Plagiarized (14 page)

When I arrived back at my house, I stopped dead in my tracks at the sight of Tom’s car parked in the driveway. What the fuck was he doing at home during the middle of the day? He should be at work.

The only thing I could think of was that he was waiting for me, which made me nervous. I had left the house this morning, was it really just this morning? The day seemed so long already and it was only the early afternoon. Maybe he hadn’t stayed home all day? Maybe he had just come home early?

I let out a sigh as I opened the front door, trying to prepare myself for the confrontation that I knew was coming. I set my purse and keys down on the table in the foyer and called out to Tom, thinking I might as well face the inevitable.

“Tom,” I called out again. “Are you home?”

He came out of the den and looked a mess. I immediately noticed his lack of work clothes. He was wearing jeans and an old T-shirt, clothes he typically wore when he was doing work around the house, not something he’d wear in the middle of a workday on a Friday.

“Yes. I’m home.” His words were cold, almost emotionless, yet his eyes showed how he really felt.

“Are you feeling okay?” I asked him carefully.

“Not really, Sage.”

“What’s going on?” I offered him a smile, trying to seem attentive to him.

“Where were you today? I called the school and they said you weren’t in.”

I just looked at him, unable to speak. For the first time in as long as I could remember, I didn’t have a lie waiting for me at the end of my tongue. I had been completely blindsided by him. “I was out with Missy. I wasn’t feeling like being at work today; I needed to get my mind off things.”

“What kind of things?” he asked, almost as if he knew what to expect as the answer.

“What’s going on, Tom? You aren’t acting like yourself.” I wanted to get the topic off me.

“Do you remember what happened last night?”

I looked at him blankly. Was this a trick question? Of course, I remembered it. I was fucking there! I had come home and he was gone. Was he about to tell me he was having an affair? Was he about to admit to me that he had been cheating on me? I could already feel my blood boiling at just the anticipation of his admissions. I finally nodded.

“That was the beginning of our end,” he said wistfully.

“Our end?” What the fuck was he talking about? He really was about to confess to being unfaithful!

“Yes, my dear. Our end. The end of our marriage. A marriage cannot survive once there has been infidelity. It causes cracks in the foundation of a marriage. The kind of cracks that cannot be fixed. They’re the kind that spread out until the whole building crumbles.”

“Infidelity?” I asked in a high-pitched tone. At first, I thought he might’ve been talking about me, but I knew he couldn’t have been since I didn’t technically cheat on him the night before. I had come home and he was gone. He really was about to tell me he’d been having an affair! I wanted to yell and scream at him, but waited until after he confessed.

“Yes, infidelity. Didn’t you wonder who had left you those love notes? You shouldn’t have had to wonder for very long. One of the notes mentioned having a dick inside of you. Whose dick has been inside of you, Sage? The obviously writer of those notes should have been me, had you not been fucking anyone else. You should have only felt me inside of you. But you are fucking other people, aren’t you? Or else you would have immediately thanked me for the notes. You shouldn’t have even needed to question who had sent them.” I heard anger and sadness mixed in his tone.

I stared at him in disbelief. He had written the notes? What kind of fucked up game was this? I would have never thought it was him, but he was right. His dick should’ve been the only one inside me, as husband and wife.

“I thought someone was stalking me at school. I was scared and didn’t know who to turn to.” Lie.

“No, Sage. That isn’t true. I’ve suspected this for quite some time now. I’ve been told of things, of people you’ve been with. I just didn’t want to believe it. I’ve been shown proof, but turned a blind eye to it. I’ve tried to reconnect with you, but you don’t seem to want that. I don’t even know what it is you want anymore. So, that was my final test. Sending you notes that should have obviously been from me, waiting and waiting for you to say something about them. It was the push I needed to end things. You see, Sage, I have loved and worshipped you for so long that I was willing to overlook certain things. I was willing to overlook the occasional slipup as long as you were happy. But you aren’t happy. No matter what you have, you are never happy. You always want more. You will never be happy and satisfied to live with what I can give you. You’re only happy with the money, but nothing else. I can’t be
just
your bank account anymore. It was very hard for me to come to this realization, but now that I have, there’s no going back. This is over for me.”

“No,” I said softly, feeling the sting of tears in my eyes, actual real tears.

“Don’t worry, Sage. You’ll receive a nice sum of money in the divorce. And I’ll give you the house. I don’t want to spend one more minute in it. I don’t want the reminder of everything I lost—everything you took from me. I don’t want to see my failures hanging on every wall.” He sounded so sad, like the way one would sound when they’ve accepted things as they were and decided to give up.

“Please, no,” I begged, sobbing. I didn’t know why I was fighting for him, I didn’t care to be married to him most of the time, but knowing he was walking out on me left me with a feeling of abandonment that ran so deep all I wanted to do was fight.

“My bags are already packed and inside my car. I was just waiting for you to come home.”

That was it. He had already made up his mind. He had his bags packed and was already out the door. I was left all alone, and I was the only one to blame. No. That’s a lie. Whoever has been talking to him, telling him what I had been doing was the real one to blame. I needed to find out who he had been talking to. Was it Craig? No, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to do that. Keegen? He did say he wanted me all to himself. He would definitely have a motive for telling Tom. Or it could have been Missy. I was foolish enough to flaunt my affair in front of her face. I had been so careless that the list could be as long as my arm.

“At least I can leave this marriage knowing that I have done everything in my power to support and love you. I have done everything to make this marriage work. You, my dear, have not. Do you know that I would have actually forgiven the infidelities? If you had at least just put forth some effort? I loved you so much, Sage. I worshipped the very ground you walk upon. I would have agreed to almost anything. Anything, but this. I am probably the only person on this earth who can see your true beauty, see you for the person you used to be.”

“Please,” I pleaded in a soft whisper, not ready to give up quite yet.

“I have always loved you and wanted nothing but the best for you, Sage. I’m sorry that you were too selfish to realize that.” He spoke his words softly on my forehead before pressing his lips to my hairline. I kept my eyes closed, not wanting to watch him walk away. I was sad, and I almost thought my heart was breaking. I couldn’t understand why I felt that way. I honestly was okay with him leaving; I guess I simply didn’t like the feeling of it being my fault.

I stood there paralyzed, unsure what to do. If I was honest with myself, I could admit that part of me was thinking this was best. I mean, I still had Keegen. And Craig. If I had the house and a nice settlement then what did I need Tom for? I shut down the part of me that longed for Tom. The more I rationalized it, the quicker my tears subsided and the ache in my chest vanished.

I squared my shoulders and took a deep breath, then went up to my room and immersed myself in the only thing I could at that moment. Writing.

I wrote for the rest of the day on Friday, all day Saturday, and all day Sunday. I didn’t answer my phone, which kept ringing. I shut the world out and just wrote. Of course, I didn’t purely write just
my
words. Without the help of Missy and my editor friend, it would have never come together. I knew I would get better at writing as time went along. I just needed time to develop my skills, and then I could do it on my own with no problem. The readers would never know that these weren’t all my words. They would never know that I had help writing the book. Not to mention, who would say anything? These people offered to help me. Isn’t that what beta readers are there for? To give you ideas and help make your book better? That’s all they were doing. And it didn’t matter anyway, I would still be famous and no one would be the wiser.

I had followed the news carefully, needing to know what had happened to him.

At first, they suggested that Ben had too much to drink and had stumbled, fallen and tragically had hit his head. There were students interviewed, they were crying and devastated by the loss of their professor. It made the event that much more tragic in the viewer’s eyes.

But once the crime scene investigators combed the apartment, analyzed the details and the shape the living room was left in, it was ruled a homicide. Aside from the near destruction of the place, they were able to tell that most of the surfaces had been wiped clean. They also noticed a bloody shoe print in the carpet. It was determined to be a female’s size-eight shoe. How the hell they were able to tell that was beyond me.

Not to mention, they had the 911 tape from an unidentified female voice, letting them know about the body. I had made the 911 call because I couldn’t imagine his lifeless body lying alone and starting to decompose for days. I just couldn’t handle that. I didn’t think it would imply a murder had taken place.

I started second-guessing everything. Maybe I shouldn’t have called. Should I turn myself in and explain what happened? Would they realize that it was an accident? Or would they charge me with murder? I didn’t want to go to prison for the rest of my life.

Through phone records, the investigators were able to determine that he was having a relationship. They had call logs of every time we talked to each other and all of our text messages. But the calls and text messages from my end had all been from a prepaid phone, so there was no trace. That gave me some relief. It also made me realize that we had never used names when texting. An odd thought that I had never noticed before. I also learned through news stories, that Ben had my number listed in his phone as “Love of my Life.” That nearly killed me and made the guilt even harder to bear. I shed so many tears over the days and weeks that followed. Way too many to count.

They centered their investigation after a female student of his. She admitted to sleeping with him the morning of his death, but confirmed what he had told me, it was a mistake and had been unplanned. She was in a relationship at the time and told investigators that she had gone to drop off a paper. She started to cry to him about the problems she was going through at the time with her boyfriend, and one thing led to another. She was ruled out as a suspect once they proved her alibi was solid.

Time moved on, but it didn’t lessen the ache I felt whenever I thought about Ben Champion and the love we shared. I died inside every time I thought about the look in his eyes as he took his last breath. I prayed every night that God would take that day away, to make it so that I had never gone to see him, and that I would still have him in my life. But I had committed too many sins for him to answer that prayer. It was in my destiny to suffer, so suffer I did.

The case went cold without any real leads, but I had to live the rest of my life knowing I had killed the only man I would ever truly love.

I typed for hours until my book was finally complete and I had sent the entire document to my editor. She believed in me so greatly that she had vowed to stay up all night working on it. It would be released at the end of this week. I couldn’t wait to see my numbers on Amazon.

Becky, my cover artist, had already done my teasers and cover, so things were ready to go. I had already been posting my teasers on Facebook; all of my followers knew the book was coming. When you logged onto my page, you could almost feel the anticipation of my fans.

Everyone was so excited to read it. I had been including excerpts from the book in my teasers, and they were already captivated.

I was well on my way to becoming a successful, bestselling author.