Challenge Number: #1 - Rocky Horizon

Date Posted: 2.7.13

Fandom: Twilight

Rating: M just in case

Genre: AH

Content Descriptors: Hurt/Comfort

Character Pairing: Leah/Sam

Divorce.

One word was all it took to make me wonder how rocky the next part of my life would turn out to be.

Sam and I were together nine years and married for five of those. So when he asked for a divorce—for the second time—I gave it to him. I didn't want to at first. My initial reaction was devastation. How would I get my own place? Where would I go? I couldn't think past the next day, let alone that night.

Our boys were just starting school–Collin in first grade and Brady in preschool.

Before Sam and I got married, we had spent three years dating and one year living together—my last year in high school and all throughout my college career. Summer of 2003 was the start of my eighteen-month program of Business Management. After that first semester I changed my major to Early Childhood Education, which was a two-year program.

In 2004, I broke it off with Sam, before my birthday in September, because I wasn't feeling that he loved me or I him. He was distant, or it seemed that way. Sam hardly talked. It was like he was nervous for some reason.

On the Wednesday before my birthday, he called asking me to come to his place because he had something to ask me. I was getting myself ready to go to school, because it was professional Wednesday, I had to dress up. I didn't want to, but he was crying on the phone so I decided it couldn't hurt.

When I showed up he let me in the house, begging me to take him back. Sam got down on one knee, pulled out a little black box, and asked me to marry him. I looked at him then the ring. I flatly said, "No." I couldn't. Not only did I have a date with a guy from school, but also I wanted my own life for a bit.

I left from his house, heading straight to school, knowing in my heart I did the right thing.

Friday came with a rush of excitement–the night was going to be a blast. I went to a college party for the very first time with a few friends and the guy I liked. He was a talker, and sweet-talked his way into my pants.

The next morning I felt awful. I felt used. I felt like my heart had died the way a flower does after it wilts. Heath and I had sex twice that night, and though he orgasmed each time, I did not. So yes, I felt like dog shit. No, lower than dog shit, actually.

I couldn't believe I let him use me like that. I left his home, not caring if he retrieved his car from wherever he parked it the night before. I didn't care what he had to say to me Monday at school, either.

I was fucked up in my head and he contributed to it. Heath didn't care that I didn't have a good time. All he cared about was that he got what he was after. Yet, he had the audacity to call me a bitch because I didn't take him to his car. Like I said, I didn't care, because it was clear by his actions he didn't.

I went on with my schooling and my life. Working and doing what I thought I should as an individual. I didn't worry anymore about what my classmates were doing after school. They brought drama into my life. I didn't like it, so I stopped it as soon as it came.

I was doing my best to move on from Sam and Heath until I got a phone call from Sam's mother, telling me he was hit by a car and in the hospital. Looking back now, he had manipulated me. Sam was fine. He didn't have any broken bones, no stitches, nothing.

I took him back, thinking he was the only one for me. I thought Sam was the only man that could make me orgasm. I thought he was the only man that would and could love me. See how stupid that sounds? I didn't know any better being so young and naive about relationships. Sam was my first boyfriend that didn't pressure me into having sex with him.

He looked downright pitiful in that hospital bed. My parents were against me taking him back but never expressed why I shouldn't. This was one lesson I had to learn on my own, I guess. I wasn't a teenager anymore so they didn't have to tell me what to do. Though their input would've made a big difference–I'm sure of it.

Protecting my feelings didn't help me. The lies made me ache more than the facts. My father, Harry, once told me, "I'd rather be told the truth than a lie, because I will always find out the truth." I would rather have had a resentful revelation than a hundred painful lies that hid the truth.

That's exactly what Sam did. He would come home from work, then go straight to the bedroom for a nap. I wouldn't get a "Hi honey, I'm home. How's your day?" or a kiss to acknowledge me.

He certainly acknowledged the boys but it wasn't, as a father should. He acted more like a friend to his sons. He still doesn't act much like a father figure.

We had talked about starting a family the summer of 2004. Sure enough, we did. In March of 2005, I graduated with my associate's degree. Sam and I bought a house together in May with only a month left to get it ready for our baby.

While I was pregnant, I worked in a daycare called Little Angels. Working there gave me a bit of a life and experience. Because of my degree, I was hired as a preschool teacher to three and four-year-olds.

I worked until I delivered Collin. Once my maternity leave was up, I returned back to work. I was back with the preschoolers, trying to get back into a normal routine with them. They seemed less inclined to listen to me, as if my authority had been replaced. My boss saw how stressed I was, so she decided to place me with the one-year-olds.

Being with the younger children gave me a little more confidence in my job performance. It also helped that I was only one room away from Collin. First time mother syndrome had kicked in; I didn't want to be too far from him.

Collin was such a good baby. He began sleeping through the night at four weeks old. He didn't fuss for anything. Collin spoiled me rotten.

In February of 2006, I started to vomit. When weeks had past and I showed no signs of recovering, my co-workers became concerned. Some even suggested I may be pregnant, but I was in complete denial. There was no way I could be pregnant again. We had been safe. He always wore a condom.

When another week went by, and I was still vomiting, I decided to buy a pregnancy test on my lunch break one day. I spent the rest of my lunch hour at home. After eating some leftover chicken and rice, I went to the bathroom to pee on the stick. While I waited for the results, I took a shower. Half way through, I peeked at the test results.

Shock was all that went through me when I saw the positive pink line. I wasn't ready to have another baby. Collin was only seven months old. That wasn't the plan. I cried in the shower for what felt like hours.

When I returned to work, I had a few minutes left on my lunch break to spare. I decided to spend them hugging my precious first born because at that point I had no idea how I was going to manage one-on-one time with two babies under the age of two.

I was going to miss that precious time with Collin. The best times we had were when daddy, Sam, was working night shift. Collin and I had a routine down. Adding a second person to that routine would be disruptive.

Sam and I hadn't talked much about it, but he mentioned adoption or abortion. When I heard the word abortion, my exact words were, "HELL NO! I'm not killing a living person." Thinking about adoption, wasn't really an option since we already had one child. Why would we give our second baby up for adoption?

The only decision left, well, was that we were keeping the baby. It may have been hard, but we somehow managed. I'm not really sure when things started going south.

Sam barely took care of the boys when I asked him to. The few times I had asked, he became so angry that he would go out to the shed and stay there until I put the kids to bed. The shed was his man cave. Since he didn't support me, the choices I made, or those that we supposedly made together, I felt like a single mother–only I was married to someone I barely knew.

Knowing she would understand how I felt, the first person I told was my mom. On the outside looking in, she sympathized with me that the road ahead was going to be rough. Sam, however, was indifferent and his lack of support caused me to spiral deeper into a depressed state for the duration of the pregnancy. Because of this, my midwife put me on an antidepressant in hopes that I would feel better. In a way, I did.

As my belly grew larger, reality started to hit. During my pregnancy, my father use to say, "With one baby, there's all kinds of romance in it. When the second one comes, the romance is gone." He made sense, but he also made me feel horrible, like my heart was ripped out of my chest.

My mother, Sue, planned a baby shower for me to replace the baby items we had pitched. We needed a new crib since Collin was still using the first one. Brady was going to be a fall baby, so he needed warm clothes.

Becoming a stay at home mom was what I thought was right for our family of four to save money for things such as food, diapers, and utility bills. One of the perks about working at a daycare was the discount rate for employees. It still took almost half my check to cover it. I, however, do not work there anymore. I thought that would be how any job I got would be–only bringing home enough to cover the childcare expenses. At first, Sam agreed to me staying at home, but once the boys were out of diapers it seemed the only thing that mattered to him was that I get a job outside of the home.

We didn't live in an area with buses and he had to be at work earlier than I would have to be. I also didn't want to leave my kids at home or get them up earlier for all of us to have to make the trip to and from work. We did have another car, but it died before we had a chance to fix it and I wasn't about to drive the Pontiac we bought two years prior. He had turned that nice car into a smokey trashcan.

Sam was ungrateful that I stayed home and took care of the boys. The memory of one of our fights is still fresh in my mind.

I'm in the kitchen cooking dinner, when I hear a door slam then a huff on the other side of the wall, letting me know Sam's come home from work. Since the kitchen area is small with barely enough room for two people, he doesn't come in. I let out a breath.

But then I hear the annoyed tone of his voice coming from the living room. "Why are there always toys scattered about?"

I stay in the kitchen to avoid him. I see his figure standing in the doorway out of the corner of my eye. I'm stirring noodles and chicken together. My stomach knots up.

"Leah!" He says louder making me jump. I hated it when he came home like this.

"I'm cooking dinner, Sam." I keep my voice calm. I don't want Collin and Brady to hear us yelling at each other.

He takes a step closer to me. The tension sizzles off of him like butter sizzling in a pan. I was scared like he's going to hit me. The only thought that goes through my mind was, "Hit me one time, asshole and I'm gone while my dad comes over here to knock your block off your shoulders."

I can tell he wants to do something to me but doesn't. I finish with the noodles and chicken, grab bowls down for the four of us, and fill two up for the boys to have, then fill Sam's and mine. I place all the bowls on the table in hopes that we would have a family dinner.

Nope. The boys sat with me while Sam took his bowl to the couch to watch television. That annoyed me but I didn't say anything because I knew it would end up in an argument in front of the most adorable little men, happily eating. I didn't want to have a cry-fest on my hands.

He was ungrateful in the way he would ask me of my days activities. He had an angry tone, like he despised coming home to a family. Yes, the house was left a mess at times, but I ALWAYS picked up when the boys went to sleep. They were young- playtime was playtime.

Cleaning could be done during quiet time–it gave ME something to do while they were napping. Sam never acknowledged the positive side of me staying home. He didn't recognize the work I did do around the house. He thought I was being lazy.

I couldn't see past the end of my nose at first. I was crushed. I was hurting. I didn't think I would end up being a single mother of two boys at the age of twenty-six.

It was me giving all the time. Not receiving the gratitude at all from the one person I thought loved me outside of my family.

I saw the benefits in what I was doing, such as potty training our children without using too much force; feeding them what I wanted them to eat–not what a daycare might provide–and bonding with my children at a very young age. Yet, I couldn't see the horrible things he did in our relationship: he wouldn't have a serious conversation, he stopped giving me any kind of affection, and he also was more committed to weed than our family.

Three weeks after we separated, he had a new girl. Her name was Bella. Learning her name made me think about the times he would talk about her to me when we were still together, so when Sam called their dates "play dates" because he had the kids with him; I knew right then something was off.

A week after I moved out of the house, Sam and Bella moved in. I had come to the conclusion that he had moved on way before he said he wanted the divorce.

He cheated on me!

Instead of sadness, I was angry and stayed angry for quite a few months after that. Every time Sam and I would discuss something pertaining to our divorce papers, I would get very emotional to the point of wanting to hit him.

I'm glad to have gone through all that I did with Sam, because I am a stronger woman, mother, and person for it.