But then Jack looked up.
His face drained of color so fast that I was going to puke.
“Paige. Shit! This isn’t?—”
“Don’t,” I said with deadly calm. My voice felt colder than I knew I was capable of. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
The woman scrambled for the sheets, her eyes widening with guilt or fear.
Why? How could he?
I… we were together for decades. Since childhood and now he?—
Lily. I had to get Lily out of there.
I turned on my heel and walked straight to Lily’s nursery, my body moving on pure instinct while my brain struggled to process the nuclear bomb that had just detonated my life.
My hurried steps slowed when I saw my daughter sleeping peacefully in her crib, her tiny chest rising and falling in that perfect rhythm that usually soothed me.
She had no idea her father was a lying, cheating bastard. That her family had just imploded. That everything I had been working so hard to build for her—for us—was crumbling to ash.
“Paige, wait. Let me explain—” Jack’s voice came from behind me, and I heard him struggling into clothes.
I didn’t turn around. I grabbed the diaper bag from the changing table and started throwing things in like diapers, wipes, and formula. My movements were jerky and frantic, but I forced myself to focus.
Lily needed bottles, changes of clothes, and even her pacifier.
I can’t afford a crashout right now. I can have it later.
“It’s not what you think?—”
“Oh, really?” I turned to face him, and let out a bitter laugh. “Because I just found you screwing another woman in our bed while our daughter—our one-year-old daughter—slept twenty feet away. Please, Jack, enlighten me on what I am getting wrong.”
I wanted to punch him. Slap him. Tell me it was some stupid prank?—
But he had the audacity to look wounded. His hair was a mess, his shirt was buttoned wrong, and there were lipstick stains on his collar that made me want to scream.
“You have been distant and so fucking cold! Ever since Lily was born, you have barely looked at me, and I’ve been craving?—”
I laughed, tears threatening to burst through my eyes. “So this is my fault?”
My voice rose dangerously close to waking Lily, and I forced myself to breathe in and out.
Don’t let him see you break. Not yet.
“I’ve been distant because I’m exhausted, Jack! Because I’m working full-time and taking care of our daughter while you stay late at the office doing God knows what!”
I knew I didn’t need to explain to him why I was being distant. That I was feeling like shit in my body after giving birth and working more hours so I could give my daughter the childhood I never had. Spoil her with Disneyland vacations, give her a car on her sixteenth birthday and pay upfront for her university fees.
“Babe—”
“Don’t call me that!” I snapped, zipping the diaper bag with trembling fingers and lifted Lilly, who stirred but didn’t wake. “We are done.”
The world felt small in that tiny room, which we both had painted with happy smiles. I remember kissing him and thanking the universe for having such a good husband and friend.
Now I wish I could never see his face again.
“What do you mean we are done?” He said, scoffing and shoving his hands in his pants, which were unzipped. Strange. I had known him for years and yet had never seen him make that face before. At least not in front of me. What else didn’t I know about him?
