They disappear into the bathroom together.
Each second that passes feels like another crack splintering through my chest. I don’t need to see what happens behind that door. My imagination is enough.
Moments later, Patrick rushes back into frame, fumbling with his belt and moving like he can’t get away fast enough.
I shut off the phone, and for a moment I can’t even breathe. My chest tightens in a way that feels sharp and suffocating, like something inside me is trying to collapse inward.
The air in the car turns thick, my vision blurs, and my pulse thrums painfully under my skin. I press a hand to my chest, trying to breathe normally.
The images won’t leave me. They settle behind my eyes, clear and vivid, like the footage has branded itself into my mind. My husband leaned in; it wasn’t some unwanted advance like he had me believing.
He leaned in first.
He told me he never even kissed her.
It hurts in a way I wasn’t prepared for, because yesterday he touched me like I was the only woman in the world who mattered. Yesterday he cried into my arms, held me like he couldn’t breathe. I believed him when he said he regretted everything. I let him back into my life, in my bed, and in my body.
I thought we were healing. I thought we were finally piecing ourselves together. I was proud of him for giving up drinking before it escalated into a problem.
I believed that the cheating was a single, stupid, drunken mistake he barely remembered. I thought he was honest with me. I thought he was good.
But the video shatters everything. It knocks every bit of progress off its hinges until the only thing left is the truth I never wanted to look at head-on. He didn’t just cheat; he lied about it.
He didn’t confess because he couldn’t stand keeping it a secret. He confessed so he could twist the story, soften his guilt, and push some of the blame onto me. He made it sound like a moment of weakness instead of what it really was.
God. I actually apologized to him. I sat there and took responsibility for my mistakes, for what I did years ago, while he let me believe my choices somehow created the man who stood in that hallway with a woman who looked almost exactly like me.
The betrayal slides in deeper when I think about the bottles in the drawer, hidden so deliberately I wouldn’t have found them unless I was trying to make space for our baby’s nursery. The drinking was never gone. He didn’t stop. He simply moved it to another room and hoped I wouldn’t look.
Another lie.
A sharp curse slips out before I can swallow it. I touch my stomach, trying to steady myself, and the reality hits so hard it knocks the air out of me. I’m about to have a baby with a lying, cheating drunk. The kind of man I never thought I’d end up with.
A bitter laugh escapes my lips. It’s not like I can just leave. I don’t have a safety net. His family is my family, only not if I leave him. Genesis lives out of a suitcase and her entire job depends on traveling; she loves me, she loves Milo, but she isn’t going to give up her career to take care of me and a newborn. And what wouldI even tell Milo? That the father he worships broke everything? The thought alone makes my head spin.
My stomach twists so violently I press both hands to my belly, not sure if it’s heartbreak, nausea, or the baby reacting to the storm inside me. I keep thinking about all the time I wasted. I could’ve been planning. I could’ve been finding an apartment, could’ve gotten him into rehab before it got this bad. Instead, I buried my head in the sand and convinced myself to get over it.
Now everything is crashing down at the same time. The lies. The drinking. The woman in the hallway. The fact that I let him back into my bed last night thinking we had finally found our way forward.
I sit there in the car, shaking, staring at nothing, asking myself the only question that matters.
What do I do now?
Patrick
“How was school, buddy?” I ask Milo as we drive home from my parents’ place.
“We built a volcano,” he says proudly. “It exploded everywhere.”
“Sounds awesome,” I say, glancing at the rearview mirror as he wiggles his feet in pure excitement. At least his world is still simple.
At the next red light, I check my phone. Nothing from Lore. Not a text. Not a missed call. Just the thumbs-up she sent when I told her I’d grab Milo.
She’s probably stressed. Her schedule. HR. The baby. And my mess. What are the odds that both our jobs fall apart in the same damn week.
My phone buzzed earlier with a call from Internal Affairs. Detective Salazar. He handles IA for officer misconduct cases, the kind no cop ever wants to hear from. He already had the footage from O’Reilly’s. Said he would be interviewing me soon. I’m still surprised at how fast things are moving. Usually, you have to wait weeks. Sometimes months. You don’t even hear a whisper until they’re done digging.
My best guess is that because I’m technically still in the probationary window for Sergeant, they want this wrapped up before I become permanent. Better to decide now, before the ink dries on anything.
