My gut turns over and my skin goes cold at the accurate barb. “Yes, home.”
“Who. Is. She?”
I give her a little. “She’s an outside counsel we used once at the firm.”
“Someone you work with.”
“Worked with once.”
“I see.”
“I love you.”
She laughs hysterically. “No, you don’t.”
“I do. Please, let me—”
Holding up her hand, she shakes her head. “Nah. Don’t bother. I’m going to leave.”
“Don’t leave.” Desperate need storms inside me. I’ll say anything to keep her here. “I know this is awful. I know you have questions. I know—”
“How long have you been in a relationship with someone else?”
“It’s not like that.” It’s honest to God not. How can I make her see that? “I swear to you, it’s over. Done. I don’t care about that woman. I never did.”
That’s the truth. At least part of it.
She hesitates. It’s a glimmer of hope, and I latch on to it with every bit of my vicious, Bay Street-honed training. I know when a negotiation turns my way, and this one—as fucked up as that is, and I own that—just broke for the bad guys.
Fucking hell.
I swallow hard. “She’s nothing, Grace. You are everything. Whatever you need. Whatever you want. I love you. Please, give me a chance to fix this.”
3
Grace
I scream at him for hours. Throw things at him. He refuses to leave, and eventually, at dawn, I fall asleep on the couch. I wake up an hour later, jolted awake by dark, gross nightmares.
He’s curled up on the floor beside me, his hand up on the couch right next to my hand. Not touching me, but close enough that I can feel the heat of his skin.
I should recoil. I want to recoil. But I need his warmth more. I nudge the edge of my hand against his, and he lets out a shuddering groan, then wraps his fingers around mine. “I know I’ve fucked up.”
His voice is raw, his eyes red.
I sit up and look at him. He’s rumpled. Ashen-faced and needs a shave. He looks…old. And broken.
Get out, I say in my head. It doesn’t translate to words out loud, though.
“I can’t sleep,” I whisper, and he pulls me into his chest.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“I hate you.”
“Yeah. Me too.”
The tears come again, and he holds me tight as I soak the front of his t-shirt. Eventually I fall asleep again, exhausted, and when I wake up for the second time, it’s mid-morning.
Luke is passed out beneath me on the couch.
We’re both damp with sweat and my heart is pounding.
I roll onto my back and press the heel of my hand to my forehead. God. When was the last time Luke slept in this late? He’ll be pissed.
And then right on the heels of that thought is another, more bitter one. Why do I care? His schedule is not my problem. His work is not my problem.
Fuck.
I kick at the blanket he pulled over us.
“What’s wrong?” he mumbles.
I don’t say anything. I just keep wrestling with the throw until I’m free, then I lurch to my feet. I stumble to the kitchen and go through the motions of making coffee.
Luke follows. A big shadow of a man. He doesn’t any anything at first. The silence looms, ugly and familiar. He never says much.
We don’t talk anymore.
And when he does open his mouth, it’s the inevitable retreat. His evergreen excuse to get away from me. “I have to go to work for a few hours.”
Work. I slam the cupboard door shut. “Where you fucked her.”
“I never— Never at the office. It wasn’t like that. It was stupid and private.”
Things like that are never as private as people think. “Who knows about the affair?”
“Nobody.”
“Sam wouldn’t cover it up. He’d have told me. Does your assistant know?”
“No.”
“Are you sure?” There’s an unstable edge to my voice and I hate it. I’m not out of control here, he is. I’m just asking questions I have every right to know the answer to. “Why do you have to go to work, anyway? Are you going to destroy more evidence?”
“I’m going to take some time off. It’ll be easier to explain that in person. I need to pick up a few things. Bring a laptop home.”
I spin around. “You’re the fucking boss, Luke. Have them courier you your shit.” But then another thought forms in my head. If he leaves for a bit, I can search his closet. I sigh and square my shoulders. Easier to be the bigger person when you’re secretly a petty, vindictive bitch. “Okay. No, I get it. Go to work.”
“I won’t be long.”
“I might change the locks while you’re gone.”
His nostrils flare. “Don’t do that. I’m going to get some stuff so I can work from home for a few weeks. We’re going to get through this.”
The only thing I’m going to get through is a divorce, and I’m going to do it like a fucking winner. In the cold light of day, I’ve moved into an icy calm. Yelling at him didn’t work. Now I need to get strategic.
That resolve to be smart and strategic lasts an hour. I don’t find anything in his belongings, no secret love letters or obvious receipts that spell out the extent of his betrayal.
The silence of the apartment is suffocating, and the size of all that I don’t know about my husband’s affair looms large, filling the space.
Pressing against my skin.
You’re an idiot. A sucker. A fool.
I look at my phone, at the screenshots I texted myself before I confronted Luke.
A terrible need drives me to keep looking at them. Afraid of what I will find. Desperate to find it all the same.
And then I go to my computer. I put her phone number into the search engine and get nothing, but when I go to Facebook and paste it there, voila.
A profile image.
A name.
Caitlyn Jobst. A junior lawyer. Younger than me by the looks of it, because of course she is.
She’s beautiful. Lush and sexy, pouring out of dresses on the arms of handsome men. Every picture is almost exactly the same, like she knows the right angle to always look at the camera. Pettily I wonder if she hates being photographed from the other side, if she has a wonky smile or a double chin, but that’s not likely.
I can see why he was drawn to her. She looks just like the women in the porn he likes. Big boobs.
Have you ever thought about getting implants? I think of all the times his hands have covered my breasts and squeezed. Barely a handful, one bigger than the other. I’d always brush off the question, because no, seriously, never, but was that his way of saying he wanted me bigger?
Did he want me to look like her? Dark hair, flashing eyes, perfect makeup? Plumped up and pushed up in every way possible? Soft skin, no dry elbows, no scattering of prickle rash down the back of her arms?
No doughy middle, no pear-shaped hips with too much thigh and not enough length through the calves.
Of course he fucked her.
Of course he wanted that.