Nate took the ice pack, pressing it to his lip, but his glare remained fixed on Simon. "I'm not leaving you alone with this idiot."
"I'll be fine," Audrey promised, her voice steady. "Go."
Nate hesitated, the protective fury warring with his respect for her boundaries. Slowly, he leaned down and pressed a soft, lingering kiss directly to her forehead.
The profound intimacy of the gesture triggered a visceral, violent reaction in Simon. He stepped forward, a growl ripping from his throat, ready to tear the man apart all over again.
Audrey spun around. She planted her hand firmly against the center of Simon’s chest, stopping his forward momentum instantly.
For one, fleeting microsecond, the warmth of her palm against his racing heart offered Simon a desperate, pathetic sense of comfort. His wife was touching him.
But then, his brain flashed violently back to five minutes ago. He remembered that exact same hand, those exact same fingers, tangled in Nathaniel’s hair, dragging the man’s mouth down between her bare breasts.
A wave of absolute, consuming nausea rolled through Simon’s stomach. He physically recoiled from her touch, stepping back as if she had burned him, his face twisting into a mask of complete devastation and disgust.
Nate watched them for a second longer before turning, walking to his car, and climbing into the driver’s seat. The engine roared to life, and he pulled away from the curb, his taillights fading into the dark.
The street fell entirely silent, save for the dripping of the hose on the concrete.
Audrey and Simon stood in the damp street, feet apart, a vast, insurmountable chasm of betrayal and ruin stretching between them. She stood tall, wrapping her arms around herself against the cold, her eyes guarded and entirely unreadable.
Simon looked at the woman he had spent ten years building a life with, the woman he had just fought for, bleeding on the asphalt in front of their home.
"Is this why?" Simon asked, his voice cracking, a hollow, shattered sound echoing in the night. "Is this why you don't want to try anymore, Audrey? Because you already found yourself a replacement?"
Chapter 26
Simon
He stood dripping wet in his ruined suit, the cold night air biting into his skin, the sharp, metallic taste of blood pooling behind his teeth. But the physical pain of the bruised ribs and the split lip was entirely eclipsed by the agonizing, suffocating void opening up inside his stomach.
He stared at his wife. He waited for her to flinch. He waited for a flicker of guilt, a stammered excuse, or even a flash of the panic he had felt when she had caught him in his own web of lies.
But Audrey did not flinch.
She stood on the edge of the lawn, the porch light casting a pale halo around her dark hair. Her silk blouse was wrinkled, her lips were swollen from another man’s mouth, and her eyes were completely, terrifyingly devoid of remorse.
"A replacement?" Audrey repeated, the word slipping past her lips like a shard of ice. A dark, hollow laugh broke from her chest, entirely devoid of humor. "You actually think you have the right to stand there, reeking of your own hypocrisy, and play the victim?"
"We are in therapy, Audrey!" Simon shouted, the feral desperation clawing up his throat, tearing at his vocal cords. He gestured wildly toward the empty street where Nate’s car had been. "We literally just walked out of a counselor’s office to try and fix our marriage, and I come home to find you getting fucked in the back of a car in our driveway!"
"I didn't agree to fix our marriage, Simon. I agreed to perform an autopsy," she fired back, her voice raising to meet his, vibrating with an unadulterated, lethal fury. "And you don't get to invoke the sanctity of our marriage tonight. You surrendered that right the second you fucked Emily in that hotel room."
Simon flinched, stepping back as if she had physically struck him again. The name of the twenty-four-year-old girl hung in the air between them, a toxic, undeniable anchor weighing down every argument he tried to make.
"That was a mistake," Simon choked out, the tears finally mixing with the water dripping down his bruised face. "I am dismantling my entire life to prove to you how sorry I am. But this? Audrey, you are my wife. Watching him touch you... hearing the sounds you were making for him... it makes me sick."
Audrey took a slow, deliberate step forward. The remaining space between them crackled with a dangerous, electric tension.
"Good," she whispered, her voice dropping to a deadly, quiet register that cut deeper than any scream. "I want you to feel sick, Simon. I want you to feel the exact, suffocating nausea that I have been drowning in for two months. Every time I look at you, I picture her hands on you. I picture you smiling at me across the dinner table while you were texting her."
She stopped just a few feet away, her eyes locked onto his, entirely unyielding.
"I didn't bring another man into our bed," Audrey stated, delivering the final, fatal blow with absolute precision. "I didn't lie to your face for months. You burned my world to the ground, Simon. Tonight was just me realizing that I can still feel warmth from the fire. You broke the vows. Nathaniel just reminded me that I am still alive."
Simon couldn't breathe. The air in his lungs turned to ash.
He opened his mouth to argue, to beg, to demand that she honor the ninety days he had bought with his surrender, but the words completely dissolved. He had absolutely no moral high ground to stand on. He was a man standing in the ruins of a house he had dynamited, screaming at his wife for finding shelter in another man's arms.
