Her voice broke, a tremor betraying the storm of emotions within as she faced Will across the room. The question hung heavy in the air, laced with betrayal. "And with my own mother?"
Will froze beside the bed, his face contorting as if he'd bitten into a bitter fruit. "Angela, I—" Guilt flashed across his features, quickly masked by a hardening jawline. "You've got it all wrong," he said, his voice climbing with each word. “It’s not what you think. You’re seeing things again. It’s wrong, Angela.”
"Wrong?" Angela's hands shook at her sides, fingers curling into fists. Her blue eyes, usually reservoirs of warmth, nowsparked with thehurt that seared through her composure. "Don't lie to me!"
"Believe what you want!" Will's attempt at a rebuttal came out strangled, caught between self-defense and the truth he couldn't seem to face. His stance widened as though bracing against an invisible force.
She stepped closer, the space between them electric with tension. "I deserve the truth."
"Truth?" Will spat out the word, a sneer creeping onto his lips. "You think you're so perfect, don't you? Always the martyr."
Her retort was sharp, a blade unsheathed. "I am your wife!"
"Sometimes, I wonder!"
Will's words cut through the air, jagged and raw. Each syllable dripped with a venom that seemed foreign coming from him.
"Is that how little we mean to you?" Angela's voice crescendoed, filling the room with the sound of a heart fracturing. She searched his face for the man she married but found only a stranger wearing Will's skin. “Me and the children?”
His stance shifted, a mixture of defiance and desperation. "It’s always all about you. You never see it, do you? How you push people away."
"By loving them?" Her whisper was a wail wrapped in disbelief.
"By smothering them!" Will countered, his palms upturned as if presenting an obvious fact Angela had missed.
"Love is not suffocation," she said, steadying her voice with effort.
"Isn't it?" He raised an eyebrow, challenging her belief, her vision of their life together.
"Love is trust, Will." Angela's gaze didn't waver, even as her world did, crumbling around her. "Something you've just destroyed."
He exhaled and shook his head. Will's jaw clenched, his eyes darting away from her piercing blue gaze. "You wouldn't understand," he muttered, a thread of escape in his voice.
"Make me understand!" The plea was sharp, her insistence a tangible force in the room.
"Stop it, Angela!" He flung the words at her like stones.
"Stop what? Caring?" Her arms spread wide, a gesture of her bewildered heart.
"Twisting everything." Will's hands balled into fists at his sides.
"Nothing is twisted about betrayal!" She stepped forward, her spirit unyielding.
"Isn't there?" His laugh was hollow, cold as the void between them.
"Tell me why!" Angela reached for him, seeking something to hold onto in the chasm that had opened beneath her feet. “Why her of all the women in the world?”
"Enough!" Will's shout splintered the air. He lunged, his movements sudden and violent.
Angela recoiled but not fast enough. His fingers wrapped around her arm, vise-like, unforgiving. Her skin burned beneath his grasp.
"Let go," she gasped, the words barely escaping her constricted throat.
"Angela…." His breath was hot against her face, his grip unrelenting.
Panic surged through Angela's veins, primal and fierce. She twisted against the iron clamp of Will's fingers.
"Get off me!" Her cry was a shard of glass in the thick air, her breaths coming quick and ragged.
