Amanda hissed something angry from the bedroom, furious at James for his sudden dismissal. James looked caught between the two women, panicked and trapped in the mess he created. He had destroyed his wife, lied to his mistress, and still somehow believed he could manage the outcome.
Olivia walked down the stairs. Each step away from the bedroom felt like leaving the final, ruined version of her marriage behind.
James followed her down, pleading, blaming, switching tactics with every desperate breath.
"Liv, don't leave like this," he begged as she reached the foyer. "You're emotional. You're going to regret making decisions tonight. I made mistakes, but this doesn't erase eight years."
Olivia stopped with her hand on the front doorknob. She turned to look at the man she had loved.
"No, James," Olivia said quietly, her voice dead and hollow. "You erased them."
She opened the door and walked out.
Outside, the cool evening air hit her flushed face. Olivia got into her car, locking the doors immediately. She jammed thekey into the ignition, threw the car into drive, and sped away from the house blindly.
She drove for a few blocks, her vision swimming with hot, angry tears. Her chest tightened so painfully she couldn't pull enough air into her burning lungs. Gasping, she pulled over onto an empty, dark street and slammed the car into park.
Her whole body trembled violently. She gripped the steering wheel, resting her forehead against the leather as the sobs finally ripped themselves free.
Her phone lit up on the passenger seat.
It was a message from Leo.
Maria told me you left. Are you okay?
Olivia stared at his name on the bright screen. For a second, the shame was paralyzing. She could not bear the idea of telling him what she had just seen. She could not bear anyone knowing the exact, pathetic shape of her humiliation.
But she also knew she had nowhere else to go.
Her fingers trembled uncontrollably as she picked up the phone. She opened the message thread.
I went home.
James was there.
So was Amanda.
Please come get me.
She dropped the phone back onto the passenger seat and stared out the windshield into the dark, empty street. Eight years of her life had been nothing but an intricately woven lie, and as the cold reality settled over her trembling frame, Olivia didn't know if she was going to survive this.
Chapter 15
Amanda
The master bedroom was a disaster. The white duvet lay in a crumpled heap on the floor, the sheets were violently tangled, and the door stood wide open, exposing the hallway beyond. The room, which just twenty minutes ago had felt like a thrilling, stolen hideaway, now felt stripped of its secrecy. It was just an ugly, glaring crime scene.
Amanda stood beside the bed, her left cheek pulsing with a hot, radiating sting.
The physical pain of Olivia’s slap was sharp, but the humiliation burning in Amanda’s chest was a living, breathing thing clawing at her throat. Not because the baker’s wife had actually had the nerve to hit her. But because James had watched it happen and done nothing to truly defend her. Only after Olivia had slapped her did he finally come to Amanda’s side. Twice. She had been slapped twice before he chose her.
Worse than the slap was where James’s attention had immediately gone. When the confrontation broke open, he had not looked at the woman who had been taking his cock in his bed just moments before. He had not looked at the woman he had been whispering breathless promises of the future to for the last eleven months. His focus had snapped straight to Olivia. To the wife. To the collateral damage. To the pristine, perfectly curated life he was suddenly terrified of losing.
James was not looking at Amanda now, either.
He was moving around the room in a frantic, pathetic panic. He grabbed his dress shirt from the floor, shoving his arms into the sleeves. He searched wildly for his belt, his shoes, his phone—gathering whatever he needed so he could run down the stairs and chase after a woman who had just walked out on him.
Amanda watched him, her eyes narrowing as a toxic cocktail of fury, rejection, and deep, aching disappointment flooded her veins.
