Sweet Torment/A Jordan Knight Fanfic (18+)✔️

32

Chapter Thirty-Two

SEVEN MONTHS LATER

"They look gorgeous," I giggled, holding up my drying nails that had been painted by a currently napping five-year-old.

"Oh, they really do. She's getting good at polishing," Kaylee said matter-of-factly.

Kevin walked into the room, glaring at both of us in jest as we laughed loudly. "Shh! Madi's sleeping! What time is her Christmas recital?" he asked for the tenth time.

"Six o'clock," we said in unison, and then we both giggled again.

"And when is she moving out?" he asked, jerking his thumb at me.

"Shut up," I said petulantly.

Kevin was fully healed after a long road of recovery, and they didn't really need me around anymore. They hadn't really needed me around since Kevin had been released from the hospital nearly six months earlier.

I always worried Kevin's ribbing had some element of truth in it, though Kaylee assured me it didn't. They loved having me around as much as I loved being with them, but it was time to move out of Santa Clarita and head back to the city that had captured my heart in so many ways.

I'd promised myself I'd assert my independence, yet I was relying on my sister and my niece to help redirect my focus from my brokenness. I was ready to be on my own and to pick up the pieces of the life I'd left behind when I'd walked out the doors of Knight Industries all those months earlier.

"This came for you," Kevin said, handing me a manila envelope.

Los Angeles Superior Court was emblazoned in the upper left-hand corner. Kevin went back to work stringing the Christmas tree with lights to surprise Madi when she woke up from her nap.

My first thought as I looked at the return address was that this was going to be my first Christmas without Charlie.

I headed to my bedroom. I needed privacy for this, because I knew what it was the very second I saw the return address.

I tore open the envelope and pulled out the paperwork. I read the words across the top of the first page: Judgment of Dissolution.

Tears burned my eyes. It was final. I was officially divorced. I was part of the awful statistic I'd heard that fifty percent of marriages end in divorce.

People say divorce is never easy, but ours had been.

Going to the courthouse and filing the paperwork had been a simple task.

It was the aftermath that was the hard part.

It was the heartbreak leading up to the moment I received that piece of mail that was the most difficult.

I stared at the paperwork as I allowed the memories I'd blocked since the night Charlie had found out about Jordan and me to seep back into my mind.

We'd been mostly happy. We'd met at a bar of all places. I'd gone for a night out with friends and ended up finding the man I'd eventually marry.

Dating Charlie had been one adventure after another, and that excitement was why I'd fallen in love with him. When the excitement stopped, so did the love.

I felt the loss of what we'd once had. I missed Charlie—or maybe the idea of Charlie. I mostly missed what we'd had when we'd been dating, back before the marriage that had ended up being just one huge disappointment.