But she couldn’t.
He’d put them in this position. He’d abandoned her. As Sam had said, he’d left her alone while he’d dealt with his issues, but he hadn’t done a thing to include her. She’d been trying to be ... open minded or cool.
No.
She’d been trying to not be a bother.
The realization stopped her in place. She’d have never said that was her. She’d been so sure she was herself—her brash, bold self—all the time. But not with him. She’d left her personality confined to her office. She hadn’t told him it hurt her that he was leaving. She hadn’t even let herself feel the hurt. She’d told herself she had to be okay with it. She’d prioritized his feelings, his needs, over her own because she’dconvinced herself she was too damaged to be allowed to have the final say in anything. That he was the one who knew how life, marriage, and relationships were supposed to be because he’d grown up in a situation that was functional and she hadn’t.
She’d convinced herself that he was whole, and she was half.
That she would always have to follow him because he knew how to walk on a road that wasn’t broken.
But she hadn’t listened to herself. To her own needs. To her own intuition.
She’d buried it.
Heart in her throat, she took the phone out of the bag and held it in her palm. It saw her face and tried to unlock, shivering because it didn’t recognize her and asking for a pin.
She entered it—his mom’s birthday, it had always been that.
It unlocked, and she looked at the screen. At the bright-red notifications on his messages numbering in the hundreds now. At the apps and icons. His D&D app. His bird-watching app. The little weird things that made himhim.
Then she opened the messages.
Tara.
That was the top name, the most messages.
That was her name.Examine meeeTara.
With her heart in her throat, Nora clicked on the name and looked at the messages.
I just need to know if you’re okay.
I know you said not to message you but I’m so worried.
They won’t tell me anything because I’m not on any of your paperwork. They just took you away and I have no idea if you’re even alive.
Divorced from the context of all this, Tara’s messages were sort of sad. But she wasn’t on any of his papers because Nora was on them. Because Nora was his wife, and Tara was a woman he’d met only a month or so ago. Because Nora had given Ben years of her time, her love, her body.
She scrolled up blindly until she hit a photo. Not explicit. Just the two of them. Tara was holding on to him and gazing at him with adoration.Love ya!
The accompanying message was enough. She didn’t need to see any more.
She stared at the picture, trying to see what Ben was thinking, feeling. She didn’t see the same level of adoration in his eyes that she saw in Tara’s. He looked like Ben. It made her feel sick. Was she Tara? Gazing at him in utter, total adoration while he looked ... fine?
While he looked like he was just ... going through the motions of their relationship?
Even the affair didn’t make him look adoring or giddy.
It was a weird thing to be upset about. But God, if he was going to sleep with another woman, shouldn’t he be beyond control? Enraptured? Enchanted? Something?
Instead, he just looked like some guy. Standing there with any woman.
It was maybe worse than seeing a video of them screwing.
Seeing him look at Tara like he’d been married to her for ten years. Seeing the disparity between her adoration and his, like she was looking in a mirror of her own life.
