1
TILLY
I’ve always knownthat I was kind of crazy.
I grew up surrounded by cowboys and a twin brother who treated me the same way he would have if I were a boy. If I weren’t a little twisted up in the head, I would have spent my entire childhood locked away in my room crying instead of bucking up and making him and his friends followmeinstead. Replacing pain with anger became second nature, and I’ve carried that with me into my thirties.
Moving out here to Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, came as a shock to everyone in my life. Hell, it surprised me too. The woman I was back home in Oak Point, Alberta, is nothing like the one I became here. I guess I have my husband to thank—blame—for that.
He seems to be behind every negative thing in my current life.
That’s the easiest way to explain why I’m currently slamming my front door shut in the face of the woman who just took a giant metaphorical shit all over me and reaching for the lamp on the console table. Ethan, said husband, hops out of his hiding spot inthe dining room at the sound of the door closing and opens his slimy mouth to speak.
I dig my fingers into the smooth base of the table lamp and lift it so fast the cord rips out of the wall before he can get a word out. With my vision tinted red, I whip the whole goddamn thing at him, watching with bated breath as he rushes backward to try and avoid getting hit.
“You fucking bastard!” I shout, chasing the lamp when it explodes on the floor a few inches shy of his kneecap.
“Tilly—let’s talk about this. She’s lying!”
The shattered pieces of teal porcelain look sharp enough to cause some damage, but do I really want to stab him? Gritting my teeth, I launch my fist at him instead. He trips on his feet, stumbling back against the wall with a terrified curse.
“I knew it, you son of a bitch,” I attack, readying my sore fist to hit him again. “A kid? Really? You couldn’t have even wrapped it up while you had an affair?”
The bar is in Hell.
Ethan winces, hands rising to shield his face as I bare my teeth and lift my knee. It sails up into his groin so hard I wouldn’t be surprised if the baby in the woman’s arms on our porch was the only one he could ever have.
“We don’t know it’s actually mine,” he argues, choking on pained groans.
“Oh, I know it is. I’ve seen more than enough of your ugly baby photos to recognize that kid out there.”
He squeezes his eyes shut, making more of those annoying noises as he clutches his dick. Inhaling deeply, I back away from him and uncurl my fingers. The burning sensation in my palm has me looking at it to find small crescent-shaped indents from my nails.
“You’re my wife,” Ethan says with a wince, as if I need the reminder.
I laugh and shake my head while leaving the room. “Not for much longer.”
There’s a beat of silence before— “What does that mean?”
“It means we’re getting a divorce.”
“You don’t get to decide that on your own, Tilly! Just wait up. Christ, wait a second.”
I speed up, turning down the hall and into our bedroom. His hurried steps are uneven on the hardwood as he follows me. Maybe he’ll trip and send himself face first into the wall on the way. What a treat that would be.
God, I wish I wasn’t upset by this. The ache in my chest is a poison that I can’t afford to feel right now. Six years of marriage and seven of a real, serious relationship down the drain so quickly. One minute, I’m brewing his coffee for him with the machine that took me two months to understand, and the next, I’m answering the doorbell to see his old assistant holding a baby in her arms.
A baby that looks just like him. One thatIdidn’t bring into the world. I didn’t need to hear her tell me that it was his before I already came to that conclusion. All hearing it did was upset me even further.
“Tilly, baby, I haven’t even seen her in months,” he says, desperation making his voice shake.
“Since you fired her? Let me guess, you did that when you realized she was pregnant.”
“No.”
“You’re a terrible liar, Ethan,” I snap.
The giant black suitcase in the closet is the one I grab. I toss it onto the bed I made earlier and unzip it. It’s empty from when I unpacked it after our trip to Florence three months ago. God, do I do everything around here? The realization is swift and cruel.
