Her tears were flowing nonstop, and the crowd began to soften. Soon enough, people around us started lecturing me.
“Be a decent human being. Take care of your son. That poor girl has already suffered enough after you assaulted her. Yet she didn’t ask for compensation. What more do you want?”
“If a kid just fell from the sky into my lap, I’d be celebrating for three days! So, why are you pretending you’re above all this? If you can’t afford to raise a kid, maybe don’t take off a woman’s clothes in the first place!”
Gwendolyn tried to defend me, but the more she talked, the worse it sounded. By the end, people were calling us a shameless couple, saying I handled the “dirty work,” and she cleaned up after me with hush money.
A vein in my temple throbbed so hard I thought it might explode. I held it in for as long as I could, then finally said, “I really am not an irresponsible person. But I need to make one thing very clear. I absolutely don't know you. I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. I really am. But has it occurred to you that you might be mistaking me for someone else?”