Shawnie's POV

I was laying on Chris's chest, in his arms. This was nice but I needed to go. Joe was outside waiting for me and I forgot, I have a whole husband that's literally going to kill me if he knew what went on tonight. I am such a horrible wife.

"I have to go." I say, trying to sit up but he tightens his grip around me.

"No, I don't want you to go. I want you to stay the night with me. Stay in my arms."

"You know I can't do that." I say

"We just made love—we haven't done that in so long. I just want you to stay like this." Chris says

"Chris, I'm sorry but I have to leave. I told Aubrey I would call him once I left here. He knows where I am. Plus, Joe is waiting outside. He's been waiting long enough I don't wanna keep him out there any longer."

"We need to talk about your marriage." He says

I sigh. "Chris, I'm not leaving him."

"But I think we should give things another try." He kisses me on my forehead. "Just once."

"I can't just give things another try with you. I'm married. It's not like I can just break up with him and go back to you. It's a different situation now." I say. "I'm not willing to go through that process when all I have to do is leave you alone. We may have our issues but in my opinion I feel like we can fix them and be better than what we are."

He sighs, and tightens his grip around me again. "I just can't. You don't know how much I crave this. You don't know how much I miss you and having you here in my bed with me right now it's just solidified my feelings. I cannot just let us go. You can't make love to me like that, then just leave me here alone." He says

"Chris—-."

"No, because y'all are having issues and you're having second thoughts about your marriage. I know you're unhappy and I know you don't want to be with him. Why do you want to stay with him? Just leave him because you know you want to be with me and it's almost like you're only with him to continue to punish me. I get it. You can stop punishing me now."

"Everything was fine before that incident. I don't like a lot of things but I understand why he does them. I'm not punishing you, this is what I want."

"I'm not feeling it. I get what you're saying but nobody told your ass to go off and marry him. You did that shit to get to me and you're making excuses for him, which is pissing me off even more." He snaps

I sit up and look at him. "I didn't do it to get to you. That's your problem, you think everything I do that you don't like stems from me trying to get back at you." I climb off of the bed. "You don't know my relationship with him. I married him because I wanted to. I married him because we decided that that's what we wanted to do." I start looking for my panties and my bra.

"Aight." He runs his hands over his face. "I don't wanna fight about this. I am just very passionate about what I feel and you know me, I'm very passionate about you. I'm very protective of you and you know I love you to fucking death and I will kill any motherfucker that tries to fuck that up."

"So now you're threatening to kill my husband?" I slip on my underwear.

"It's just a figure of speech." He rolls his eyes, "I understand everything you're saying, I just don't want to, never wanted to. I told you I feel like you're the only person that deserves my loyalty, and my respect, and my faithfulness. I just wanna give you what I should've given you from the beginning. So the fact that you're not allowing me to do that, is getting to me because I thought that we were kind of on that path."

"Christopher, how can we be on the path to getting back together when I am married?" I put my bra on and walk over to my pants. I glance out of the window, down at my awaiting suv and I see Joe standing next to it on the phone.

"I don't know. I just thought. But to be honest, that's how I felt...but since this isn't gonna work out, I wanna be real with you and I can't say that I necessarily have lately." He stands up and picks his underwear up off the ground.

"What?" I turn around to look at him.

"Since there is no convincing you to leave your marriage, I want to tell you something that is important."

"The last time you had something important to tell me, you told me Diamond was pregnant. You got another woman pregnant?" I quickly put my pants on and grab my shirt, before putting it on as well.

"No. But I have been kind of involved with the girl that was in Vegas with me, I have been for a while. I actually met her right before you had Genesis..."

"Put your fucking dick away." I say and he puts his underwear on. I take off his chain and give it back to him. "I just fucked you, and you're trying to get back with me....a married woman...." I pause for a second, thinking about this fucked up sitiation. "...and you're actively trying to get back with me?" I repeat. Guilt sinking in, my chest starting to get heavy. I made a big mistake by having sex with Chris. Chris isn't going to change.

I actually met her right before you had Genesis, replayed in my head a few times before I snapped out of it.

"SHAWNIE?" Chris calls out to me.

"So you've known her for what, 2 years, and you have not only been keeping her from me, but from the world too? Let me rephrase that, I'm not mad that you've been keeping it from the world. I'm actually proud of you for doing that but why wouldn't you tell me?" I ask, acting like I'm okay with this bullshit.

"Because I wanted us to get back together. When I met her it was cool but I wasn't trying to be with her because I thought we were trying to work through the issues but things just got worse and I know I contributed to that because I did cheat on you a bunch of times. I cheated on you with her and I cheated on you while you were pregnant, right after I met her and the cause of my change in affection towards you was because I was with her."

She was the reason we fell apart...

"I don't have any words. I appreciate you telling me all of this, it's in the past. I don't even want to have this conversation. I already knew something was up, so you basically confirming everything right now just makes me feel better about the decision that I made." I say somewhat pissed off. "I'm not leaving him. I don't care about what your feelings are about that, but you know you messed up and you know you continuously messed up and the fact that I'm the one that left you after taking you back so many times, I think it's really eating away at you and you're trying to fix it within yourself. I think you think that if you get me back that you're somewhat controlling the situation, or I don't know what your plan is to get me back and maybe to dump me so you feel better about yourself. I don't know. Bottom line, I married. I'm going to stay married and you can move the fuck on with Golden Barbie."

"I'm sorry, Shawnie." He says looking very apologetic but you know what I'm done.

I damn near went crazy during that time. I begged and pleaded with him to talk to me, to give me something, to give me some kinda hope, and he didn't. He gave me nothing.  I knew something was up because it was at the flip of a switch he started acting like that. I didn't do anything. He was mean and disrespectful. He purposely let our relationship fail. He didn't try. It was all because he was fucking some bitch he met WHILE I was pregnant. I can't forgive him for this.

"I know you are. I don't doubt that you're sorry about all of this. I believe you wholeheartedly. Maybe you can apply the things that you've learned and what you've done wrong to that relationship and maybe it will be successful. I really do wish you nothing but the best, but me being in a setting with you like this will never happen again. I love you to death Chris, but we cannot do this anymore. Like ever." I say

"I got you." He visibly looked disappointed in himself.

"As promised, you can keep Gen as long as you want. I'm still here in LA. I will let you know when I leave. I will be taking her when I leave but that depends on when you want her back, so I still plan on being here for a while longer. You don't have to worry about me coming to get her anytime soon if you want to keep her for a week or longer. I know your mom wants to spend time with her. You just let me know, I don't care. It is perfectly fine." I say

"Okay." He says

"I love you Chris, I really do, but I have to protect my heart from you. You've broken it too many times. I thought we could do this friendship but...here we are."

"I know. I love you too." He says, head handing. He can't even look at me.

With that said, he walks me outside. I made him put his shirt and pants on so Joe wouldn't know that I was in there fucking Chris.

Joe opened the door for me and Chris helped me in the suv.

"Aight Joe, It was nice meeting you. Make sure you take care of her." Chris says

"I got you, bro!" They shake hands

"Nah, for real. Take care of her." He says with a serious face.

"I will." Joe says

Chris looks at me. "I'll see you later." He hugs me and kisses me on the cheek.

He looks at me one more time before closing the door. I don't even look at Joe, I just pick up my phone and call Aubrey.

Joe's POV

"Hey baby...it was okay, I just left from dropping off Gen...I'm okay...I miss you too...I'm coming home. So have them get a room for Joe ready..... Okay...I love you too, babe."

Wow. She's in too deep with both of them.

She hasn't said too much to me about what's going on with Chris, but I'm starting to put pieces together. Based on what I read, they were together for some years and broke up because of Drake. Now, she's married to Drake but she has a daughter with Chris, and it's pretty obvious that they mess around every now and then. Like tonight. I'm not stupid and I think she knows that I know. If I could figure this shit out, I know Drake has to know too. Maybe he just chooses not to address it. I don't know but this soap opera I fell into is juicy as fuck.

Shawnie's POV

I hung the phone up and I could feel judgement all through the car.

"Stop." I say

"Stop what?" Joe says

"You're judging me right now."

"I'm not, I'm just—Can I be honest with you and you won't get mad at me? I know this is technically my first day but—." He asks

I sigh, "Yeah, I guess."

"If you're not happy with him then why do you stay with him? Why stay in your marriage if you're not happy?" He asks

"Because I am happy. I love Aubrey, he's my husband and I'm choosing to make my situation work."

"Your situation? You mean your marriage?" He corrects me.

"Whatever you want to call it. Don't judge me." I snapped at him.

"I'm not judging you, I just think you need to be honest with yourself. Can I speak freely, as someone who's witnessing this situation from an outsider, and now as an insider?"

"Yes, but don't get too comfortable."

"I see that you and Chris still love each other and it's clear that you two have unfinished business. It's okay to love two people. But you still have to set boundaries. I was somewhat in a situation like this a few years ago. Granted, I wasn't married to one of them but as long as you're honest with yourself and know that you are doing all that you can to make the situation better, or fix it, that's all you can do. If you want to make your marriage work, you have to set boundaries. It's blatantly clear that you refuse to set those boundaries with Chris and maybe there's something that you need to think about."

"I thought about it but those boundaries literally only stay in place until we're face-to-face. You have to understand, Chris and I were very close and even though we had a bad break up, we've found our friendship again and it's hard for me to just tell him to leave him alone, or tell him not to touch me, or that I can't see him. We have a daughter together. Wherever he asks to see his daughter I make sure I do it. But in situations like today, this is all I've been wanting for years with him and it's fucking me up a little bit because I literally tend to forget that I'm married to somebody else sometimes. There's so many times I had to bring myself back down to reality and tell myself, bitch this is not your man and you need to chill the fuck out. It's hard. And now he's telling me about some new bitch, that isn't really new. He met her when I was pregnant and it's just too much for me to process right now." I say breaking down.

"You're human and you're going to make mistakes but if you feel that strongly about it, I think you need to talk to Chris about it and then talk to Drake." He says

"I am going to talk to my husband as soon as I walk through the door because I fucked up." I start balling, covering my face, crying into both hands.

"Oh." He says. I know he knows what I'm talking about. I know he knows I had sex with him. He knew as soon as I got back in the car.

"Don't judge me." I yell

"I'm not, Shawnie. I'm looking at you. Be honest with yourself." He scoots over to me and wraps his arms around me, pulling me into his chest. "You have to ask the question, which one, if any? You have to really sit and think about this because this situation will only end up bad for all parties. It could end up worse than before. You're married. This ain't no boyfriend/girlfriend drama anymore. Set boundaries. And you know no one is not gonna make this any easier on you. He wants you back and maybe he hasn't fully expressed that to you, but if he wants you back fully, I believe he'll do what he has to do. Whatever that may be. You need to be prepared for that because that's what's going to happen if you don't either put a stop to it, or you make some type of decision."

Joe is right but what he doesn't know is that I've already made my decision and the decision is to stay with Aubrey. I'm going to make my marriage work, and we're going to get through this. Like he said, I need to set boundaries so that's exactly what I'm going to do with Chris from now on.

I sit up, wiping my face. "Thank you for this conversation."

"You're welcome." He dabs a Kleenex on my face, getting the access tears off. "My ex taught me to dab, not wipe."

He laughs which makes me laugh.

"I know you really haven't known me that long, but I feel like the whole thing in Vegas was supposed to happen. I feel like I was placed in your life, but I don't know what for. Maybe it's to help you with this situation, and maybe it's for something else, but what I'm getting at is, I know you hired me to be your bodyguard but anytime you need to talk, I will listen. It doesn't seem like you have many people like that in your life, so I just want you to know if you ever need me, besides being your security, I'll be your friend when you need it." Joe says to me, sincere and I feel his words in my heart.

"I appreciate that Joe. Thank you."

What did you think about what happened in this chapter??