At No Time || Bruno Mars

60

Peter was in a daze.

The kind of daze that only some kind of divine intervention could pull one from. He had been in it for nearly two weeks, though he was positive it might just have been closer to a month. Very often, as he was doing in the precise moment, he sat on his couch, a bottle of vodka or rum or any kind of digestible alcohol he could get his hands on, sipping it until what he felt insider became more and more numb, doing what he could to make it feel as though it had vanished even though he knew it was still alive, throbbing, angry.

He stared out the window of his apartment building, the traffic beneath him silent as he could hear nothing but his own thoughts, loud and badgering and near evil. If he could shut them off he would, but that would not undo what had been done.

Over and over his mind kept replaying what had happened, what Trystan had revealed to him, and how he had reacted. In a better place, it all could have simply been a nightmare, that the height of finally getting back with the woman he loved most had not suddenly come crashing down in a fiery explosion that no amount of extinguishing could quell.

But he did not live in a perfect world, and as he found out, Trystan was not perfect either. She was far from it.

Peter felt himself stumbling backward, the weight of her words both massive and intangible at the same time. The heartbeat in his ears overpowered Trystan's speaking; he saw her mouth moving, her hand reaching out to him, but he moved away.

June, that was his mother's name. Through a will he was not sure where he had obtained, he finally found his voice, and he stammered, "What . . . what are you telling me right now, Trystan?" The next words made bile rise from his stomach. "Raina . . . she's . . . she's my daughter?"

It was like the air had been knocked out of him, his vision blurring and the world about him seeming to tilt when Trystan's hands wrung together and her eyes turned downcast as she answered him quietly and honestly, "Yes."

Peter had heard her, but he did not hear her. He could not fathom standing there in that moment, in front of the woman he loved, and have her reveal she had been dishonest with him for four years.

"You were lying to me?" His voice was quiet, the words paining him to say. The only woman he had allowed himself to trust had not been truthful? If there was a place to sit down and digest what had just been exposed to him, he did not know where it was as he struggled to stand through his unsettled cognition.

He then became enraged, his disbelief swelling into animosity so suddenly it caught him off guard. He could tell Trystan had become even more uneasy in his presence, but she stood in place as he neared her, their faces close enough to kiss, but there were no thoughts of loving her in the moment. "All this time you've been fucking lying to me?"

Trystan inhaled shakily. "Bruno, please, you have to understand–,"

"I don't have to "understand" shit!" he exploded, throwing up his hands. "What the hell, Trystan? I have to find out from a three-year-old that you've been lying to me this entire time? That you had another man in here playing "Daddy" with a child that's mine? Why would you do that? What the fuck is wrong with you?!"

Trystan began to cry then, and with eyes Peter abruptly could not stand to look at, she gazed at him helplessly, "Bruno, please, it's . . . please let me explain–,"

"This whole fucking time . . ." He paced away from her, running his fingers through his hair and clutching at the curls. "I've-I've been staring my own kid in her goddamn face this entire time and you lied about it! You lied to my fucking face, Trystan!"