[UNEDITED][CHLOE]

        The house seemed too big and empty when I was the only person in here. There was far too much space and not enough people to fill the space.

        I was used to having Amanda running around the place, playing with her toys or begging Matthew to take her to the park for a while. I was used to Matthew appearing out of nowhere, wrapping his arms around me and telling me how much he loved me. I was used to shouting at Jason because he had let another inappropriate thing slip in front of Amanda.

        It was strange to be alone with nothing but my thoughts. Perhaps I was a little hard on Jason he was, after all, only trying to protect me at a time when I was already feeling vulnerable.

        He was the one who had always been there for me and, until this point, he had told me absolutely everything. I knew he would never deliberately hurt me and whatever he does, he does it to keep me safe because I know how much he hates to see me hurting.

        I know that I need him but I can’t bring myself to tell him that. I love my brother and I love that he has always been there for me since I was little without ever really questioning anything I said to him – other than when he discovered that I was pregnant and he decided he was going to act like a total prick for a couple of months.

        “Mummy,” I heard Amanda’s cheerful voice calling through the house and simply hearing her voice was enough to make me smile.

        “Hello baby. Is Uncle Jason with you?” I asked her as I picked her up, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

        “No. Erin brought me back. Uncle Jason had to go to work,” Amanda smiled and there was something which suddenly boiled up inside me.

        My brother had allowed someone I didn’t even know to bring my daughter home while he disappeared off to do god knows what. I didn’t like people around Amanda, much less people who my brother had taken to sleeping with to forget about all his problems.

        “Please don’t be mad mummy. Erin is really nice,” Amanda pleaded. I looked down at her and there was something in her eyes, she looked like she was about to burst into tears at a given moment if I got angry with this woman for bringing Amanda back.

        “Where is Erin?” I asked her.

        “She’s waiting outside. I told her she could come in but she said it wasn’t right if she did,” Amanda chuckled and I laughed at her innocence.

        As I looked at her, I wondered how someone could be one hell of a father but one hell of shitty husband. If someone was capable of loving the child they had created, they should be more than capable of loving the woman they created it with.

        “Why don’t you go upstairs and I’ll talk to Erin,” I suggested.

        “Promise you won’t get angry with her?”

        “I promise sweetie,” I smiled, putting her on the ground and watching her as she disappeared up the stairs.

        I wasn’t going to break my promise to Amanda. I wasn’t going to shout at Erin, but I was going to make it clear that I wasn’t happy with her being around my daughter when I didn’t know the first thing about her.

        Jason should have brought her with him on her way to work. I would have preferred that to Erin bringing her back.

        Anything could have happened and then it would have been on Jason’s head. I would have killed him myself if anything had happened to my daughter while she was in the care of someone else.

        I walked towards the front door and I was surprised with the woman who was stood there. She had a slight smile on her face and was obviously nervous about something. She wasn’t especially tall, perhaps a little over five foot, and her blonde hair stopped just below her shoulders. She had an amazing figure and I wondered how Jason had managed to find her.

        I thought Charlotte was stunning when I first met her but Erin. Jason had done well to get someone like her in his life.

        “Erin?” I said as I leant against the front door and looked at her.

        “That’s me. Safe bet that you’re Chloe then, right?” Erin laughed.

        “Where is Jason?” I asked, being sure to keep my face void of any expression as I asked the question. I didn’t want her to assume that I hated her but I also didn’t want her to assume that I liked her either.

        “He had to leave early for work. I offered to bring Amanda back for him,” Erin replied casually. “She’s a great kid.”

        “Sorry for asking, but do you actually know anything about kids?” I thought it was better to get that question out in the open before anything was said.

        “I don’t have kids of my own but I have a nephew who’s a few months old and I also have a cousin who is the same age as Amanda. I look after him twice a week for my Aunt so that she can work,” Erin chuckled.

        At least she knows what she’s doing and she’s not going in totally blind.

        “Was she any trouble?” I found myself asking before I could stop the words from coming out. I knew if there was trouble, then Jason would have told me, regardless of whether we are talking to each other.

        “No. She watched Frozen with Jason.”

        “She always watches that with Jason. She won’t watch it with anyone else,” I replied as I remembered the first time they had watched it together.

        Jason had bought for her because she wouldn’t shut up about wanting to see it and, being the great uncle he is, he agreed to watch it with her. She sat through the entire thing, not once opening her mouth until the end when she expressed just how much she loved it.

        Whenever she asked Jason to watch a film, he knew what was coming, but he told her he would watch it with her anyway. Even when she would repeat the film word for word and sing along to every single song, he never complained and simply sat in silence until the end of it.

        He doted on Amanda and, when the time came, he was going to be a bloody amazing father. I know he has always wanted a daughter who he could spoil rotten. I think that’s the main reason he loves Amanda as much as he does.

        “Well, I suppose I had best be going. I need to get myself ready for work,” Erin suddenly spoke after a moment of silence.

        “My brother is a good guy. He’s stupid, he makes terrible decisions and he doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut but he’s a good guy,” I paused as I took a moment to look at Erin, studying the confused look on her face as the words come out without a second thought. “Please don’t hurt him again. I don’t think I can handle seeing him so low that he doesn’t know what to do with his life because of another woman.”

        “Look, Chloe, regardless of what you think of me, I have no intention of hurting Jason. Sure, when we first started sleeping together nine months ago, I never thought anything would come out it because I always thought he would go back to Charlotte—“

        “That bitch. If he had gone back to her, then I would have murdered him myself,” I muttered. She didn’t just ruin my brother’s life but she also ruined my life.

        She was the one who took my husband from me and broke my family apart. I would do anything to be able to grab hold of those extensions in her hair and rip them out, giving her a small sense of the pain which I was feeling.

        “Six months ago, that was when I really began to question what I felt for your brother. He had been there for me and not once did he ever push me into anything I didn’t want. He treated me like a person and he actually made me feel loved. That was the point where I realised I had fallen for Jason and there was no going back. At least not for me,” Erin sighed as her attention moved to the floor.

        Jason was right. I did judge her and I didn’t know the first thing about her. She wasn’t the monster I had pegged her to be, she was actually a pretty amazing person and I hoped Jason would do anything to keep hold of her for as long as possible.

        Erin was one of those rare and genuine people. She didn’t take you for a ride or claim to be something she wasn’t, she was simply open and honest about her life; even with someone who had her mind set on hating her from the moment I met her.

        I wouldn’t even mind if she was to marry Jason. I bet she would be one hell of a sister-in-law and I could imagine having a serious amount of fun with her.

        “You know, the funny thing is, it was the exact same thing with my husband. When I found out I was pregnant with Amanda, he told me that he wanted nothing to do with her and that I should get an abortion, so I practically decided that I hated him from that moment onwards,” I chuckled softly as I remembered the conversation I had with Matthew about the hypothetical baby which actually turned out to be real. “It was only when my father arranged our marriage that Matthew decided he was going to be there for the both of us. New Year’s Day at exactly midnight, that was when I told him that I loved him and I kissed him for the first time.”

        Despite hating his very guts right now, I couldn’t help but smile at the memory. We shared so many memories together that it was impossible not to smile at each of them because they were so special.

        I then found myself thinking back to Matthew’s pleas of innocence. The way he looked at me with tears in his eyes as he claimed that he never slept with Charlotte, when Jason caught the both of them in the bedroom, he was trying to push her away from him but she wasn’t moving.

        The way he told me that he loved me and how he knew he would be an idiot to hurt me. The words which came from his mouth when I first confronted him about it.

        “I swear, I would never do that to you Chloe. I love you too much to ever hurt you. You mean everything to me so why would I risk throwing that all away for the sake of some bitch I have never liked anyway?”

        “Look, I know about Matthew cheating on you with Jason’s fiancé and I know how that feels—“

        “You do?” I asked in shock.

        “Yeah. My boyfriend announced he was gay and leaving me for my brother,” Erin laughed.

        “Wow.”

        “What I am trying to say is, perhaps you should listen to Matthew’s side of the story. You two clearly love each other and, considering everything you’ve already been through together, there must be a way for you to work this out. Don’t let him slip through your fingers Chloe because you may end up regretting it,” Erin just about managed to smile and, from the slightly sad look in her eyes, it was like she was talking from experience.

        “What if we can’t work it out though?” I sighed.

        “At least you’ll know that you tried. Seriously, don’t let him be the one who got away,” Erin replied.

        The sound of the car door closing diverted my attention away from Erin to where the banging had come from.

        I looked across to see Matthew and Marcus walked towards the house. Matthew looked like he had been crying for most of the night while Marcus looked seriously pissed off about something.

        There was then the sound of more banging from the car and, when I looked up and saw who it was, I immediately lost my temper. All I could see was red and I wanted to make her pay for everything she had done. I wanted to break her in the way she had broken me.

        “What the fuck is she doing here?” I seethed, my hands clenching into fists.

        “Oh. Her? Turns out Marcus is fucking her,” Matthew snapped and, the closer he had gotten to me, I could see that he had been crying but he also looked as angry as I felt in that moment.

        “I didn’t know who she was. I met her in a club one night and she told me that her fiancé had left her, it just sort of went from there really,” Marcus tried to defend himself.

        “Did she tell you the reason that he left her?” I laughed coldly.

        “She said the two of them had fallen out of love. He told her they just weren’t right for each other anymore,” Marcus shrugged and I couldn’t believe he was stupid enough to actually fall for that shit.

        The bitch had always been full of bullshit since the day I met her and, though I immediately took a strong disliking her, I didn’t want to see Jason unhappy so I allowed him to carry on life with her.

        When he told me that he had proposed to her and she had accepted, I could have strangled him for being so god damn stupid. You don’t have to be an idiot to see that she never loved him and she was only using him until the next best thing came along.

        “No. He left her because he caught her trying to fuck my husband,” I shouted. I didn’t even realise I was walking towards her until I felt a hand around my wrist, pulling me away from them. A second later my back hit someone and they wrapped their arms around my waist.

        “Ssh. Calm down baby,” Matthew whispered in my ear and I quickly felt my anger disappearing. Matthew had always been able to do things like this.

        He would wrap his arms around me, say a few words and I would suddenly feel a whole lot calmer. I was an idiot to think he would actually cheat on me, especially with the woman who was supposed to be marrying my brother.

        Matthew loved Jason like the brother he never had. He wouldn’t dare do anything which would jeopardise the relationship they had together.

        “He was the only one who ever resisted my charms. I had never been rejected by a man before, regardless of whether or not they were married,” her voice finally sounded.

        “And, as I told you at the time, I love Chloe and Amanda. But you just couldn’t accept that and you had to fuck everything up because you couldn’t just accept that I didn’t want to sleep with you,” Matthew chuckled humourlessly and it only made me feel like an even bigger bitch for what I had said to him. I should have listened and I should have believed him, I should never have even humoured the thought that he would cheat on me.

        “The last I heard though, you two were getting a divorce and Chloe was going to prevent you from seeing your daughter.”

        “You fucking told her?” Matthew shouted, his anger directed straight at Marcus.

        “She asked what was wrong, so I told her. I didn’t know who she was because, if I had known who she was and what she had done, then I never would have slept with her in the first place,” Marcus replied and I could see the guilt in his eyes as he realised what he had done, but it was too late for that, he should never have believed her story and he should never have gone there with her.

        I suddenly turned my back on both Charlotte and Marcus, looking up at Mathew with tears in my eyes. I didn’t need to say the words I was going to say because all I could do in that moment was wrap my arms around his neck and kissed him.

        “I’m sorry,” I mumbled against his lips.

        “I told you that you wouldn’t get rid of me that easily,” he smirked and I playfully hit him on the chest before I put my arms around his waist and put my head against his chest, never wanting to let him go again. He was my husband and no slut was ever going to change that, no matter how hard she tried.

        “Daddy,” Amanda’s voice cried out with joy as she ran out of the house and wrapped herself around his leg.

        “Hello beautiful. Did you miss me?” he laughed, bending down to pick her up.

        “I love you daddy,” Amanda grinned as she snuggled her head into his neck. “Have you met Erin?”

        “Erin?”

        “Yes. Matthew, this is Jason’s girlfriend, Erin. Erin, this is my husband, Matthew,” I introduced them to each other with a grin on my face.

        “Ha. I see Jason has gone a little down market since we broke up,” Charlotte’s voice echoed.

        While Matthew was busy conversing with Erin, I took that as my opportunity to walk over to where the bitch was stood and give her a piece of my mind. By the time he realised where I was going and what I was doing, it was too late.

        I took a handful of her red hair in my hand and pulled her out of the car, into the open where she could actually see me. “Here’s the thing Charlotte, no one actually likes you, I especially don’t like you. If my daughter wasn’t over there right now, then I would be smashing your pretty little face of the side of this car.”

        “I see your tendencies to use violence as the answer still hasn’t changed,” she laughed.

        “You ruined my family. You hurt my brother and then tried to sleep with my husband. You then took advantage of Matthew’s best friend. Excuse me if I don’t want to throw a party to celebrate your return,” I muttered. My tone was harsh and clipped, definitely the tone of someone who wasn’t to be messed with.

        “I guess you’ll hate me even more if I told you I had slept with your ex-boyfriend as well,” Charlotte laughed.

        “What sob story did you tell him?”

        “You can ask him yourself if you like. I still see him on a regular basis,” she chortled. I was taking everything I had not to do something really stupid to her right now but, the fact my five year old daughter was just metres away from me was enough to ensure I didn’t do anything I would live to regret.

        “Clo, leave her, she’s not even worth it,” Marcus said as he pulled me away from Charlotte.

        I suddenly had an idea. An idea so clever that it would cause so much shit and I wouldn’t even give a damn. I had a point to prove and I was going to make damn sure I proved that point.

        “Dinner. All of you are invited to dinner,” I said with a smirk. “Charlotte, be sure to bring Braydon. Erin, you make sure Jason is here and Marcus, well, you just bring yourself.”