I gave her the best that I had to give for sixteen years, from the first night that I took her out until today. Sure, I have regrets. Everyone does. There are probably a hundred things I’d do differently if I had the chance, but I’d have happily given her the rest of the years that I have left on this fucked-up planet.
What does that make me? A doormat.
“Bam—”
“You need to stay downstairs right now,” he tells my wife, cutting her off when she tries to follow closely behind us.
An angry huff pushes through my nose as I carefully move up the stairs, heading for our bedroom and leaving the two of them behind.
I flip the lock as soon as the door closes behind me, and I make my way through the room, bracing a hand against my screaming rib cage. The sound of Julia shouting‘no no no no no!’filters up from our living room, followed by the beating of heavy, panicked footfalls on the stairs moments before she pounds a fist against the door.
“Tripp,” she calls out. “Lovey, please open the door!”
Brody must join her, because the muffled sound of his eerily-calm voice comes through the door alongside hers. She’s sobbing, and they’re talking to each other, but I can’t make out their conversation. I don’t think I care much about it, either way.
While the two of them talk, I reach for my over-the-ear headphones and slip them on to drown out the sound of their voices as I carefully get myself settled onto our bed. My stomach twists at the sudden realization that, for all I know, Connor and my wife could have fucked each other on this bed; and suddenly I’m standing.
The blankets are yanked off of the bed first, followed by the pillows, before I flip the mattress itself onto the floor.
I don’t care that my entire body hurts. I don’t care that it feels like I’m being torn in half.
Split me down the middle and throw the pieces to the wolves, for all I care.
Chapter 15
JULIA
The sound of something heavy crashing into the floor above us makes my body shudder. My eyes move frantically between the stairwell and Brody, standing stoic and unmoving against the wall with his arms crossed over his chest.
Hazel eyes bore into mine as he looks down at me through the lenses of his glasses. A hand clamps down on his forearm, the other gesturing wildly behind him and into the stairwell.
“Please,” I beg him. I can hardly see him through the cloud of tears filling my eyes. “You don’t understand.”
“No, I don’t,” he tells me.
“I need to go in there, Brody,please,” I plead with him. “He’s in pain.”
“Yes, he is.”
All I can hear is the destruction of our bedroom and the life that I knew through the sound of my own desperate sobs until one final thud sounds from upstairs. Pushing my way past my brother-in-law, I rush back up the stairs, nearly tripping over my feet as I do.
The violent shaking of my hands makes it difficult to slide the master key into the doorknob, but once I finally manage, Icarefully push open the door and take a step inside, pain hitting me like a javelin as I take in the scene of our once-tidy bedroom.
Our mattress has been thrown against the far wall, Tripp’s night stand drawers are dumped out onto the floor, our armoire is left open with Tripp’s clothes strewn across our box spring.
My husband sits on the floor at the foot of the bed frame with one knee pulled up and a hand pressing into his right side. His head is leaned backward, and I’m not sure if the tears leaving streaks down his face are because of emotional pain or physical.
Does it matter which? Either way, I’m to blame.
“Tripp,” I whisper with a sniffle, dropping to my knees next to him. I reach for his face – his beautiful face, now bruised, swollen, and scabbed – and I cup it between my hands, forcing him to hold my gaze. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
My husband doesn’t cry. He gets angry, he laughs loudly enough that it startles me sometimes; loud enough to rattle the loosely-fitted window in the living room which we have yet to have fixed, but he doesn’t cry. I’ve only seen it twice in all of the years that I’ve known him.
‘Montgomery men don’t cry.’
Looking at his eyes, now bloodshot and filled with tears, it rips a hole open inside of me.
“You fucked him,” he says.
