Invisible Strings

Chapter One

Delaney's POV

Change is a good thing...

That's the line I'd heard so many times over the years that I'd long ago lost count. Don't get me wrong, sometimes change is definitely a good thing. Getting a promotion, getting a raise, having kids... all of those were good changes. But other times, change caused a world of heartache. Especially when there are kids involved. And with the changes that were going on in my life and that of my kids right now, it was hard to see what the good in that was going to be. How was it a good thing when the man you were married to for the past eight years tells you he's going to the shop to talk to his employer about something that came up and never comes back? How is it a good thing when you have to tell your twins, Cloe and Colton, that their daddy –who they think hung the sun, the moon, and all the stars– decided that he doesn't want to be part of your family anymore, that he would rather spend his time with a woman ten years younger than him and doesn't "bitch at him about his alcohol and sex addictions"?; That's a direct quote from him by the way in case you were wondering what kind of asshole he had turned into...

In times like this, the easiest thing to do –and the hardest and scariest all at once– is to distance yourself from the place you have called home for the past eight years, to distance yourself from the friends you thought you had made, to distance yourself from the reminder that you failed at marriage; even if doing that means that you have to move back to the small town you grew up in, leaving the city life you have always known. For as long as I can remember, all I had ever wanted was to leave the small rural Georgia town that I'd grown up in behind in exchange for the hustle and bustle of city life and all the perks that came with living in a heavily populated area. In fact, I didn't even bother applying to colleges if they were not in major cities –a fact that had pissed my parents off since they had always hoped I would follow in their footsteps and become a Georgia Bulldog; instead, I'd become a 49er at UNC-Charlotte.

Fast forward to graduating and starting our careers, Alex and I had rented a small apartment that was close to both his job and mine and began making a life together that I thought was the stuff out of fairytales. He went to work with his cousin William –one of the up and coming drivers in NASCAR– handling his PR and learning everything there is to know about the sport and how to spin things in favor of the driver. I went to work at the elementary school, starting out as a teacher's assistant before being hired as a third grade teacher and later becoming assistant principal. It was a job that I loved dearly, that had taught me patience, and that everything that seems a certain way isn't always as it appears. Case in point: My marriage. That sure as shit wasn't what it appeared. I thought we were happy, that we were the ideal couple. Turns out that wasn't the case at all.

"Mama, daddy is here!" Cloe shouted from the small porch of the home Alex and I had brought when we found out I was pregnant. It had been the place that I thought we would watch our kids grow up in. The place that I thought would hold every memory we made as a family. And it did have some good ones –telling Alec that I was pregnant with twins, decorating their rooms, bringing them home after they were born, their first words and first steps and their first day of school– but there was no way that I could stay in that house, a place that was going to be a reminder of how naive I had been to think that his trips to "the shop" had been strictly about work.

I turned in the direction that Cloe was pointing and saw his shiny black BMW coming down the tree lined street. The car had been a gift from William for getting him out of a PR nightmare when William had been caught with a woman in his hauler that wasn't his long-time girlfriend, Erin. Alex had spun the story into one that made him look like he was the cheater and not William, causing him and I to argue when the news came out. Of course Alex had denied that it was the truth, that he would never cheat on me. Then three weeks later, he pulled his "i need to go to the shop" shit and never came back, calling me after two days and telling me that he was in love with someone else; that someone being the woman that William had been caught with.