Page 108 of The Truth About Love

I set it back down again.

“When he was twelve weeks old, he got sick,” I tell her, closing my eyes as I’m assaulted by the memory. “He was fine when we put him to bed. There was nothing to suggest there was anything wrong, he’d been smiling that day and everything. But a few hours later, we were in the emergency room and by the morning, he was gone.”

I don’t even know I’m crying until I feel Summer-Raine’s fingers catching the tears on my cheeks. The touch of her skin on mine is more comforting than anything I’ve felt since the day it happened.

When I blink my eyes open, I find that she’s crying as well.

“Don’t cry for me, Summer-Raine.”

She blinks up at me. “How can I not?”

Though I have no right to touch her, especially here, in my marital home, in he nursery of the son I had with my wife, I take her face in my hands. “You should hate me.”

“I do.” She says it so earnestly that I almost take a step back. “I hate you for having a child with a woman who wasn’t me, but you don’t deserve this. In no world would I ever wish upon you the pain of losing your child.”

My gaze dips as more tears fall.

She lets me cry in silence for a little while, my hands still clutching her face. The feel of her is enough to ground me in the moment and stop me spiralling into the endless pit of grief that I fall into most hours of most days.

“What was his name?” she asks on a whisper.

“Oscar.” I look at his little face in the photos on the chest of drawers beside us. At his button nose and cupid’s bow lips. The way his lashes rest on his little cheeks as he sleeps. “After Oscar Wilde.”

“He’s so beautiful, Auden.” She sniffs, bringing her hands up to cover mine where they still cup her face. “He looks just like you.”

“Yeah? You think so?”

“I really do.”

Her eyes stare into mine, deep and understanding. The moment is so thick as we share in my grief that it would take an Obsidian knife blade to slice through it.

Several minutes pass before Summer-Raine coughs and steps out of my hold. The reality of our situation seems to return to her. I watch as the memory of my betrayal takes root, her eyes clouding over once more, the emptiness in them returning.

For a few long moments, I got to see her without the shields she erected two weeks ago. It was a privilege I didn’t deserve, no matter what I’ve been through in the time she’s been away.

But now, she’s closing herself off from me and I feel it like a chill on my skin.

“Thank you for having us, but I think Max and I should go now.”

My jaw ticks at the mention of that asshole.

“Is he your boyfriend?” I can’t help myself. The question is out before I’m able to censor it and the severity of my voice goes undisguised as well.

She looks at me with narrowed eyes. “I can’t see how that’s any of your business.”

I scoff, anger rising like a sea storm and I have no hope of stopping it. “It was only two weeks ago that you were showing up here to be with me.”

She blinks, stunned.

I can see the confusion on her face. She doesn’t understand how my mood has changed so quickly. She can’t pinpoint the trigger that made me switch.

But she doesn’t know just how much I’ve changed in the years since she’s been gone. I’m not the jovial, easy-going Auden I was back then. I’m cold and angry and cruel.

It’s because of that, that I say, “You move on quickly, that’s all. Or is that why it took you so long to come for me? Because you were fucking him already?”

The slap comes so fast I don’t see it.

“Don’t you dare talk to me that way,” she spits. “You have no right to make those accusations. Not when you got married to another fucking woman while you were supposed to be waiting for me.”

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