CARMEN“What do you mean? What can’t you do anymore?” I asked Dave as I stood up and headed to the door, getting ready to ask him to tell me where he was so that I would go to him to talk.“We need to meet up and talk about all of this. I’ll send my location to you. Can you meet me in a few minutes?” he asked, and I almost laughed at the question as even hearing from him over the phone was more than I could ever ask for.“Of course I can. I’ll take a taxi as soon as you send the your location,” I replied, running down the stairs and taking the car keys from my father when Dave hung up the phone.“What’s happening?” Dad asked.“Dave finally called. He wants to see me. I think he wants to call everything off between us. He said something about not wanting to do this anymore,” I relayed my worries to him.“It’s going to be fine, Carmen,” he assured. “I’m sure he wouldn’t want to do something that would hurt you. If he does want a break, though, you can always let him go. It’s been hard f
CARMENMy hands flew to cover my mouth as I read the question that all the lights on the ground had formed, over and over until my eyes watered and everything was too blurry to read.“Dave…” I whispered.“I know, I know,” he laughed nervously as he reached up to his neck and started to rub it. “This isn’t me rushing you into anything that you might not feel like doing, anyway. I just wanted to wait for you to get the divorce finalized before making any move on this.”That was why he had not been picking up my calls or replying to my texts – he had been planning this the whole time.“You’re very quiet,” he added. “I don’t think I’ve ever met you this quiet over something like this. You’re starting to scare me.”“No, no,” I said, shaking my head and wiping my fallen tears. “I was just surprised, that’s all. You… I didn’t think you would do this. When you called me and told me to come, I thought you wanted to end everything with me.”“That’s the last thing I would do,” he laughed at me a
CARMEN“No,” I heard my mother whisper into the air as her legs took her backwards and her body limply fell into the couch at the sight of my father.“You seem extremely surprised,” I commented, looking over at my father, who was now walking towards her.“Don’t come any closer!” she immediately warned, putting her hands forward to signal for him to stop where he was, which he did. “Who are you? What do you think you’re doing? How much did she pay you to do something this horrible?”“What are you talking about?” I couldn’t help but laugh as I asked the question. “You really believe that I paid some random man off the street who looks like my father to come to you and act like him?”“I want you to cut the crap right now, Carmen,” she said, now regaining the strength to stand up as she looked at Dad with a sneer in her eyes.“This is ridiculous,” she scoffed to herself. “Just because the divorce is some days away, you’re trying to scare me with this?”I looked at Dad, and he looked back
CARMENHe knew. He knew what my mother had done to his father, and he knew that I had knowledge about it the whole time but had been hiding it from him.“Dave, I know you’re disappointed. I didn’t want you to freak out over it—”“Freak out?” I heard him scoff. “What did you think would make me freak out, Carmen? The fact that your mother has been trying to kill my father or the fact that the one person in that house that I trusted enough to tell me things did not see this as something to tell me.”“That’s not what’s happening at all,” I denied with a shake of my head. “Of course I wanted you to know about it. I wanted you to know everything, but there was already so much going on. You were overly stressed, and telling you about it would bring nothing but more stress—”“And now? Does finding out about it now and in this manner make it any better?” he questioned, and I was filled with the sudden urge to ask him how he had found out about it.“If you knew that I was going to find out abo
CÀRMEN“What…what are you doing here?” I asked, looking around to see if I could find out if someone else came with him – perhaps Kate or his father.“I wanted to talk to you about everything,” he said.“There’s nothing to talk about. We’re divorced,” I replied, wanting to turn around when he grabbed me by the wrist.“What are you doing?” Dad asked, finally bringing Jasper’s attention towards himself.“Who are…” Jasper trailed off as recognition grew in his eyes, and he took steps back as be looked between me and my father.“You’re… You’re her father,” he noted. “They said you were dead.”“If she doesn’t want to talk to you, don’t you think you should take a hint and leave her alone?” Dad asked him, ignoring his shock and refusing to give him any explanation.“I just wanted to have a short and important talk with her about something, that’s all,” Jasper defended.“Excuse us,” I told Dad, a little curious to know what Jasper wanted to say even after we had legally gone our separate way
CARMENBefore Dave could take me into the room where his father was staying, I pulled him back. I tried my hardest to hide my annoyance from him, but I could feel it coming off in waves, and I was certain that he could tell as well.“Is something wrong?” he questioned, and I raised my brow at that.“I should be asking you that question, Dave. I know you’re mad at me, and you should be mad at me for what I hid from you, but you haven’t spoken to me in a week. We can’t just leave things hanging and go in there to tell your father about us.”“I know, Carmen. We have a lot of talking to do, and I do have a lot of apologies as well, but I don’t want to prolong this. The more we keep him the dark, the less likely he is to be happy about the news. We can talk about everything else that we haven’t talked about during the week after.”“Are you sure you want to do this?” I asked. “With everything that my mother must have planted in your mind against me—”“She planted nothing in my mind against
CARMENDave and I shared a look of disappointment, and I could see that he had made up his mind to be with me no matter what his father said, but that didn’t stop me from feeling bad.“This whole thing between Bianca and I is not close to being over, and I believe she’s going to raise hell before everything is finalized. I have all of that in mind, and I don’t want anything to distract me just yet. Perhaps, after the divorce, we can revisit this talk,” Steve explained.I completely understood why he didn’t agree to the whole thing, but that didn’t mean I was not hurt by it.“You can take all the time you need to think about it,” I encouraged. “We wouldn’t want to put you under any kind of pressure.”“Carmen and I have something important to discuss. Thank you for giving us your honesty, father,” Dave told him as he took my hand and led me out of the room as he asked me, “Which of the bedrooms is yours?”“Here.” I took the lead from him and opened the door to my room, slamming it shut
CARMENMy mother stared at Evan with a shocked expression on her face as he submitted a flash drive to the judge as evidence.“The house where you left after you got married to Mr. Wilmer had a lot of security cameras, which Mrs. Wilmer here may have forgotten about when she slipped into the kitchen and put about ten pills of aphrodisiac into the victim’s drink,” Evan explained as the video on the drive was played for the whole courtroom to see.I had not thought that Evan would work that hard and go that far to get evidence, but he did. Was that why he had been working with my father the whole time? Even I didn’t know about that.“If we watch further, we can see that there was no complete and direct contact between my client and the victim that they were involved in any sexual discussions with each other. To further prove that an aphrodisiac was used in this footage, we have receipts from the pharmacy that she bought them from that week.”“Do the prosecutors have anything to add to t