I need some advice. Sorry in advance, its pretty long.

Back Story: I met a man in January of 2017 and for the sake of discretion we will call him…Shawn. I met him through work. I am the secretary for the company I work for. I work in the office at a cleaning company, and he got hired as a cleaner. It’s just a small cleaning company and almost 100% of our employees are felons or have done jail time at some point in their life and our company is one of the few that hires “jail birds”. As the secretary, all of the workers/cleaners (mostly men) know me and are very protective of me in a sense, since they are all older men (40+) and I am 23. This particular man got hired in late January of 2017, almost 1 year ago. He was 39, I was 22. For some odd reason, I became immediately attracted to him. He was fine as hell, for a 40 year old man. Even though I knew he was a felon, even though I knew he didn’t have shit to his name, didn’t have a car or money or his own place, even though I knew he had been in and out of jail and prison since he was pretty much 18, even though something about him seemed a little….not right, we started messing around. Discreetly, of course…because, duh, I’m the company secretary, I would die if any other employees found out.Well, guess what. They found out. And the fire quickly spread. After about 2 weeks , everyone knew about me and this man fooling around. We figured since everyone already knew, then whatever, to hell with it. We started dating. Now, what I DIDN’T know, was the man was a thief. (He had been locked up for forging checks to bury his older brother that committed suicide because his family had no money to do it. That should have raised some flags for me but it didn’t, at least not right away.) But anyway, the man was a thief.

He lived in this rooming house where he rented a room and shared the common areas and bathrooms with like 4 other people, who also rented rooms. There was a couple of times that I would go to his house and leave my wallet inside my purse in his bedroom, and we would go into the living room to mix and mingle a little with his house mates, only for me to go home and wake up the next morning and find out there’s a hundred dollar bill missing from my wallet. This happened on two separate occasions, both times it was a hundred dollar bill that went missing, and both times he played the dumb it-wasn’t-me role, insisting that one of the other guys in the house had to have snuck in his room, somehow undetected, and gotten into my wallet while no one was paying attention. I was furious, I threatened his roommates and all kind of crazy shit. I was so pissed, and he was right there along with me, “I swear I wish I knew who took your money baby, why would somebody wanna steal from you, when I found out I’m going to beat their ass”, the whole shebang, right?

Meanwhile, there’s another guy who gets hired at the job. We’ll call him Ant. He’s my age, maybe just 2 or 3 years older. He doesn’t have a record, surprisingly, and despite him being my age he was extremely polite and respectful to my boss, he was polite to me, he just seemed like a guy that isn’t really like this new generation of young men these days. He spoke properly, he didn’t wear his pants around his knee caps, he had a car and his own place, wasn’t a hood rat, and he was just the sweetest thing. So, anyway, this new young guy gets hired. I didn’t notice him checking me out but SHAWN most definitely did. He didn’t bust him out in front of everybody but he kinda on the side let him know when no one was around, like yo, that’s my girl, don’t even think about it. And at this point I was so infatuated with my “boyfriend” I would never have even considered giving that guy the time of day, because I thought I was just soooo in love with SHAWN. So the young guy was respectful and he was like oh ok, my bad bro, I didn’t know she was your lady. Cool. End of discussion.

Fast forward a couple of months, now its April 2017. I had JUST found a house that I liked and had signed a lease to rent. And of course, I was not going to have my boyfriend living in a boarding house with random people so I decided, hell, who cares if we’ve only been together less than 3 months, this is my man and I would rather have him living with me than with 4 other grown men. And it would’ve been hard to get his own place, because of his record. Nobody wants to lease to a felon. So I told him, come live with me, I got you.

The very first night we spent in the house together, was a Friday night. I was so happy because I didn’t have a lick of furniture besides my bed, but I had a place I could stick my key in the door and walk in whenever I wanted and could call my own. So we slept in my empty house, and we had the most amazing sex ever. Mind you, this is the FIRST NIGHT THERE. So after we are done having sex, I roll over and I’m just relaxing, facing the wall, with my eyes closed. He jumps up and tells me, “Babe I’m gonna go outside to smoke a cigarette.” Without even bothering to turn around and look at him, I said ok, cool, go ahead. He goes outside. 5 minutes pass, then 10, then 20. I’m wondering ‘damn how long does it take to smoke a cigarette?’ I peek outside, He is nowhere to be seen. I look out the side door, the man is gone. There’s a tiny convenience store on the corner about 2 blocks from my house. So I figure maybe he ran to the store for cigarettes or a snack or something. I lock the door and lay back down, assuming he will just knock when he gets back.

I fall asleep waiting, and I wake up the next morning and realize I’m still in the bed alone. Now mind you, he disappeared Friday night. So it is now Saturday morning. I had just gotten paid Friday when I got off work. When I woke up Saturday morning and realized he hadn’t come back, I threw on my coat to go outside and see what I could find out. Something told me to stick my hands in my jacket pockets. After I had gotten paid, I went and took care of my first month’s rent, and my other little bills that needed to be paid, before I met him at my house the night before. I had about 270 dollars left over, to feed myself and to just live off for the next couple of weeks, and I had stuck the cash in my jacket pocket. My jacket had been hanging on the closet door knob the night before when he “stepped out to smoke”, and I was rolled over towards the wall and was paying absolutely no attention.

And now, there was no money in my pockets, and no Shawn. It took me a second to realize the money was gone, and when I finally put 2 and 2 together, I was LIVID. Oh, I was ready to kill him. I blew his phone up, no answer, I texted him, no response. Left voicemails. He was GONE. And I knew he wasn’t coming back. I sat and cried, in my bed, for the rest of the weekend.

Everybody at work ended up finding out what he did to me. My boss was so smug because she told me he was no good and I didn’t believe her, because I was trying to give a criminal the benefit of the doubt. (She was the one who originally suggested that he was the one stealing my money the first couple times at the boarding house, but I defended him.) I was devastated that he did this to me, after all I had stuck up for him and I had taken this man into my home when he had NOTHING, not a dollar to his name.

So, fast forward a couple days after he disappears. It is now Wednesday. I wake up Wednesday morning and turn on my TV as I’m getting dressed for work, and who do I see with his mug shot spread all across FOX 59 news? You guessed it.

He had been arrested because someone had called the police to report a suspicious person (his stupid ass) lurking around a Family Dollar at 3am the night before. He already had a warrant out on him, so when the police pulled up to family dollar to investigate the ‘suspicious lurker’, he ran. They arrested him for running, and found out later that he had a warrant on him. So in my head I’m like, good, that’s what the bum gets, let him rot in prison. I turn off the TV and head to work.

When I get to work, Ant is sitting in the office talking to my boss. Now, by this time, Ant has already quit (he only lasted a couple weeks) BUT he would still come by the office every now and then, just to say hi to my boss, or check on her and see how she was doing, because he was just nice like that. So when I saw him sitting in there talking to her, I figured he had just come by to say hello. Turns out, he was looking for Shawn.

I guess he hadn’t seen the news yet so he had no idea that Shawn was in jail. He came by the office looking for him, because the day after he had robbed me, he had given Ant a call late at night and given him a sob story. He called this man and told him he had a part time job at Subway (a lie), and that he was having a hard time finding a ride up there to pick up his check. Ant agreed to take him up to Subway, even thought it was about 9:00 at night, Ant showed up to give the man a ride. Before Shawn got out of the car, he asked Ant, “let me borrow $20.00, and when I get my check out of here I’ll pay it right back to you., I swear.” So Ant believed him. Ant gave him his LAST 20 dollars, and Shawn got out the car and went into Subway. Ant waited, for about 45 minutes before he realized Shawn had duped him. Shawn went into Subway, and dipped out the other entrance door on the other side of the building, and left that poor dude out there waiting for him for a whole 45 minutes. He took off with that man’s LAST 20 DOLLARS. So now he was up at the office trying to figure out where Shawn was at. Plus my boss was giving him all the tea on how Shawn had done me dirty and robbed me and everything.

I was so embarrassed. I told him I had seen on the news that morning that Shawn had been arrested. And that’s when I realized, this man that I was dealing with was literally a demon. He really didn’t give a fuck about anyone but himself. I felt so bad for what he had done to poor Ant, If Shawn hadn’t taken off with my money too, I would’ve paid Ant back out of my own money. But now he had duped both of us, and he was nowhere to be found. After a couple of days of being locked up, this bum mustered enough courage to call my phone collect. On the free 2 minute phone call, he told me he had a dream that I was pregnant. At this point I’m like yea nigga whatever you can kiss my ass. You robbed me, I don’t wanna talk to you anymore. I hung up. But out of curiosity, I did take a pregnancy test.

And the test was positive. I was about 4 weeks along or so. I am still currently 9 months pregnant with this baby as we speak, and Shawn’s dumb ass is still in prison. Now, I’ll get to the point. Through all of this situation, I already knew Ant had always had a crush on me. He still does to this very day. Whenever he comes by to say hello to my boss, I see the way he looks at me. The way he speaks is not just a regular hello. Its an ‘I’m-sexually-attracted-to-you’ hello. He actually came by the office this morning, just about an hour ago. And I know its a little late in the game but I really want to get to know Ant, because hes the type of guy I should’ve been dating to begin with, instead of a 40 year old cokehead and liar. (After he got arrested I found out from his family that he was snorting coke while we were together, which would explain why he kept stealing cash from me.)

I was just too blind to see it at first, but Ant was a great guy. And I know he’s still attracted to me. Even if I am pregnant with the demon’s baby. I want to get to know him but I’m afraid he’ll turn me down because I dated the loser that stole his money and am now pregnant by him. I feel so embarrassed every time I see Ant. But he’s still very sweet to me. Should I attempt to talk and get to know Ant or should I just forget about it? I feel so ashamed of my ex’s stupid ass, and what he did, I feel like I don’t even deserve for a good guy to give me the time of day because I totally ignored the good guy to be with a dumb-ass. And now I;m having the dumb-asses baby. No nice guy wants pregnant damaged goods. I’m so sad.