“Youneedme. You need me to do math for you. You need me to tell you what time I feed your children dinner. You need me to balance the checkbook that you use to buy her jewelry.”
“Hey.” He looked back at the truck. “Leave her out of this.”
“I can’t, Jonathan. You brought her into it. You brought her into our life.”
“Relationships end, Daisy. I don’t know what you want me to do.”
I don’t either. Because I don’t want you back, because I could never take you back, not after that, not after her. But I just want to go back to the way things were before.She couldn’t say any of that, because it was too sad.
All of this was so sad. She felt ...
I didn’t curse you earlier. And maybe I should have.
Because God, it was like none of this touched him. He was looking at her likeshewas the bad guy. Likeshewas the villain.
“You cheated on me,” she said.
“I don’t really want to have this conversation with you in the driveway. The kids are right in the house.”
There he was again, pretending to be the voice of reason. Pretending to be reasonable. Like she was the one who was unreasonable. Like she was the one who had caused this, when he’d saidhe hadn’t been happy for ten years. She had never considered him a manipulative man. She had never thought he was pulling the strings on her, like a puppet.
She’d loved him since she was sixteen years old.
She just didn’t know anymore if he had ever been the boy she thought she knew or if it had always been a lie. He made her feel guilty. He made her feel like she was causing this. Made her feel like she was the one ripping them apart when he was the one who had slept with somebody else. Who had left her for somebody else. Who was buying that woman rings and ...
“I’m going to need you to have some perspective,” he said. “Because when Amberly and I get married—”
She’d suspected it. But . . .
She looked back at the truck, where Amberly was now playing with her hair during the selfie, and saw a ring sparkling on her finger. She looked down at her own left hand.
She still had her ring on.
“You’re marrying her?”
“Yeah.”
“We aren’t divorced yet.”
“That isn’t going to take long, is it?”
“You haven’t told yourmother, Jonathan.” Her heart was pounding so hard she thought she might throw it up. “What are you thinking? You can tell her you left me on a Friday and marry Amberly on a Sunday?”
“I’m waiting for the right time.”
So many angry words boiled inside her, and she wanted to just let them all spill over. Screw control. Screw him.
“Why ... why do you even want to get married to her?” It wasn’t the zinger she would have liked to get out. But why? This was a new level of humiliation. Because it was one thing if he wanted to go out and sleep around—that was insulting and unendurable, and she’d never have stayed with him—but at least that felt like it was about him.
It didn’t mean he was in love.
Him loving her, wanting to marry her, that ...
That hurt.
“She wants to get married.”
“What ... what does marriage even mean to you, Jonathan? Because our vows meant nothing.”
