Chapter 11
Chapter 11:
Here’s something they don’t tell you about betrayal: the worst part isn’t the anger. The anger is almost a relief—hot and clean and righteous. The worst part is watching the person you love comfort someone else while you fall apart in front of them.
Meredith’s hand found Nathan’s forehead, her fingers tracing the red mark where the tissue box had landed. The gesture was tender. Proprietary. The kind of casual intimacy that comes from long familiarity.
“Are you okay, baby?” she murmured.
Baby.
She called my husband baby in my living room, and he didn’t even flinch.
The tears came then, hot and unstoppable, and I hated myself for them. I didn’t want to cry. I wanted to be cold and composed and devastating. Instead, I was a pregnant woman sobbing on her own couch while her husband ushered his mistress into the guest bedroom and closed the door—to protect her from me.
The irony was almost funny. Almost.
Nathan emerged a moment later, his expression the careful blank of a man who knows he’s in trouble but hasn’t quite figured out how to spin it yet.
“Vivian.” He sat beside me, maintaining a careful distance. “What’s gotten into you? She’s sick. Do you really need to fight with a sick person p>
I stared at him through the blur of tears. This man I’d loved for a decade. This man I’d built my entire adult life around. This stranger wearing my husband’s face.
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“I’m your wife,” I said. The words felt foreign in my mouth, like a language I was forgetting how to speak. “I’m pregnant with your child. And you’re asking me to be understanding p>
He sighed. The patient sigh of a man dealing with an unreasonable employee. “You’re being dramatic. When Meredith feels a little better, I’ll go to your appointment. Just—stop acting like this. It’s exhausting p>
Exhausting.
I was exhausting him. My pregnancy was exhausting him. My entirely justified anger at finding another woman in my home, in the room I’d painted for our baby, was exhausting.
The nausea hit without warning—though by now, I should have expected it. Stress, spicy food, and first-trimester hormones make for a volatile combination. I barely made it off the couch before I was on my knees, retching onto the hardwood floor I’d spent three weekends refinishing.
Through the haze of sickness, I heard Nathan make a sound of disgust. Footsteps. The bedroom door opening and closing. Murmured voices.
When I finally stopped heaving, I was alone.
He’d left. He’d actually left. Packed up his precious Meredith and fled into the night rather than deal with his wife’s justified meltdown.
I sat back on my heels, wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, and laughed. It was an ugly sound—more sob than humor—but once it started, I couldn’t stop.
Finally, I thought. Finally, I can let go.