Tory holds my gaze for a moment too long before she stands, smoothing her skirt. “I’ll let you get back to work. But for what it’s worth, I think you’re doing the best you can.”
Her perfume lingers in the air after she leaves, as does the ugliness I just spewed about my wife and my marriage.
I tell myself it was nothing—just venting, just conversation. But a part of me knows I betrayed mymarriage vows just now by bitching about my wife to another woman, one who’s clearly interested in me as more than a colleague. I don’t see her that way, but that doesn’t change the fact that I just spewed bile about my wife…unfairly.
Paul’s right. I’m being an ass. When we sat down for a drink after the hike, I told him what’s been happening at home—not the details, just the highlights. He hadn’t been as sympathetic as Tory.
“You’re drinking your own supply, Rhys. You’re a lifesaver to your patients, but at home, you’re a husband, a father, a man. They don’t give a shit that you can perform a quadruple bypass in your sleep. They don’t want Dr. Prescott. Finn wants his father. Jayne wants her husband.”
I’d ignored him then, waved him off.
But now, as I sit in the mess I just made, venting for sympathy, for validation—for someone to say, “You’re fine, she’s wrong”—I know he’s right.
I fucking hate him for it. Hate myself for it.
I drop my face in both hands.
Get it together, Prescott. Or you’re going to lose your mind—and worse, your wife.
CHAPTER 9
Jayne
He’s being an ass. That’s the only way to describe how Rhys is behaving.
He left early, as he always does,andhe forgot his good luck bandana, which he wears under his surgical cap. I gave it to him when he started med school. It’s soft from a thousand washes.
I pick it up and sigh.
For a while on Friday and even Saturday, it was like it used to be. We laughed. We touched. He looked at me like I was magic. I thought, stupidly, that we’d turned a corner.
But then came Sunday, and as soon as I opened my mouth, he started to accuse me of making him out to be a bad father and husband.
Should he help on weekends when I do everything family-related during the week?Yes.
Does he deserve a break, considering the high stress of his job?Yes.
I don’t begrudge him a hiking trip or when he goes away skiing with Paul and some others. I don’t. Never have. Never will. But he feels guilty, and he decides that I blame him for ignoring his responsibilities at home. I don’t. I haven’t.
ButI do feel resentful.
Why does he get time off while I still have to play soccer mom? I don’t say anything even if I think it. Instead of being grateful that I keep my mouth shut, he attacks.
I drive to Camden Memorial, it’s going to add ten minutes to my morning, so why the hell not?
Maybe he’ll feel better knowing I cared enough to drop off his bandana. Maybe when he comes home, it’ll be back to how it used to be and not this strange war zone we find ourselves in, where I’m afraid I’m going to say something to set him off, and he’s scared to say something because I set him off.
Hell! How did we get here?
We used to not be this couple. We used to talk. We used to communicate. We used to be happy.
I’m about to knock on his door, which is open a crack, when I hearhervoice.
Tory Chehade.
That woman is into my husband, and it pisses me off how openly she flirtswith him.
Ugh.
