I sent him one final text: “You said you were sleeping with Brianna, so I just helped you finish the move.” After that, the banging stopped and the street fell into a heavy, uneasy silence.
I assumed he had crawled back to her place to lick his wounds, but at 3:00 AM, my phone buzzed with an unrecognized number. I answered with a racing heart, expecting his voice, but a woman’s shaky, tearful tone met my ear instead.
“Is this Skylar? This is Brianna. I think your boyfriend is passed out in my front yard.”
I sat up straight in bed, the smell of fresh wood from the new door frames still lingering in the air. “Is he injured?” I asked, the instinct to care for him dying a slow death.
“He is wasted or something, and he was screaming at my door about how I ruined his life before the neighbors called the cops. But Skylar, I found something in one of the bags you dropped off that you need to see before the police get here.”
A cold pit formed in my stomach as she continued. “What did you find, Brianna?”
“Bank records, a jewelry case, copies of your social security card, and wire transfer slips for twenty-eight thousand dollars. There is also an envelope with your name on it, but Skylar, he told me you two broke up months ago and that he only stayed there for the lease.”
I closed my eyes and realized the infidelity was just the tip of the iceberg. “Don’t move a muscle,” I told her while grabbing my keys. “Tell the police he stole your identity and documents, I am coming there now.”
When I arrived in Scottsdale, the flashing lights of a patrol car illuminated the street where Dorian sat on the curb with a paramedic checking his vitals. He didn’t look like the charismatic man I loved; he looked like a common thief caught in a net of his own making.
Brianna walked toward me holding the black suitcase like it was filled with poison. She wasn’t the polished homewrecker I had imagined, but a pale, terrified woman who had been played just as hard as I was.
“I am so sorry,” she whispered as she handed me the bag. “I know saying that doesn’t fix any of this.”
“Did you actually sleep with him?” I asked, needing the blunt truth. She looked at her feet and nodded slowly.
“For four months. He told me you were unstable and obsessive, and that you were only together because of some legal contract you forced on him.”