James hesitated. He looked from Amanda to Olivia, his jaw tight. The hesitation was an answer all on its own.
"How long, James?" Olivia demanded, her voice breaking on the edge of a scream.
"It doesn't matter," James said, scrambling to his feet, pulling the duvet tighter around himself.
"It matters to me."
James let out a frustrated breath, running a trembling hand through his hair. "We had problems, Liv. You know we did. We felt disconnected. You were always busy with the bakery, always exhausted. We were drifting long before Amanda."
The manipulation was so familiar it made her physically sick. He was trying to make the affair a symptom of their failing marriage rather than something he had done because of his own filthy choices.
"You don't get to make this my fault," Olivia said, her voice shaking with rage.
"I'm not," James insisted.
"You are. You always do," Olivia shot back. "You steal our money and you call it financial pressure. You forge my name and you call it protecting me. You sleep with her in our bed and you call it loneliness."
The truth hung heavy and suffocating in the air. James flinched, his posture turning defensive.
"You don't understand what I've been carrying," James argued.
"You're right," Olivia said, her voice dropping into a broken, ragged whisper. "I don't understand how a man can look at his wife every single morning and lie to her face with that much ease."
The questions kept pouring out of her, each one ripping another piece of her heart away. "Was she at the company dinner just to humiliate me? Did she know you were calling me insecure while she had her hands all over you?"
James looked away.
"Were the business dinners dates?" Olivia pressed. She stared at him, her mind flashing back to the day she had surprised him at work. The way he had rushed her out. "Was she there?" Olivia breathed, the horror of it sinking deep into her bones. “Was she hiding in your private bathroom? Or tucked away in that file room off your office, waiting to be your little afternoon snack while you shooed me out without even letting me fully inside?”
James said nothing. He just stared at the floor.
Amanda smiled faintly from where she was pulling herself up off the floor, and that small, victorious curve of her lips nearly broke Olivia in half.
"You let me sit across from you at lunch right after that," Olivia whispered, wrapping her arms around her own stomach as if she might be sick.
"It's over," James rushed out, his eyes wide and panicked as he tried desperately to salvage control. "I swear, it's over."
Amanda reacted violently to that. She looked at James in sheer disbelief. "Excuse me?"
Olivia knew it was a lie. He didn't mean it. He was just a coward trying to save his own skin, tossing his mistress under the bus to preserve his carefully curated life. He wasn't loyal to either of them.
“We can get through this,” James begged, turning his back on Amanda entirely. “We can go to couples therapy. No one else needs to know about any of this. Please, Liv. Let’s just save our marriage.”
"Which part of this is a marriage?" Olivia asked, gesturing wildly to the tangled sheets and the half-naked woman standing beside him.
James had no answer.
Olivia looked around the master bedroom. The mattress. The white sheets. The framed wedding photo resting on the nightstand. The closet holding her dresses. The vanilla perfume bottle sitting on her dresser. The entire life she thought she was building.
All of it had been invaded.
She realized with brutal clarity that she could not take anything from this room. Not tonight. Maybe not ever. Theclothes, the memories—all of it felt permanently stained by what James had done. She had come here to gather her things and reclaim control. Instead, she had found the final, devastating proof that there was nothing left here she wanted badly enough to stay.
Olivia turned on her heel and walked toward the hallway.
"Liv, wait!" James scrambled after her, grabbing for her arm.
Olivia yanked her arm away violently. "Don't touch me. We are done talking."
