There's Snow Place Like Home For The Holidays

Homecoming

     Win was exhausted. The last few months had been hell. He had known that his marriage to Lovely was more a sham than a reality, but he'd still held on to this hope that he could fix it and they could go back to the beginning and start over. The very public cheating scandal had destroyed that and ripped the barely there veil of pretending everything was perfectly fine to shreds.

     He had barely put two feet in university before he was headhunted by a modeling agency. His mother had told him not to go, but he thought a little side money wouldn't hurt. He never expected to blow up and become the next face of the entertainment industry like he had. And he had enjoyed the spotlight when he'd had it, but he'd known even when he started that he wouldn't last long in that life. It was fun while it lasted, but it had never been his endgame.

     When he'd met Lovely, he had been in the industry for 5 years and she'd only just begun. Her eyes were still fresh and whole and hadn't gone star-crossed like Win had seen so many others go. Or at least that was the impression she had given Win. She was beautiful, kind, and magnetic. He couldn't resist the pull she had, and he'd fallen for her.

     Their romance was a whirlwind, and they were married before they even officially announced they were dating. Her career skyrocketed right after the marriage, and between the two's hectic schedules, they had a hard time finding time for each other. It didn't take long for the cracks to show.

     Win had a stronger following and Lovely was jealous. Win started to pull back on some of his projects because he wanted to preserve the relationship, but it was never enough. And then she'd pulled the rug out from under him when he found out she had scheduled an appointment for an abortion for a child he didn't even know she was pregnant with.

     He'd done everything he could. He begged, he pleaded for her to keep their child, and she refused. She said she didn't want to risk her career by being an actress and having to be a mom, too. Win told her he would retire and raise their child as a stay at home dad. That way Lovely could pursue her career freely without the restraints of motherhood. She finally agreed, and he had hoped that when their child was born and Lovely saw her, it would bring them closer as a family.

     His life was made when Tess was born. He didn't miss the spotlight or the shutter of the cameras. His life was whole in the sunshine smiles and smitten giggles of his little girl. He did everything he could to keep Lovely there, to get her to embrace the warmth of their family, but she only faded more and more from them over time. It was another crack that would have been revealed if they had not gotten married so quick and learned that their desires in life had always been different. Their endgame goals could not co-exist. Win had always wanted a family, while Lovely had only ever wanted fame and fortune. They had never had a foundation strong enough to build a family in the first place.

     A revelation that came crashing down on him in full force as one affair was revealed and then like an automatic weapon another affair, and then another affair, and then another affair came down around him in just a matter of weeks, until it was no longer surprising to him to hear of just how often and how completely she had betrayed him. And then she turned around and publicly outed him.

     He didn't care that people knew he was bisexual, that never bothered him. It was the fact that it's his sexuality and she took his personal rights away by outing him publicly like that. He shouldn't have been surprised she'd done it, after everything else at that point, between deciding to abort their child without even talking to him first, to having these massive affairs and now outing him to gain some sort of sympathy for her actions.

     Bisexual or not, a proclivity towards men or not, he had never, not even once, thought about cheating on Lovely. So her plea that his sexuality had any weight on her reasonings behind cheating on him had been utter bullshit and they both knew it. He wouldn't have even made a public statement about it if he wasn't afraid the courts would use his supposed cheating against him in the custody battle for his daughter. Win knew that the courts almost always ruled in the mother's favor, so he had to make sure he was squeaky clean to have a chance at keeping his daughter.