How Much I Love by Marie Force

Chapter 1

DEE

Is it possible to go into hiding when everyone knows where you are? Asking for a friend. Well, that’s not true, and we all know it. I’m asking for myself because I’m in a mess of my own making. There’s no other way to put it. I had revenge sex with one of the groomsmen at my cousin’s wedding, and for months he’s been texting cute little daily notes that I find myself looking forward to with far more excitement than I should have for a supposed one-night stand.

Wyatt is coming back to Miami to interview for a job here and wants to see me again. File that under things that weren’t supposed to happen when I decided to get busy with a man who doesn’t live here. Meanwhile, my ex—and the subject of the revenge sex he doesn’t know I had—is texting me, pleading for a chance to make things right.

Did you follow all that?

In case you’re wondering, I’m not that girl. I’m not the one who juggles the boys and giggles when she gets too much attention or has sex with men she isn’t in a relationship with. I. Am. Not. That. Girl. I assure you I’m not judging that girl. I’ve been envious of her in the past, how she could bed-hop, having all the sex without the stress of dealing with a “boyfriend.”

I’ve had one boyfriend, and once upon a time, before he lost his mind and married someone else, I expected to marry Marcus. Somehow, he ended up married to a woman we now refer to as “the skank.”

Too bad he didn’t see fit to break up with me before he got married.

Semantics.

I didn’t see any of this coming, and it flattened me. Marcus married someone else. My sister, cousin and I have no idea if his wife deserves the name we’ve given her, but what does it matter? She married my Marcus, and she’ll never be anything other than “the skank” to us.

For a long time after I heard he got married, I blamed myself. I was the one who desperately refused to move back to Miami after we both attended college there, and for a while, he was a good sport about it. But six months after he left New York, he said we needed to see other people. So that’s what we both did for a few years, not that I “saw” that many people.

About eighteen months ago, he reached out to tell me he’d made a big mistake letting me go and could we try again? Since I hadn’t met anyone I loved more than I loved him, I said okay, but I kept our reconciliation between us—and the cousin I lived with, who was the only one in my life who knew we were back together.

Marcus flew up to see me every other month, made sure we talked every day and said all the right things about supporting my dreams and loving me enough to let me spread my wings.

After he suddenly married someone else, though, I began to wonder if he got all that supportive shit from Hallmark cards at the local CVS.

My phone buzzes with a text. I make the mistake of glancing at it to find that Marcus is begging me—again—to call him.

Did I mention the skank dumped him, and he’s been telling people that the biggest mistake he ever made was letting me get away? I heard about that two days before Carmen’s wedding five months ago, now.

Thus, the revenge sex with one of her husband’s groomsmen, an incredibly sexy doctor from Phoenix who rocked my world in more ways than one.

I experienced actual rage when my sister, Maria, and cousin Carmen gently broke the news that Marcus was apparently in some sort of regret tailspin regarding me and how our relationship ended. Oh, and he’s still in love with me and never stopped loving me. Even then, I hadn’t told them that we’d recently reconciled, and as far as I knew, we’d still been together when he married someone else.

You got married, I’d scream if I returned one of his hundred calls over the last few weeks and months. What more is there to say? And yes, I know I should block him. I just haven’t gotten around to that yet. Stop judging me.

He has regrets. Whatever. How soon into his “marriage” did he regret leaving me after six on-again-off-again years without so much as a conversation? He let me hear through the formidable Miami-to-New York grapevine that my boyfriend got married. To someone else!

So yeah, call me crazy, but I’m not in any great rush to make him feel better by calling him and talking it out. He can screw himself. Was he thinking about me when he married her? When he had sex with her? When he let me hear about his “marriage” from other people?

And you wonder why I’m in hiding in my new apartment. A couple of months ago, I inherited the garage apartment at home owned by my aunt and uncle from my sister, Maria, who moved in with her fiancé, Austin. She managed to grab the golden ring with a great guy who came with a beautiful daughter named Everly, whose life Maria saved when she donated bone marrow to Everly.

Maria met Austin a year after the transplant, when they were finally allowed to talk to each other, and fell madly in love one email and text at a time. Austin is a star pitcher who’ll be playing for the Miami Marlins next season. He took a lesser deal than he could’ve gotten elsewhere so he could live in Maria’s town.

Now that’s a real man who steps up for the woman he loves, and I couldn’t be happier for them. They’re adorable together, and Everly is a sweetheart. Maria hit the jackpot, and I’m a nasty cow for being jealous that my sister and cousin have it all figured out while I hide out, hoping the whole world will just go away and leave me the hell alone.

Of course, with my mother battling breast cancer and me being back in Miami to help take care of her, I can’t hide out for long. My brothers Nico and Milo are in charge of dinner for my parents tonight, so I’m able to stay in my bunker for a while longer.

I watch mindless TV and try not to think about what I’m going to do about Marcus’s nonstop texts, or Wyatt, the one-night stand, trying to score a second night, or my mom’s illness, or anything other than which of the Property Brothers is going to win their latest Brother vs. Brother challenge.

I need a real job beyond waitressing at the family’s restaurant. At nearly twenty-eight, I’m living in an apartment owned by one aunt and uncle while working for another aunt and uncle. Not where I thought I’d be at this age, that’s for sure. I need to go to New York and get my stuff out of my cousin Domenic’s apartment. I need to get a freaking life. That’s the bottom line.

My phone buzzes again. I swear to God, I’m this close to blocking Marcus. But this text isn’t from him.

It’s the weirdest thing how I can’t stop thinking about what a great time I had at my buddy’s wedding. I never expected to meet the sweetest, sexiest bridesmaid in the history of sweet, sexy bridesmaids.

God, it’s from Wyatt, the first one-night stand of my life. At least, I intended it to be a one-night stand. He has other ideas.

Coming to Miami this weekend to hang with Jason and Carmen before my interview at Miami-Dade on Monday. Any chance I might run into you while I’m in town?

I have a systemwide meltdown as I read and reread his texts. Why had I given him my number, anyway? Oh, right, because I refused to leave with him from the wedding, so we exchanged numbers so I could sneak into his hotel like a dirty secret.

“Ugh,” I say to the walls. “How can this be happening? Why can’t everyone just go away and leave me alone?” I like being alone. Being alone makes it so someone I expected to spend my life with, only to find out he didn’t picture his life with me at all, can’t hurt me.

I never again want to put myself in a situation where something like that can happen. By keeping to myself, I can avoid that kind of drama—and that kind of pain. Yes, I see that my sister and cousin have found great guys who make them deliriously happy, and I’m glad about that. They both deserve all the happiness they can find. Carmen went through hell after her first husband, Tony, a police officer, was shot and killed on the job when they were only twenty-four. It took a long time for her to come back from that and take a chance on love again with Jason.

And Maria… her ex cheated on her while they were living together, turning her life upside down. Then she met Austin, who lived in Baltimore when they were first together, and they did the impossible—made a long-distance relationship work until his baseball season ended. He came to Miami for the off-season, and now they’re engaged.

It’s all worked for Maria and Carmen. But I’m under no illusions that’s going to happen to me, too. My illusions, such as they are, were shattered when Marcus married her. There’s no coming back from that kind of betrayal, especially since he didn’t even have the decency to let me know it was over between us before he married her.

At first, I laughed at Domenic, the cousin who sat me down and very gently told me he heard Marcus got married. How could that be? I laughed at the foolishness coming from Dom. “Marcus is my boyfriend,” I said. “He wouldn’t marry someone else.” I angrily accused Domenic of spreading rumors that weren’t true. I told him I’d seen Marcus a month ago, and everything had been fine. There was no way in hell he got married.

But he did. And realizing the “rumor” was true was the single most devastating moment of my life until a few days later, when I miscarried the baby I hadn’t even known I was carrying. That was worse than what Marcus did, but not by much. After the miscarriage, I holed up in my room in the apartment Dom and I shared in the city and refused to come out, except to use the bathroom.

Domenic threatened to call my parents, which finally got me to come out, to eat something, to return to the land of the living. Still, I was a shell of my former self over the last year as I walked through life like a zombie while I tried not picturing the man I loved living and sleeping with another woman.

Naturally, I had to stalk them online, which is how I learned that the skank is a stunning blonde with big boobs. Why couldn’t she be a troll? At least then I could live with him marrying down. But from everything I’ve seen of them together, he married up, and that hurts worst of all. He threw me over for a stranger who’s prettier than me, not to mention her boobs are twice the size of mine.

Ugh, what am I doing reliving this shit? What’s the point?

Before I can answer my questions, the phone rings with a call from Marcus’s sister, Bianca. I decline the call. I don’t want to talk to her any more than I want to talk to him.

A minute later, Bianca texts me. Please take my call. It’s an emergency.

For crying out loud. Why can’t people just leave me alone?

The phone rings three times before I take the call.

“Dee?” Bianca sounds frantic. “I’ve been using Marcus’s phone to reach out to you, but you’re not responding. He… He’s in the hospital, Dee. He was found unresponsive this morning and is in the ICU.”

My heart drops into my stomach. I don’t want to talk to him, but I don’t want him to be sick. “What’s wrong with him?”

“They don’t know. The doctors think maybe he took something.”

“What’re you saying?”

“I don’t know, Dee! I just don’t know. He’s really sick. Can you come here?”

There was a time when the thought of him being sick or in need would’ve had me running out the door to get to him as fast as I possibly could. That time is in the past. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”

“Dee! He could die!”

Tears fill my eyes, but I battle through the emotional firestorm, determined to look out for myself even when everything in me still wants to go to him. “I’m sorry. I’ll pray for him, but I can’t come there. I just can’t.”

The phone goes dead.

Before I have a second to process that Bianca has hung up on me, someone is pounding on the door.

“Open up, Delores.” My sister calls me that only when she means business—or is spoiling for a fight.

I haul myself off the sofa and unlock the door for Maria, who comes barging in like she owns the place. Just because she lived here before me doesn’t give her barging rights.

“What the hell, Dee? Mommy called me at work today to ask me why she hasn’t seen you in days, and I told her I had no idea because you were supposed to take dinner to them this week.”

“Nico did it. We switched weeks.” I return to my spot on the sofa that used to belong to Maria until she moved into Austin’s mansion and didn’t need it anymore. I also inherited her bed, dresser, TV and coffee table.

“I went by the restaurant, but they said you weren’t working tonight. What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing and this is Sofia’s weekend. We alternate, as you know.”

“I can tell just by looking at you that something’s up. You always do this when the shit hits the fan.”

“What do I do?”

Maria sits next to me on the sofa. “Go into hiding.”

I fixate on the enormous diamond ring on her left hand. I feel like an asshole for being jealous of what she has with Austin—a beautiful man, a beautiful little girl, a beautiful home and a stunning engagement ring. She’s the best person I know and deserves every good thing. “I’m not hiding.”

My phone chimes with a new text. I’m almost afraid to look. It’s Marcus—or I should say, Bianca. I can’t believe how selfish you’re being.

Now I’m selfish? How rich is that? I should’ve asked her how long he’s been in the hospital so I’d know when he last texted me himself. They’re going to blame me for this somehow. I didn’t respond to his texts, so he did something stupid and dramatic. Did he do it to get my attention?

I’ve almost forgotten Maria is there. I glance at her, wishing I could keep this to myself. But that’s not how things work in my family, which is one reason I was so eager to move to New York in the first place.

“Marcus is in the hospital.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Bianca said he took something he shouldn’t have, and she’s trying to guilt me into going there. He was blowing up my phone, and I was ignoring him, so I guess now it’s my fault he’s in the hospital.”

“She said that?”

“She said I’m selfish for not going there.”

“No, you’re not. You owe him nothing.”

“You and I know that, but she sees it differently. If he dies, they’re going to blame me.”

“Let them. You know the truth of what he did to you.”

Maria doesn’t know the half of it. No one does. Then I’m sobbing. She moves closer and puts her arms around me. I’m furious because it shouldn’t hurt this much after all this time.

“I’m so sorry, Dee. He’s an asshole for doing this to you—and so is she.”

“There’s more to what happened than you know.” I wipe the tears from my face and decide to tell her the truth. Maybe if I say it out loud, I can finally get some peace.

“Tell me,” she says, giving me her full attention.

I realize it’s been a while since I had my sister’s full attention. Between her ass-kicking job as a nurse at the free clinic and her new life with Austin and Everly, I hardly see her.

“Six months before he got married, Marcus and I had gotten back together—or so I thought.”

“What? You guys were together when he got married? Are you kidding me?”

I shake my head. I wish I were kidding. “We were keeping it low-key and working on our issues. I’d just seen him a month before, and I thought he was coming back the following weekend.”

She stares at me, incredulous. “This is unbelievable.”

“I found out he’d gotten married on a Friday. The following Monday, I had a miscarriage.”