One More Night

“Are you fucking kidding me?” the words had came out of his mouth before Marc even knew what was going on. He’d become so used to coming home to an empty apartment that he usually just started flinging stuff – his clothes off if he was going to crawl into bed, his jacket to wherever it landed, keys in the direction of the table, etcetera – and today was no different. Practice had been awful; the coach had skated them into the ground, Marc had a killer headache, and on top of all that with Robyn having been gone all of last week, he didn’t remember what she’d told him, so he’d assumed something family related, he’d been missing Bree more than ever. Enough to get out his cell, even compose a text, but he couldn’t bring himself to send it. Not with all the lying he’d done to her.

So as soon as he’d got in the car home he’d decided that downing some Advil and taking a nap was what he needed. He didn’t know when Robyn was due back – if she even came home to him, she spent nights at her friends’ homes too – and honestly he didn’t really care. Once he was in the door his jacket came off, followed by his shoes, then his button-down shirt, and his T-shirt, and padded to the kitchen to get some Avil in nothing but his jeans. After that he stumbled into his dark bedroom and flicked on the light, ready to crawl into bed and stay there for the rest of the day.

Only to find out that he wasn’t alone in the apartment.

Whoever the hell this guys was, was about ready to pass out – that was the first thing Marc noticed once his brain started to function. Panic was written all over his features, and Marc could see a sheen of sweat appearing just beneath his hairline. He recoiled at the thought that it wasn’t what the sweat was from, but Marc didn’t want to think about that at this particular moment.

In complete contrast to the man, Robyn appeared cool, calm and collected, as if Marc hadn’t just caught his wife with somebody else. In their goddamn bed, nonetheless. The fake-blue of her eyes was cold, and while she held the sheet up Marc knew she wasn’t doing it for her own modesty – it was probably more for their sake than hers. She’d never been huge on restraint, but somehow sensed that Marc might just blow a fuse in an extreme way.

“Marc,” but she had the nerve to use a condescending tone with him, as if he was blowing something out of proportion. He’d been trying these past few months, he really had; making more effort to try and spend time with her, he’d been turning down going out with the guys a lot lately, even though most of the time his efforts were fruitless. Usually Robyn didn’t bother coming home so he could take her out or actually talk with her. He’d even tried going to work once to surprise her and take her out for lunch, because he’d done that when they’d started dating and she’d loved it. Even then she did her best to shut him down, bringing to his mind that Bree had always lit up when he’d done the same thing. She’d appreciated any little thing he’d went out of his way to do for her, where Robyn seemed to resent every thing about him. He’d let Bree go for all of this misery that was his marriage. But as much as it killed him he’d actually tried to fix it, even though Bree was always there in his mind.

He knew it was stupid to hold onto the thought of the brunette from Thunder Bay – it had been four months since he’d last seen her – but he still did. That was why it had killed him to try and work things out with Robyn when she seemed so uninterested in reciprocating his effort when he could’ve had Bree.

“Don’t you fucking dare. You can’t turn this one on me Robyn; things haven’t been great between us, I get it. But I’ve been trying – you can’t deny it,” he cut her off, and she seemed surprised. Usually Marc was the type to lay down and let people walk all over him, and they both knew it, but this was the last straw for him.

“You know what? I get it. I get that when things were shitty for us neither of us were happy. But this? When I’ve been doing everything I can to try? This is like a slap in the fucking face Robyn. I did everything I could to try and fix things, and you weren’t even willing to talk to me,” he nearly spat the words out at her, shaking. With a pointed look the other man was scrambling for his clothes and hightailing it out of the apartment, before Marc turned back to his wife.

“Don’t even start Marc – you weren’t trying to fix things earlier, now you decide to try making plans once in a blue moon and it’s ‘poor you’?” she mocked him, getting his temper up.

“How long?”

She blinked a few times, before he realized she didn’t understand his question. “How long has… that been going on?”

“Since last season,” she mumbled, and while Marc’s heart broke a little bit it didn’t hurt as badly as he’d thought it would. He’d always figured if something like this were ever to happen he’d be crushed. Instead he just felt a pang of remorse. It wasn’t the earth-shattering, life-ending blow he’d always anticipated being cheated on would accompany.

“Why even bother then Robyn? Why drag it out? Why not just tell me that you were done with all of this? I mean, instead of screwing around and making me think that you were just avoiding me,” he asked, and she rolled her eyes at him.

“Good God Marc, stop trying to make yourself out to be such a hero. It’s not like you haven’t thought about doing the same thing! I know what you guys talk about, and you seem to forget that I’ve known you for a long time,” she shot back, but Marc could tell that she really didn’t have anything as ammunition. The venom that had been in her previous arguments wasn’t there, because as far as the rest of the world knew Marc was just a goody two-shoe, small town kid, devoted to his wife, working his ass off to try and make it work.

Being the stupid ass he was, he was going to give the ammunition to her and even load the gun.

“Hell, Robyn I’m no better than you and I’m not trying to make myself better than you,” the shock written all over her face was almost painful, but Marc felt like somebody had suddenly freed him from all of the pain, guilt and frustration he’d been suffering from for the past six and a half months. It was the first time in that long he’d been one hundred percent, totally honest, and he didn’t know a better feeling in the world than what he felt at that moment.

“WHAT?”

“I cheated, okay? When things were really shitty this summer and we weren’t even talking, I cheated. I felt like shit about it, and I still do, but I can’t take it back. Neither one of us was doing anything to try and fix things, we weren’t talking, you weren’t putting in any effort and neither was I, so I cheated; it wasn’t something I should’ve done and I’m not proud of it but I did it. ” he shrugged, realizing that he didn’t really feel bad about it. He felt bad for going behind Robyn’s back, yes, but he didn’t feel bad about what he’d shared with Bree.

“You fucking son-of-a-bitch,” she screamed, launching herself at him and swinging. Marc let a few of her punches hit him before calmly catching her wrists and holding her still. She was fairly strong, but no match for Marc.

“You bastard. You were screwing around on me! How could you Marc? We’re married!”

“So now that comes into play? Where was that whole married mentality when you had that asshole in our fucking bed?” he shot back, feeling guilty as she shrunk away from him. He released her wrists, not wanting to frighten or hurt her, but the look in her eyes was far from either. She backed up about two steps before crossing her arms, her hard gaze never leaving his face, the sneer on her lips.

“What was I supposed to do, Marc? It’s not like you were there for me,” she scoffed at him, pulling on a t-shirt and a pair of sweats, probably so as not to feel like she was more vulnerable than he was at that moment. Robyn liked being in control, Marc knew from first hand experience.

“That’s a load of shit. I’ve bent over fucking backwards since we’ve got back to New York to fix things. I’ve made time for you – denying interviews and stuff with the team, not going out with the guys – and you’ve bailed. You refused to talk with me about it, and to be honest I give up. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do to somehow make you happy Robyn. I’ve done everything I can think of, and I’m never enough,”

He was exasperated. He was tired. He was so done with all of this that Marc didn’t even care anymore. He’d been through hell and back with Robyn, all for her to try and turn her cheating into his fault, when she hadn’t been faithful for nearly half of the time they were married. He’d cheated, and it was wrong, but at the same time she hadn’t been trying to fix things either, and any of the minute attempts she might have made were nothing like those he had made while she’d been screwing around on him.

“Chad makes me happy,”

Marc winced at her reaction, hearing it so blatantly was like she’d swung at him and landed a punch to his solar plexus. Honesty was good, but that was brutal; it cut right into all the insecurities he had, but he did his best to swallow that and keep himself together.

“Good for you. But you’re gonna need to sign the divorce papers first,”

They stood in silence as Marc’s words sunk in. He didn’t even know he was going to say them; it felt like lately he wasn’t in control of his own body. Thoughts came from weird places, words came out of his mouth without him being able to do so much as filter them… it was more than Marc could handle.

“Excuse me?”

“Don’t be stupid Robyn; I’m not going to stay married to you so you can fuck whatever his name is. This obviously isn’t working, so it needs to end,”

“This is about that girl, isn’t it?” she accused him, and Marc ran a hand through his hair. Now that he’d come clean, everything was going to be ‘about that girl’ and he knew it. It wouldn’t matter to Robyn that she’d been sleeping with someone else for almost a year; according to her, he would have ruined everything with ‘that girl’. He just hoped Bree could stay ‘that girl’ to Robyn so she wouldn’t find herself under attack.

“Good God, Robyn; I haven’t seen or talked to her in months, okay? Cut me a little slack, wanting a divorce considering I just found you with somebody else in our bed, when you’ve been with him for half the time we’ve been married, I admitted to sleeping with somebody else, and to top it all off we’re both completely miserable? Seems pretty damn rational to me,” he groaned, but Robyn shook her head.

“We need to give this a real shot first, Marc,” she insisted. He didn’t know where this came from, but he didn’t want to deal with it now. He was done with trying when he wasn’t appreciated, and he wasn’t going to keep giving their relationship a shot if she was going to keep sleeping around.

“We’ll talk about this later. As of right now? I want a divorce,” with that he grabbed his overnight bag and threw a few things into it before snatching his keys off of the counter, slipping into his jacket and shoes and leaving the apartment. He couldn’t stand the thought of spending another moment in there, and even as he made his way down the stairs to get to his car he was on his phone. First to text McDonagh and see if he could bum at his place for a few days. Then, after a long hesitation, he dialed Jared. He needed to come clean to his family, too. Before they heard whatever fucked-up version of the story Robyn was going to tell them.