side. He had my kids.

I quickly checked to see if I could make it there in twenty minutes. I could be there in fifteen minutes if I took a taxi and half-an-hour if I walked. Well, I didn't have the money or luxury of taking a taxi, so he would have to wait.

The almighty Rick Steele could wait for a while. I'd done the same thing when he walked out of the door and left me, like a scared mouse. He ran away without having the decency to say goodbye. The woman whose heart he’d broken had to remain in this building and not let him know that after all this time I was still hurting after the way he treated me. He didn’t deserve to know that even after all he did, seeing him right now made me weak at the knees. No. I would do the same to him as he’d done to me. I’ll make him wait and suffer, not knowing if I was going to turn up, or if he would ever see my face again. I would give him a taste of his own medicine.

All the hurt and pain of the past rushed through me and I decided I wouldn’t just stay here for another twenty, but I would stretch it to thirty minutes. I kept dismissing it, thinking I could leave, I could face him. As soon as I stood up, I found the tears I’d held back so I needed to calm down and focus on the twins. I couldn’t break down in front of him, I wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry. He didn’t deserve anything but pain from me. He was my only ticket to getting them back. My babies were the only thing worth living for, I had nothing else, and going back home to Mexico wasn't an option if I wanted to live. My Uncle would kill me in a heartbeat if I showed up back there.

I had to compose myself and make sure that I put everything in perspective. There was too much to lose by blowing Rick off and not showing my face. Something I couldn’t afford to do, even if the stubborn part of me wanted nothing more.

* * *

My heart was beating rapidly and I was uncontrollably sweating. I’d decided to wait thirty minutes, but ended up staying a lot longer than that. I was kidding myself. This was all b*llsh*t. I wasn’t over Rick. We’d been together for three years. Then one day he just up and left with no explanation. He left some cash on the bedside table, and took his things from our one-bedroom apartment.

Now my ex and kids were living with his fiancée, Katie. Rick had moved on, and not only did he have kids with me, but her too.

Every cloud has a silver lining and that saying fell true when I was six months pregnant and I couldn’t work as a stripper anymore, let alone have any other job in the club. Even being a cleaner wasn’t an option at that point. A girl in the strip club I used to work in was obsessed with social media, so she was able to figure out where they lived. She claimed everyone who posted about their lives left a window for stalkers. They wanted all details to be known about them. I didn't know if it was to gloat or for others to know their every movement.

Rick was a triplet and considered himself to be the eldest. He had two brothers, Stan and Pete. I’d met them a few times, but I wouldn’t say that all three of us were friends, exactly. They may have been triplets, but they were completely different personality wise.

Rick was the strict one out of the three. It was probably the reason why they looked up to him. Pete was the carefree one, the one Rick claimed would never settle down, and Stan was the nerd who spent way too much time on the computer. Rick prided himself on being the one that held them together, but behind closed doors he was a wounded SEAL. I turned a blind eye to his drinking and mood swings. When I was pregnant, I spent more time thinking about why he left, and the fact that as much as I painted this picture of us being so happy, realistically we weren’t. We were two people together trying to get over their painful pasts.

After I found out I was pregnant and needed to find Rick, I discovered that Pete loved to post on social media nearly every single day. Sometimes two or three times a day. It was strange, because the little time we spent together, I never thought of him as that type of guy, but then I remembered the girl telling me that you don’t really know someone until you've seen them on social media.

Pete gave me an opportunity to turn into a stalker, and it didn't take long to figure out where they lived, because I had nothing better to do.

I couldn’t strip and I took on odd jobs because I needed the money seeing as I was about to have an extra mouth to feed, or so I thought at the time. I never knew I was carrying twins. I had no idea how I was going to do it. I began to panic, because I knew the odd cleaning job wouldn’t be an option and I had no idea how I was going to feed myself, let alone my baby.

I was growing bigger, with no medical insurance. I knew the only trip I would be making to the doctor was when I was ready to give birth.

The girls had got together to help with the Silver health insurance plan. It meant that the only thing I would be seeing a doc for was to give birth. I avoided any visit because I didn’t want the cost to go up. I promised to pay them back, but they knew as well as I did that there was no way I was going to be able to do that. I didn't have the money, but they felt like crap knowing what Rick had done to me., even though it was never their fault. Once a guy was rough in one way or another, we all went out of our way to help each other. We knew girls like us didn’t get much in life, we’d all come from rough backgrounds, so we made ourselves a family of misfits. It was rare that one of us was lucky and we got out of the lifestyle. I thought, for just a moment, that I was one of those girls. After he left and I could no longer work, I remembered his angry mood swings, the drinking binges we would go on together. There was nothing romantic or pretty about our relationship, but at the time it felt as if it was everything. As if someone really saw me, and wanted to be with me. When you have nothing and someone pays you some attention, it feels like everything. Rick did back then, and he knew it. That was the part that hurt the most.

I tried to put those feelings aside as I reached the Starbucks and saw him sitting and waiting for me.

Forty-five minutes late.

Some part of me hoped he would leave and I wouldn’t have to face him. I’d sat in the boardroom thinking I was ready to face him, but who was I kidding? There were too many mixed feelings to dismiss in a few years, let alone minutes.

“You’re late,” Rick said to the table, without facing me. The moment I walked in he turned his head away from me, his eyes on the table, as if he was more nervous than I.

“You’re lucky I came. I so-o-o didn’t want to, Rick. I so…” I stuttered trying to get the words out as all my emotions flushed out of me.

He put his hand on mine as he stood up, this time removing his sunglasses and looking directly at me. I could have sunk into his arms as all the old feelings, the good ones, the ones I’d tried to keep under lock and key, came to the surface. I didn’t know who I hated more, him or myself, for making me feel this way. I should hate him. No, I did hate him. I was getting confused, thinking I felt something for this man. No nothing. I had to remember how he abandoned me. It had to be in the forefront of my mind, otherwise I would regret coming, I would think of myself as weak and if I was weak then there was no way that I was going to get my kids back.

Never.

I should want to stay as far away from him as possible, but I couldn’t and I had to remember that. I had to focus on only them. Nothing more. Definitely not him. He wasn’t worth it.

“I know. I deserve to wait for an eternity, but we have to do this. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have bothered sending you the message.”

He said it so casually that it annoyed me, so I slapped him as hard as I could, but it probably just grazed his face. He was so big, whereas I was so small, and my hand hurt a lot more by giving him the slap than the pain I intended to inflict on him.

He rubbed his cheek to confirm what I’d already suspected. The slap had done nothing to him.

“I deserved that.”

So I did it again, hoping this time to make an impact on him. Just a little of the pain and fear of having to go back home to Mexico I’d been carrying around with me since he left.

Did it make me feel better? Not really, because everyone was looking at us. I was waiting for him to react to it, but he only looked at me, a tear welling up in his eye. Seeing it brought back the memories of us being together. The times he would be crying in my arms as he talked about the death of both his parents.

I s*ck*d in a breath then slumped down. He shifted to the side, out of my field of vision. I didn’t know where he was going, but he returned a few minutes later, after I’d caught my breath and tried to calm down, and he was holding a hot chocolate with marshmallows on top. The same gift he used to offer, which always made me smile, as we talked about our painful pasts. This time I would drink it, but I wouldn't smile. I wanted to keep hitting him. I’d never slapped anyone in my life, but I didn’t hesitate to do it one more time, before he sat.

“You left me. You didn’t even say goodbye. You were gone. Just like that.” The words were rushing out of my mouth like hot air as he pushed the hot chocolate closer to me.

Did he really think it would make me feel better? I would cry. Smile. Then, we would talk about the missing years? He simply nodded and his silence angered me even more.

“I was weak and a coward. I wasn’t in a good place, but that’s no excuse for how I treated you. A slap is nothing compared to what I deserved for my cowardice.”

There were times where I’d sat and rehearsed the words I would say to him. One time, it resulted in me learning some killer moves, as if I was one of Charlie's Angels and I knew kung-fu. I would act like some ninja or something and I would kick him and punch him until he was black and blue, then I would walk away with a smile on my face, knowing the pain I'd inflicted on him was enough to bring my broken heart some semblance of satisfaction. The disappointment of knowing the slaps I’d given him were nothing in comparison to the way he made me feel back then, and even worse now, gnawed at me. He’d hurt me, broke my heart, a pain which I'd experienced once before when I was fifteen and my parents died.

I snatched my hand away from his. He had no f*ck*ng right to touch me.

“Don’t touch me. If it wasn’t for Kylie’s obsession with social media and Pete posting about your club and your lifestyle, then I wouldn't have figured out where you lived. I didn't even know I was pregnant. You left and who knows what would have happened to the twins back then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I was desperate. I didn’t know I was pregnant when you left, and imagine the shock when I did find out that I was carrying not one baby, but two.”

I paused for a second, trying to catch my breath. I shut my eyes and tried to explain to him exactly what had happened in the past.

“I didn't know what to do. This wasn’t entirely true…I could have had a termation. The girls had them all the time. I was no stranger to witnessing them, but the difference was that I saw what they became when they had them. It was so ugly. Numb. Dead inside. Alcoholics, or even worse, they became hooked on drugs to ease the pain. Not knowing what day or even month we were in. Most of the time they didn’t even care.”

He said nothing. He didn’t even look at me, but that didn't stop me from taking a sip of the hot chocolate and retelling the past.

“I waited for you, Rick. I f*ck*ng waited. I thought maybe you would realize the mistake you'd made and come back to me. Even when I hit four months, I didn’t give up. I kept waiting, living in some sick fantasy land, thinking that you would miss me, come back, and we would be one happy family. All you needed was time.”

Our eyes locked as if he'd woken from the place he went to for a few seconds. I remembered how much I used to love looking into his green eyes and finding myself lost in them. I hated myself even more now for feeling that way. I should hate him. I wanted to hate him. No, I needed to, for my own sanity. He’d done me wrong, and belonged to another. Whenever I drifted into the good memories of the past, I needed to be brought back to reality by the fact that he left me.

“I thought about it. I won’t deny that. I did for a long time, wonder about you. I knew that I needed to go back to find out if you were okay. It was the least I could do. I knew you were illegal and at any moment, you could get sent back. When I did have the guts to do it, I heard you left the club, a conversation in which I had with one of the girls who’d left the old club to join our new one. I just figured you’d moved on. She never said you were pregnant, and in all honesty I didn’t ask any questions. I was a f*ck*ng p*ssy, not asking for details to make myself feel better. I knew that if you weren’t all right then I was responsible for it. A responsibility that I wasn’t willing to own.”

He shocked me, because I never knew or even thought that he would bother to think of me from the moment he left.

“You checked up on me?”

He nodded, not saying anything more as I replayed his words in my mind. He said he asked casually about me, that wasn’t the same thing as checking up on me.

I sipped on my chocolate, while he continued to stare at the table. I didn't know what to say to him. I felt as if I'd said enough, and if he apologized a thousand times, it wouldn’t make up for what he did.

“I thought you did it to punish me,” he practically whispered.

“What?”

I didn’t understand what he meant by that. What did I do in all this that was so wrong?

“I assumed you had some man in Mexico, or even here. So you had the kids and decided to dump them on me as some form of punishment for leaving. But it didn’t take long for me to figure out you hadn’t left them because you were riding into the sunset with someone, you’d left them because you were in trouble. I should have done something, anything, but I somehow decided the best thing I could do to help you was to look after our kids.”

I hated the idea of him knowing me so well, but there was no denying we had a past filled not only with the painful memory of him leaving, but the good times too.

“Yeah, immigration just seemed to be everywhere and I thought it was a matter of time before they caught up with me. I was lucky that the girls pitched in to help pay for their delivery. Otherwise, who knows what would have happened?”

He punched his legs, and I looked up, startled, and noticed a tear had swelled up in his eye. Rick wasn't a man for showing any emotion, especially in public. Maybe this really was a different Rick and the one who’d left me behind was under lock and key.

“F*ck! I’m so sorry, please forgive me…”

He pleaded as he went on bended knees next to me. I couldn’t even look at him as he took my hands and continued to plead with me. The idea of him being on his knees and everyone watching should have given me pleasure, as he appeared to feel like sh*t about the past. He should.

“I only found out they were twins when I went into premature labor. I’d never had a hospital visit or check-up. All I knew was that the price would be more to have them, but I had no choice.”

I started to cry, unable to fight the tears any longer as I started talking about the time I decided to leave my babies. The hardest decision of my life.

“I knew where you lived. I even followed Pete home once when I was six months pregnant. I thought about telling him then. I toyed with what to do every single day. Then, they came early. As soon as I left the hospital, I knew I couldn’t stay with Lara. Not indefinitely. I had no income. Nothing.

It felt stupid to even think about adoption, especially when I knew where you lived.”

There are so many options out there, but they’re all restricted to people who are legal residents of the country. I didn’t want my kids being brought up in a system where they would be known as the kids dumped at the hospital or in trash cans. Girls I’d worked with had done that, I saw their misery at the idea of having such a painful decision to make. They would go for backstreet abortions, which lead to some of them being unable to work again, or they would have the baby and as a result of their decisions, the baby would be deformed. They had to live with the painful decision they had made. Most of them couldn’t cope with a baby, let alone one with special needs.

I could go on to tell him all the things that happened and what was going through my mind in detail, but we weren’t friends. He’d hurt me, led me to desperation.

“Every day was painful. Lara said she thought I was suffering from Postpartum Depression. Everything that should happen naturally as a new mother didn’t happen for me. It was as if I was missing the maternal instinct. I felt like a failure, because I couldn’t produce milk and I didn’t go out anymore. We lived in a one-bedroom apartment with her daughter, and I was on her sofa with not one child, but two. Of course I was f*ck*ng depressed. The mere thought of going out would send me into a panic attack thinking that immigration would see me and take me away from those babies and sign my death warrant by sending me back over the border. I was living in a f*ck*ng nightmare. You wanted to know the past? Let’s talk,” I said coldly as I took back my hands.

He wiped at the tears now falling from his eyes and regained composure in his chair.

We said nothing. I sipped on my chocolate and he didn’t move an inch. Anger and hurt was too fresh in my mind. I couldn’t sit and have small talk with him. I had to leave. I was just about to stand up and do so, the remains of my hot chocolate still burning in my throat, but then he spoke.

“Lara,” he chuckled lightly. “Wow, how’s she doing? And the little one?”

“Fine.”

This wasn’t a f*ck*ng reunion and I wasn’t about to start sharing stories with him. I shouldn’t have come, this was a mistake. A big f*ck*ng mistake. Like the time I fell in love with Rick Steele.

“I know you hate me. And I don’t blame you. But I think we can make this work for us all. I've really been trying with the twins. To raise them, and do right not only by them, but by you too.”

Mierda!

Was he expecting me to get down on my knees and praise him?

“This was a mistake!” I shot up.

He was trying to be nice, but seeing him again after over two years… I thought I would have calmed down. Then again, I was doing a lot better than before. I couldn't imagine seeing and speaking to him like this if I’d had the balls to confront him back when I found out where they’d lived.

“I just want to make things right. I can’t undo the past, but I can make the future better. I know some guys and well, my wedding’s in less than a few days time. And Pete just renovated a house, which he’s looking to sell. We were thinking of introducing the guys to you and then…well, we’ll see how it goes.”

He stood up next to me, his words were coming out so fast, and we both knew that if he didn’t explain himself soon, I would be gone. Because he couldn’t have just said what I’d thought he’d said.

“You want to pimp me out to your friends and in return, you’ll let me see my kids?”

He leaned forward and spoke quietly, while motioning for me to sit down.

“Not like that. You’re illegal, and this way—if you get married—it could be a good way for you to stay here and be part of their lives.”

I sat down, thinking my English is really going bad, because I just don’t understand a word coming out of his mouth.

“We?”

“Yes, Katie and I.”

His wife-to-be. I wasn’t ready for jealousy to creep into my mind, and he must have seen it, too, because he took my hand.

I shoved him away and spat, “Well thank you and your new wife-to-be for your generous offer, but I was a stripper, not a prostitute, so I’ll kindly decline.”

It was a stupid thing to say, because we both knew when a client paid top dollar for a private show, it didn’t mean I was just stripping, I used to do a lot more than that before we got together. He jumped up, shaking his head in a panic.

“No. You have it all wrong. I don’t mean like that. Of course, I don’t think of you like that. Look!” Once again, he was touching me, so I snatched my shoulder away from him, stopping only once I’d reached the door, ready to leave him.

“Come to the wedding. Meet the guys. Move into the house whenever you want. Then we can see how things go. If it doesn’t work out, we’ll come up with another solution. I mean, I want the kids to know who you are. You’re their mom and you hold a special place in their hearts.”

His eyes were pleading with me, just as they had done so many times in the past. I shoved past him to open the door. I didn’t reply, I just ran in the direction I had come from. It didn’t matter if I was running to Lara’s or not, I just knew I had to get as far away from him as possible. Once I was far enough, I looked at my phone, it’d been beeping like crazy as I ran.

The address is 8676 Melvin Ave, Northridge. As I said, stay at the house. Come to the wedding. The invitation is at the house. See how it goes. I want you to be part of our kids lives.

I was just about to shove the phone in my pocket, but I decided to reply to him anyway.

It hurts too much Rick. You keep saying our kids' lives. But not me.

I had to tell him the truth. I would be lying to him and myself if I didn’t admit that knowing he wasn’t part of the equation was the part that was hurting the most.

I’d moved on.

I really had.

Until, I saw him once again and all those feelings of the past came flooding back in.

He wasn’t mine.

I had to flush them out. I couldn’t break down again, because if I did, not only would I lose myself again, but my kids too. This time not for a while, but for good.

It had been another busy day in court and I needed a drink. A stiff one to take away the pain and sorrow of not seeing my kids. I took early retirement from the Navy a broken man, and instead of being treated like a fucking hero, I was treated like someone who had a disease, just because I couldn’t keep up the fight anymore. I wanted to spend time with my kids and not behave like an animal as I’d been accused of by my ex. To be fair, that’s exactly how I’d behaved the last time I came home. I made the change for them, gave up my career for them, but the moment I came home, I found out I was too late. Everything had changed, and she wasn’t my wife anymore. I didn’t even have a place to live with them as a family.

“I’m coming!” I grumbled at my phone, which rang another time. By the time I found the damn thing it’d already switched to voicemail.

It was Pete; suggesting we meet for a drink. We’d worked on the same construction site in San Diego, but I’d been let go, because