Page 126 of The Truth About Love

“Look man,” doucheface starts and I hold a hand out to silence him without looking his way, but he doesn’t take the message. “What the fuck? You can’t do that. Babe, did you see that? Tell him he can’t do that.”

“Get out, Graham,” Cara snaps.

Ah, so that’s his name.

I see his mouth drop open in shock through the corner of my eye.

“What?”

“Now.”

I meet his eye as he looks at me, pleading for me to help him, as if I’m not the husband of the woman he just got caught fucking.

“You heard her.”

Graham finally puts his dick away, doing up his cargo pants and throwing on an oil-stained shirt. Cara and I don’t take any notice as he picks up his work boots, not bothering to put them on, and shuffles out of the room.

All the while, Cara looks at me with an arrogance that doesn’t make sense.

She stands and saunters over to me, white sheet falling off her shoulders and exposing her nakedness to me once again. When she raises a hand to touch my chest, I catch her wrist and hold it in front of us.

“Don’t fucking touch me,” I snarl. “And put some damn clothes on, for Christ’s sake.”

She pouts, but does as I say, taking a satin robe out the closet and tying it in place. Then she flops into the chair where she usually sits to do her makeup and cocks an eyebrow.

“So, who’s your friend?” I ask.

“Some guy I picked up at the construction site across the street after you abandoned me earlier.”

“He know you’re pregnant?”

She shrugs. “Told him I was bloated.”

Jesus, this woman is shameless.

“Classy.”

She rolls her eyes. “Well, what did you expect? I’m a woman, Auden. I have needs. And God forbid you’d ever be down for a fuck, we haven’t even consummated the marriage yet.”

Her hands snap to cover her mouth as if she’s just said something she shouldn’t.

“Of course, we have,” I snap. “You’re pregnant.”

And then I see it.

The blush of panic on her cheeks, the glint of deceit in her eyes, both are a blinding indication of the truth.

She scurries backwards up the bed until she hits the headboard like a mouse running from its predator. “I meant apart from that one time,” she says weakly.

“That one time that I have no memory of other than what you’ve told me?”

Fuck, the lie was there all along, wasn’t it? I’ve never gotten so drunk that I’ve forgotten the night before, but I believed Cara when she told me we’d slept together without a second thought.

What the fuck have I done?

I watched Summer-Raine’s heart shatter in front of me the night I told her about Cara’s pregnancy. For months, I’ve watched her from a distance. I’ve seen her weight-loss, the fake smiles she gives her clients and the moments she lingers too long at the dumpsters to cry where she thinks no one can see her.

I’ve ripped her apart.

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