“All those months you were with her… did you learn new ways to please her? With your body? With your mouth?” I pause, swallowing hard, bitterness burning my throat. “Will you compare us in your head, Colin? Wonder if shetastedbetter? Ifshewas better?”
The color drains from his face. He stumbles back a step and sinks into the armchair, looking like he’s just taken a blow to the chest.
“Please... don’t talk like that,” he whispers, his voice cracking. Though I can’t tell if it’s guilt, disgust, or just the weight of finally facing what he’s done.
“Why? AmIlying?” I ask, anger shaking my voice as I look straight at him. “After all those months with her, are you reallygoing to stand there and tell me you didn’t doeverykind of thing with her?”
He pushes up from the chair and starts pacing across the rug, his hands running through his hair. “She never meant anything to me. And she never will! I told you, it wasn’t like that!”
“Yeah?” I fire back. “You keep saying that like it’s supposed to make it hurt less, but it doesn’t change a damn thing.”
I lift my hand and start counting on my fingers. “You took her out for coffee. There were lunches and dinners on those so-called work trips. Room service. Hotels. Hours together on day trips. And let’s not forget all the things you bought her.”
When I finish, I notice him staring at my fingers, like the truth might somehow disappear if he looks hard enough.
“All of that, in my dictionary, adds up to how you treat someone you’reinvolvedwith. Some would even call it girlfriend treatment. So don’t you dare tell me it was nothing.”
“She wasn’t my girlfriend. She wasn’t anything to me. I’m married to you. You’re the only one that matters,” he says, guilt and frustration plain in his voice. “Why do you keep rehashing these things? We’ll never move on or fix our marriage if that’s all you focus on.”
“Our marriage wasn’t broken, Colin.Youbroke it.”
“I never stopped loving you. I never will. Whatever happened with her was never more—”
He stops himself. I don’t.
“—More than sex?” I whisper. “Then it must’ve beenreallygood for you to keep going back for months. Not just good. Exceptional, I suppose.”
My mind flashes to the receipts, to every nauseating detail burned into my memory.
I shake my head, a broken laugh slipping out before I can stop it. “Well, thank you for keeping me in the ‘boring sex’ box at the back of your mind.”
He jerks his head up, startled. Offended, even. “Our sex wasneverboring! You’re the best I’ve ever had. You’ll always be the best I’ll ever have. The only woman I’ve ever had a real connection with.”
I stare at him, my voice flat. “You have a funny way of showing that, Colin. By taking another woman to bed. Over and over. For months.”
For once, he doesn’t try to fill the air with excuses.
“What if our roles were reversed?” I ask, my voice low but sharp enough to make him flinch. “Let’s say I started an affair with Caleb, the neighbor’s grandson down the road. He’s what?” I force myself to keep going, controlling my breathing. “About seven years older than Ethan. Around the same age as your mistress.”
His jaw tightens, the muscle in his cheek twitching. “You wouldneverdo that.”
“You’re right,” I say, my voice even despite the tremor beneath the surface. “I would never do that. Not to me. Not to you. Not to our children.”
I swallow hard, my throat burning as the next words scrape their way out. “But that’s not the point, Colin. I wantyouto imagine it.”
I move around the couch and take a step closer, my eyes locked on his, refusing to let him look away. “Imagine me with a younger man. Having sex with him for months. Coming home late at night and lying next to you after letting him do to meeverythingyou did to her. Sharing things with him that I never shared with you.”
My voice falters, but I don’t stop. “Picture that, Colin. Really picture it. And then tell me… how wouldyouletmefix it after finding out?”
He sinks back into the armchair, his whole body collapsing in on itself. Head in his hands, he shakes it slowly, like the mere thought is enough to destroy him.
I watch as he presses a trembling hand to his throat, then to his mouth, like he’s fighting the urge to throw up.
Watching him like that should make me feel something close to vindication. But it doesn’t. There’s no satisfaction, no relief. Only the hollow, gnawing ache of a heart that’s been torn apart too many times to keep beating right.
I feel stripped bare, emptied of everything I once was, everything I thought we were.
“I want you to leave.”
