To Have, To Hold, and To Leave: A Bryce Hall FanFiction «completed»

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"I am alone. Kate wanted to buy some stuff for the baby," he replied, looking over at me and squeezing my hand. "I'm not sure why that matters, though. Kate is my wife, so anything that affects me affects her, too."
"No, I know. Sorry," Addison said. "Do you, uh, are you busy? Can we meet? I don't feel like this is something that I should tell you over the phone."
"I can't meet right now. Kate and I have lunch with Josh and Nessa in just a few hours, and I should really clean some of this mess up from the kids before she gets home."
"Can I come over, then? I can help you clean, and I'll be gone before Kate gets back," she assured him. 
"Addi, no," he sighed. "I can't do this with you. What was so important that you had to call?"

She sighed, and I had no idea what she could be about to say. "Bryce, I really think that we should wait until we can do this face to face."
I could feel Bryce tensing up against me. "Damn it, Addison. Can you please just spit it out?"
"I hired someone."
"What the hell do you mean?" Bryce asked, his expression never softening. 
"Calm down," I whispered.
"I hired an investigator," Addison clarified. 
"An investigator?" Bryce exclaimed. "For what?" 
"For you. For your divorce. I, um, well, I know Kate, and I thought that your divorce had the potential to become pretty nasty. I wanted to make sure that your kids wouldn't be taken away from you. I know how much you love being a dad, and I didn't want Kate to take that away from you," she rambled. 

I tried to stand up from the table. I wasn't really interested in hearing any of the rest of this conversation, but Bryce reached out to stop me. "Wait," he mouthed. "Is there a point to this, Addison, or are you just telling me that you didn't think that I could get any sort of custody on my own because you think that I'm that bad of a parent?"
"No, it wasn't really about you, Bryce. I just wanted you to have something soundproof."
Bryce chuckled wryly. "This sounds ridiculous. Can you just give it up, Addison? I'm not leaving my wife."
"Then don't! That's not my problem anymore, Bry. What is my problem is that this investigator found out a whole lot of things," she said, changing the course of the conversation. 

"Alright, go ahead. I'll humor you," Bryce finally blurted out. 
"Well, for starters, Kate moved from Sugarcreek, Ohio."
Bryce shook his head. "I knew that already, Addison. It's offensive that you think that I would really know that little about my own wife. I mean, I have been with her for almost twenty years."
"Anyways, I also found out a few more things. Kate Williams isn't her real name."
Oh my, God. I stood up again, shrugging Bryce's grip off of my arm. 

He followed me through the house, never taking the phone off the speaker. "What's her real name then?"
"Kathryn Williamson."
Bryce looked at me as if to ask if it was true.
I nodded. It wasn't something that I had hidden intentionally; I had it legally changed before I left Ohio so that I could get a fresh start. After all, that had been the entire reason for the move to LA.
"What else did you find?" I could tell that Bryce's curiosity was getting the better of him, but there was nothing that Addison could say that I was hiding. 

"This might sound a little bit crazy, especially since we were at her graduation ceremony."
"Will you just tell me more?" Bryce spat out. 
"She was never even enrolled at UCLA. Not as Kathryn Williamson, and not as Kate Williams."

I reached over, muting the phone. "This is ridiculous. Do you believe this?" 
"She's obviously got some more to say, so if you could please let her speak, that would be great," he snapped at me, unmuting the phone before speaking to Addison. "That's insane. What was she doing all those days that she had class? What about the graduation ceremony? God, maybe our whole marriage has been a lie, huh?
"That's only the beginning! Did you know that she never took any other deliveries for Postmates? She only brought that one to you," Addison murmured, clearly excited that she was 'exposing' me for some kind of monster.

I stood up once again, waddling over to the staircase as I shook my head. This was unbelievably. I couldn't believe that she was really stooping this low to get back with Bryce. 
Bryce was quicker than I would have liked, and he cut me off, standing in the middle of the stairs in front of me. "Are you sure that you're not just saying all of this? I know that you were kind of upset that I told you that Kate and I weren't getting divorced anymore."
"I'm positive. This guy is literally the best. Everything that he has is verifiable," she assured him. 

Verifiable, my ass. The only thing that had been true was that my birth name wasn't Kate Williams. The rest of it had been bullshit.
"I don't want to listen to this," I mouthed. 
"Too bad," he mouthed back. "If she lied about all of these things, how has she accomplished anything? I mean, the top forty under forty? How the hell does that happen?" he laughed. 
"I don't know," she laughed back. "Even better question is how she ended up on the list and I didn't."
"Well, you know that those panels are biased. Did you have anything else that he found? I would love to be able to confront her with all of this. If it all checks out, maybe we'll get that divorce after all."

I hit him quickly. "Ow," he mouthed. 
"Well, this one is going to be the hard one, Bryce. I really don't know how I'm supposed to say this to you. God, I don't know how I would say this to anyone," she stammered.
"Oh, just say it," he sighed.
"Kate was cheating on you."