Heartbrake (Demi Lovato/Santana Lopez)

Chapter 2

Santana stirred her second vodka tonic replaying all that had happen during the day knowing where her thoughts would eventually take her.  Her meeting had gone well with some prospective clients.  The account would take some work but she thought they had a good chance at getting the project and possibly some follow on work.  Her daydreaming was interrupted when the person sitting next to her on her flight back to LA tried to drum up a conversation.  Santana quickly put on her headphones, completely ignoring her neighbor.  She was not in the mood for idle chit-chat.  It had been a long 24 hours and the last thing she wanted was to engage in some stupid conversation that would end with some random guy trying to get her number.  Ugh, men!  She smirked as she thought to herself, “Women are no better.”

Santana started reminiscing on her life and how she had gotten to where she was today.

She and Quinn both were offered jobs in the LA office of the same consulting company after college.  They had moved out together to start their new chapters in life.  Although they learned a lot, working for that company had been brutal with tons of travel, late nights, and all-nighters.  They played hard, too, at the expense of getting sleep.

During their first year working at the firm, Rachel was offered a starring role in a TV show in LA and jumped at the opportunity.  There had always been some weird, unexplained chemistry between Berry and Quinn so it was not too surprising that they started dating not long after Rachel moved out.  Brittany ended up catching "LA fever" as well when M.I.T. started to bore her.  She got a job as a barista at Starbucks because she was over having to think.  Being in the same city once again, it was easy for her and Santana to fall back into a relationship.  The four amigas had fun together when they were able to see each other.  Life was good relatively speaking.  Santana was head over heels in love and so was Quinn.  They ended up having a double wedding.  The whole Glee club gang came out to celebrate.  That night was probably one of the best nights of Santana's life.  She was even able to limit her sarcasm and cynicism to a minimum and just enjoy basking in the glow of her new wife and all of their friends.  Santana was on cloud nine that day.

The natural progression happened.  A year later, Santana gave birth to twins and a month after that Quinn gave birth to a baby girl.  Two years later Brittany gave birth to baby girl and shortly thereafter Rachel gave birth to a baby boy.  The four amigas couldn’t have timed things better.  They were godparents to each other's kids.  Playdates were so easy because the kids were similar ages and all of them seemed to get along together.

Shortly after Gabby was born, Santana’s Aunt Anita died.  She and Santana were close and she had no kids of her own, so Aunt Anita left the majority of her estate to Santana.  Quinn and Santana both were tired of funding Partners and kissing ass in their current companies.  They were constantly discussing plans to break out on their own.  With the money from the inheritance and Quinn and Rachel’s savings, Santana and Quinn started Lopez Fabray Consulting, LLC.  They were able to convince several of their friends and co-workers to join as well.  The two of them poured blood, sweat, and tears into the company to get it off the ground.  After a rocky first year, they finally got some traction and started showing a small profit.  By their third year, they were getting a lot of recognition as an up and coming company to watch which helped bring more and more project work in.  The company had grown to over 100 people.

All should have been great – the perfect wife, the perfect family, the perfect job – but things came crashing down - hard.  Brittany suffered post-partum depression after the birth of Gabby which was not diagnosed until she had completely spiraled out of control.  Santana was not home enough to really notice and what little time she had, she tried to spend with her kids.  Brittany and her had occasional “adult” time but most of the time Brittany was sad, angry, or just too tired.  Their sex life suffered which only drove Santana to work more.  She had to get a release somewhere.  With Santana around even less, Brittany turned to self-medicating which led to even harder substances.   Under normal circumstances, Santana would have noticed but she just wasn’t present enough to really to recognize the change in Brittany.  To Santana, Brittany was just exhausted from trying to raise 3 kids which was completely understandable.  She just figured that things would get back to normal when the kids got a little older.

It all came to a head one night when Santana was out of town for work.  She got a call that evening from an officer.  Brittany had been arrested in a sketchy part of town for buying drugs from an undercover cop.  To makes matters worse, she had left the kids in the car while she was in the alley trying to make a deal so she was also charged with 3 counts of endangerment of a minor.  She was arrested on the spot and CPS was called in to take the kids.  Thankfully, CPS released the kids to Quinn and Rachel due to legal documents that were drawn up between Santana, Brittany, Quinn and Rachel that allowed them to be caretakers for each other’s children in case of an emergency.  Never did Santana think she would be dealing with this kind of an emergency.  The kids were pretty traumatized but Aunt Quinn got to them quickly and brought them to her house.

Santana was devastated.  She was so worried about her kids and Brittany and felt powerless as she wasn’t where she could get to them quickly.  She couldn’t get a flight back until the next morning.  She was exhausted as she had gotten zero sleep and had been thinking about all of the scenarios that could have happen.  As soon as she got in, she headed to Quinn and Rachel’s to check on the kids and wrap them in her arms.  They were crying and not understanding all that had happened.  When they settled down, Santana headed to the station to check on Brittany.

It was there that she was dealt the final blow.  Brittany had been cheating with her with a guy and not just any guy, but one that was a drug dealer.  She cut a plea bargain with the prosecutor to reduce her sentence by giving information about him and his contacts but that also meant exposing her transgressions.  Santana's whole world crumbled around her.   How in the fuck had this happened?  God forbid she be happy for any extended time.  Karma is a bitch.  All shit she had done and said to people in her lifetime was finally catching up with her.

Brittany ended up serving time in a minimum security prison.  Santana had tried to visit but after the first time, it was just too much.  Brittany had changed.  She had put their kids in danger.  She had cheated on her.  That trust was broken and it didn't matter that Brittany was sick.  Sure, Santana still loved her, but the thought of Brittany and that guy made Santana want to puke.  And, if that guy had laid a finger on their kids, Santana would have been the one in jail.  It was all too much to process.  Her true love had shredded her heart so deeply that Santana packed away those pieces so deep that no one would ever find them again. 

The only silver lining in all of this was that they let Quinn and Rachel foster the kids while Santana dealt with the CPS red tape and the mess of the situation.  Unfortunately, CPS wouldn’t give the kids back to Santana outright.  They wanted to assess whether or not Santana was a good mother.  Santana jumped through all the required hoops.  Several lawyers and thousands of dollars later, she got her kids back.  Santana was awarded "temporary" full custody with the understanding that when Brittany was released from jail and could show that she was clean and sober and was employed for 6 months, she could petition the state for joint custody.  That scared the crap out of Santana.  Gabby was too young to really remember that night, but the twins remembered.  They would ask questions and Santana would try her best to divert the conversation to another topic.  She couldn’t, however, avoid the question "Where is Mommy?" to which Santana typically answered that she had gone on a long trip.  Eventually the questions subsided.  Santana had hired 2 nannies who were students at UCLA to help with the kids in the mornings and the evenings.  The kids loved them and soon their memories of that day were replaced with more happy ones.  Santana was scared shitless that Brittany would come back into their lives and ruin that.

A tear rolled down Santana's check as she waved her empty vodka tonic glass at the stewardess.  Two more vodka tonics later, she de-boarded the plane and caught a taxi home.  She fucking hated travelling.