An hour later, when he returns, he’s carrying a bouquet of long-stemmed red roses, wrapped in paper with a ribbon tied around the middle. It’s generic, flowers you’d pick up for anyone. The thought is sweet, but the intention behind it isn’t.
“These are for you,” Adam says, holding them toward me.
“Thanks,” I say, taking them with a smile.
My parents raised me to be gracious, even in awkward situations. I set them on the counter without putting them in water.
“Can we talk?” he says.
“Aren’t we doing that now?” I ask.
“No, Wen. Like really talk.”
I stare into his hazel eyes, and he grins.
“Fuck, you look incredible,” he says.
A year ago, that compliment would’ve had me melting. I would’ve smiled and let him steer the conversation wherever he wanted.
“What do you want to talk about?”
He leans forward, removing some of the distance between us. The heat of his body, combined with the smell of his skin, takes me back. The good memories were my favorite, but there weren’t enough of them.
“I know you’re sleeping with Carter,” he says.
I don’t respond or confirm anything and let the silence sit between us. Adam has never been comfortable in silence, and tends to fill it with his own voice. It’s one of the tactics he uses when he manages—he talks until everyone agrees.
“I heard you,” he continues. His voice drops lower, and his eyes move to my lips. “Through the wall. I heard everything. Every gasp.”
Heat washes over me. This isn’t a conversation I wanted to have with him.
“I lay in that bed and listened to you.”
He moves closer, the way he used to approach me when he wanted something and knew I’d give it to him. His thumb traces my cheekbone, and his eyes are glassy. I can’t tell if it’s real, and that’s the most terrifying part.
“I could hear your voice, Wen. The sounds I heard for five years. And knowing another man’s hands were on you, that he was inside you …” He swallows. “It’s destroying me. I can’t sleep. I can’t eat.”
His thumb moves along my jaw, and his touch is gentle. For half a second, my body responds to the familiarity of it before my brain catches up.
“I keep seeing his hands on you,” he says. “I imagined what you looked like underneath him, and I can’t get it out of my head. You’re mine, Wendy. You’ve always been mine. I love you so fucking much. I think I always will.”
I don’t pull away yet. I let him stand there with tears in his eyes. A month ago, I would’ve crumbled and apologized and felt guilty for leaving him. That’s what Adam does though. He always finds a way to twist my pain into his own. I used to apologize for him hurting me.
“Have you been with anyone?” I ask.
He looks surprised—because, usually, this is where I forgive him.
“Yes,” he says, and I expect that knowledge to hurt me, but it doesn’t. “But we can move past this.”
“Who?” I ask.
His other hand comes up to cradle my cheek, and he holds me the way he used to after we fought and he won. “It doesn’t matter.”
I take a step away from him. “With who?”
My body goes numb as I stare at the man I gave the best years of my life to.
“Gwyneth.”
