Daddy opened the window and the breeze came, lightly kissing my cheeks. A wave of guilt washed over me. I felt a heavy weight on my soul for making it hard for my family to be happy. I could tell they knew I was still a mess, but they wanted to give me time to get better on my own.

My eyes shifted to the ground, unable to connect with Dad’s. “Don’t you miss your crafts, Dad?” He was a jack-of-all-trades. From building lawnmowers to homemade water pumps, Daddy did it all. He loved to get his hands into something new each week. But since the accident he had been catering to me nonstop. He would say, “Don’t worry about such things,” but I did anyway.

“My friend Ladasha moved out to New York City.” I paused, fearful of his reaction. “I was thinking after I get the cast off I might go join her.”

“Andrea…” He started to disagree with my idea, but I didn’t give him much of a chance.

“Everyone sees me, Daddy. They look at me and remind me that I am broken. They make me want to break down into tears just by glancing my way. They whisper—Dad…you gotta let me go. Ladasha already said she could get me a job and everything if I needed her to. I mean, I was going to move to New York anyway. Might as well now.”

He sighed and removed his glasses, rubbing between his eyes. He looked over to me and plopped down on my mattress. “Your mother’s going to have a heart attack.”

I smirked. The first smile I had in a long time. “Yeah well, that’s not way out of her norm, now is it?”

Chapter Two

“I’M PREGNANT,” SHE said. I looked to my wife, and she had a look of terror in her eyes. Iris was beautiful. Slim, olive skin, soft honey brown hair running down her shoulders, brown eyes that could make love with anyone. And she was telling me she was pregnant. I was almost certain I knew why her eyes looked so scared right that moment.

Iris covered her mouth with water filling her eye sockets. I’d never seen her like this before; she must have been terrified this pregnancy would end like the others. I guess she was already tapping into her hormones as she walked over to me and touched my hand. She felt like ice. “Cooper…say something.”

Say something? No. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. My mind was busy doing mathematics. I raised an eyebrow. “How far along are you?”

“Five weeks.”

Five weeks. My heart started pounding against my chest, wanting to leap out. I shoved her hands away from me; her touch alone made me a different man. No. This didn’t make sense. None of this made any f**king sense. How the hell could she be five weeks pregnant if we hadn’t had sex in five months? Tears started pouring from her eyes as I witnessed my wife cry in front of me for the first time ever. I couldn’t even trust her tears to have meaning because they were falling from a web of lies. My fingers were becoming tight, and the only way I could control them was by forcing my hands into fists. “Who?”

“Cooper…” She cried.

“Dammit Iris, who the hell is he?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

She wiped her pathetic eyes and sobbed into her hands. Her body was shaking uncontrollably, almost to the point where I thought she would pass out. I glanced to her stomach. I wanted to throw up. She opened her mouth, and at first, nothing was heard. She swallowed a deep breath of air and released it through those damn lips that were once upon a time attached to mine.

“Speak up!” I ordered her, and when she did, I went quiet.

Tom Reed.

The name didn’t take long to settle into my head. I knew who he was. Iris and I had just wrapped up filming his wedding on our reality show, The Davidson’s Weddings, a few weeks prior. Five weeks ago to be exact. I had just finished editing wedding photos of him and the new Mrs. Reed. And during that time he had somehow managed to get my wife pregnant.

“Wh—what? Did y’all f**k before or after he cut his wedding cake? Iris, was it before or after his first dance? Did the camera crew catch you? Good God.” I was pacing now, running my hands over my face, feeling the sweat drip from my forehead. Pacing back and forth in a home I was no longer a part of. My southern roots were slipping out of my dialect the angrier I became. My fingernails digging deeper into the palms of my hands. I couldn’t believe she would do this to me. To us!

“Cooper, I still love you,” she promised. She reached for me and I couldn’t help but let out a harsh laugh. The laughter was cut short. I felt drippings running down my clinched fist. Sweat? No. My knuckles were bleeding. Why were my knuckles bleeding? My eyes shifted to the shattered photo hanging on the wall in front of me. There was broken glass covering the carpet and I stepped back, confused. Did I do that? Shit…The DNA in the blood coating the photograph was sure to be a perfect match to my own.

Iris was standing in the corner across the room, panicked. I’d scared her. The f**king pain that started to shoot through my hand shook me a bit. I scared myself. I lost grip on everything around me. The room started to spin. My eyes blurred over. My mind started mocking me, screaming inside my head, ‘Tom Reed, Tom Reed, Tom Reed.’ Over and over again.

“SHUT UP!” I shouted, wrapping my hands around my head, covering my ears, and blocking out all sounds. I wasn’t sure if I was speaking to my wife or the f**king Tom Reed chant on repeat inside me. I needed to leave; I needed to walk out the front door before my anger took me to a level I wasn’t sure I could control.

Did she really say that? Did she say she still loved me?

Son of a bitch.

I needed a divorce.

WHISKEY WAS THE only liquid lingering in my body by this point. My hands stayed clenched around the glass in front of me as I brought it to my lips and drank down my brown toxin. Did I need another drink? I squeezed my eyes shut and looked around. People appeared to have two heads, and some had three. I glanced to my hand where my wedding band was and slid it off, tossing it into my wallet.

Yup. I needed another drink.

“Maybe you’ve had enough.” The bartender came over and took the glass away. I’d been coming to this bar for awhile now—drinking and forgetting. Well, trying to forget. I hated how she was always with me in a way. I hated how she wasn’t physically around, but had the ability to reside in my head. When I closed my eyes, I saw her face. When I licked my lips, I tasted her mouth. It pissed me the hell off.

I met Iris after I’d agreed to shoot a famous couple’s engagement photos. I never did anything involving weddings; I was more into edgy, raw, human-connections type of photography, the true grit of emotions. But the couple had been damn helpful when my career was starting out, tweeting my name to their followers online, telling their other famous people to look out for me. So when they asked, I had no right to turn them down. They showed up to the shoot with this stunning woman next to them, their wedding planner.

We started the shoot at five in the morning. By five in the evening I was addicted to Iris. Two weeks later we had our first date. Three months later we were engaged. Within less than a year of knowing one another, we were married. Instant love, people called it. It wasn’t long before we were offered a television series to handle luxury weddings.

If I could go back in time, I never would have agreed to do the engagement photo shoot. I needed another drink. The dude behind the counter hesitated.

“Fuck you. Get me another.”

The look in the bartender’s eyes pissed me off. He felt sorry for me. Fuck him. I could go find my whiskey elsewhere.

“Cooper…” He leaned forward, eyes on me. He had four heads now. I shook myself and tried to focus on the ass who wouldn’t get me another drink. He continued to murmur some bullshit I didn’t want to hear. “Paparazzi—don’t go—water.” Blah blah blah. My cell phone went off and I saw Iris’s name plastered on it. What a stupid name. Drop! Into the stupid glass of water went my stupid phone with my stupid wife’s name on it.

I stood up, allowing myself a few moments to find my footing. Digging into my wallet, I tossed the ass a few bills and stumbled to the exit. It was dark outside, but the streets were bright. My hand flew up to shield my eyes from the lights. Or flashes, I should say. Dammit. The ass was trying to tell me that the paparazzi were here looking for a story. They must have heard about my pregnant, cheating, whore of a wife.

“Don’t you have someone else to be following? Get the camera out of my face.” I pushed my way through them, pissed off. I was a f**king reality television star, not damn Brad Pitt. Leave me alone. I blamed Iris for this. I blamed Iris for everything. They kept following me, searching for something to sell. I staggered back and forth, trying to keep my balance, but it was tough when everywhere I turned, there was a fucker pushing me the other way.

Fine.

I’d fly.

It appeared my flying skills were lacking. My feet landed on top of a parked taxi as I tried to hurry across the street to get to my hotel room. My new home. Losing my balance, my ass landed against the hard, metal hood. Standing back up, with a pain shooting through my back, I huffed and puffed.

“Are y’all happy!? Did you get your f**king pictures!?” I hollered at the men holding the cameras. So many lights. I took off my shoe and threw it at one of them. They laughed, as if they were somewhat enjoying my breakdown. More lights joined in the party, this time red and blue flashes.

My fingers wrapped around the back of my neck, trying to get a grip on the craziness occurring. I tried to focus in on the officers approaching me. It looked like there were sixteen of them, but there were really only four. Damn alcohol.

“Sir, we need you to get down,” one of the cops shouted. I laughed—shocked that he was looking at me as if I caused this problem.

“Why don’t you do something about these stalkers!? They won’t leave me alone!” I could have really used another drink. The real world was still too real for me.

“Sir! Get. Down. Now!”

I was sick of it all. Sick of this lifestyle. Sick of the cameras. Sick of the fame. And f**king sick of my wife for doing this to me. I looked at the cops and chuckled at their serious demeanors. One had his hand on his cuffs and another with his hand on his gun. What was he going to do? Shoot me?

“I’m a guy trying to get to my hotel, and I’m the bad person here? I mean, seriously?! Do you not know who I am?!” I jumped off the taxi, into the street, where a large group had arrived with cell phones in their hands, videotaping me as if I were the damn circus.

I staggered near the cops and pounded my hands against my chest. Trying to explain the situation. Someone screamed I looked crazed. What? Screw them. I’d had a bad f**king day.

“This is getting out of control. Look, do you know who I am?” I was annoyed now—with everyone. The paparazzi. The random folks. The damn cop with his hand on his gun.

“Do you know who I am!?! Stop with the flashes!” I screamed as I barged at the paparazzi, ready to rip the cameras from their hands. Instead, I was stopped. My body began twitching, my hands shaking involuntary. Every muscle in my body became rigid, and I dropped to my knees.

I was wrong. The cop’s hand wasn’t on his gun.

It was on his taser.

MY PALMS WERE sweating as I continuously rubbed them against one another. My eyes rested on the clock’s ticking sounds. The sounds were mocking me. Time moved so f**king slowly and I couldn’t take much more. The air was hard to breathe; I’d been in this place for far too long and was longing for my escape. Rubbing my lips together, I looked to the ground and started to count the floor tiles. That would past the damn time.

“Cooper, what are you thinking?” the old doctor with the clipboard asked me. The nametag hanging on his white coat read Doctor Downey. His thin-framed glasses fell slightly down his nose and his brown-eyes studied my face. I shrugged my shoulders and looked around. We were surrounded by other people, sitting in a circle, having our daily ‘group therapy’ session.