Page 63 of The Expat Affair

He’s already under the covers by the time I catch up. His glasses lie on the nightstand, next to his phone on the wireless charger, lit up with a soft green glow displaying the time. I slip into bed, and his hand finds mine under the comforter. A gesture that used to be so normal, so tender and full of love, that it now feels like punishment, a consolation prize swathed in pity. His fingers are warm and dry as they close around mine.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice so low I have to strain to hear. “I know I’ve been really... absent lately.”

Scream at me. Rip off my clothes and fuck me. Tell me you hate me and want a divorce. Anything other than this quiet desertion.

I lie here for a long moment, staring up at the dark ceiling, trying to figure out a way to say it. Instead, I land on, “If there’s something you need to tell me, Thomas, please just do it. I’m a big girl. I can handle the truth.”

I hate the way my voice sounds, thin and pleading, but it must do something to him because he’s quiet for a long time. I hear hisslow, steady breaths, feel the low hum of his muscles vibrating under the sheets.This is it, I think.Here it comes.I hold my breath, my whole body waiting.

“There’s nothing to say,” he says finally. “Everything’s fine.”

He releases my hand and rolls onto his side, and that’s that. Conversation over. Whatever problems we have, not solved but left to fester. I lie here in the dark, telling myself I have every luxury I could have ever dreamed of. Diamonds. The Prins name. This palace and access to a bank account with more money than I could ever spend.

But I meant what I said to Rayna a few days ago. A wife knows when there’s another woman in her husband’s bed, or worse—in his head.

I stare into the dark, thinking I’ll wait all night if I have to. I have absolutely nothing better to do than count my husband’s exhales and wait for them to even out.

Thomas’s body is a deadweight on the mattress, his breaths regular puffs of soft air. I stare at the ceiling for fifteen minutes more, and then I lift the covers and slip out of bed.

Silently, I creep around to his side of the bed, lift his cellphone from the charger, and hurry with it into the bathroom. Thomas has never given me his passcode, has never actually handed me his phone and said those numbers out loud, but I’ve watched him punch them in enough times that I know what they are. I tick them in now, and the screen dissolves into a WhatsApp conversation.

At the top of the screen, a woman’s name, Cécile, and I roll my eyes in the dim room. Cécile is Thomas’s assistant, a drab woman with close-set eyes and hair as shapeless as her body. His secretary, how cliché.

I scroll through the texts, reading them in reverse.Good night,my love. I wish it was you I was coming home to. I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up. I must see you, must see for myself that you’re okay. I didn’t tell him anything, I swear. I wouldn’t do that to you. Please be careful. Please stay safe. I couldn’t bear if what happened to Frederik happened to you, too. ILY forever, xx.

It’s funny, all these months I’ve spent agonizing about where Thomas has been and who he’s been with, I thought when the truth finally cracked open that I’d feel more. My husband is in love with another woman. He wishes it was her he was coming home to. He’s not just a liar but a coward.

Even though I was expecting this—honestly, I’ve known it for some time now—seeing those words on Thomas’s screen doesn’t hurt me as much as it ignites something under my skin. A simmering fury that he doesn’t have the balls to tell me, a nervous kind of energy to hold the phone in front of his face and slap him awake. Ithink of Thomas in the next room, snoring soundly in the bed we share, and I wonder if that’s what he’s dreaming about, this dirty little secret with Cécile.

My gaze snags on the words at the top of the screen.Please be careful. Please stay safe. He’s scared Frederik’s killer is still out there, that he might be coming for Cécile. It makes sense, I guess, that Thomas has latched on to this. Yet another distressed damsel for him to save, yet another wounded puppy for him to adopt. Thomas didn’t walk away from his upbringing unscathed, either. He loves nothing more than feeling needed.

I stand there, the marble cool under my feet, and breathe through another wave of anger—at Thomas, but mostly at myself. For believing he meant it when he promised to take away my worries, for letting myself fall for his lies, for not being prepared for a woman like Cécile sneaking in the back door.

I leave the screen exactly how I found it, with Thomas’s last text at the bottom of the chat, then sneak back into the bedroom and settle the phone back on the charger. Cécile can have my husband’s lying, cheating ass—but not yet. I’m not letting him go just yet. Let him live in agony a little while longer.

I don’t need Thomas. I don’t need his lies and dodges and empty promises.

But those twelve diamonds Xander grew for me? The ones he stashed in his safe?

Those, I need. I need them now more than ever.

Rayna

“He’s here.” I keep beanie man in my periphery and tip my head up at Lars. The clouds above his head are spitting snow again, a Van Gogh sky of messy white flecks swirling around all that glorious hair like a hologram.

“Who is? Who’s here?”

I gesture to the empty chair next to me, and Lars drops into it. “See that guy in the red hoodie four tables over? That’s him. That’s beanie man. He followed me here.”

Lars’s eyeballs dart that way, but he’s subtle enough not to turn his head. “You sure? He’s not even paying attention to you.”

Which is the whole smokescreen, and so is the friend who’s joined him. Another man about his age in Nike high-tops and a puffy orange coat, chatting up the three girls at the next table. It seems innocent enough, two single men on the prowl, but my body is still on high alert.

“It’s him. It’s definitely him.Dammit.”

I feel around in my coat pockets for what must be the hundredth time, fingertips brushing against nothing but crumbs and lint. I’m not wearing a tracker, which means he must have followed me here—possible, I guess. Maybe he spotted me coming out of that alley.

A waiter drops by the table, and I know better than to not order. Even for a freezing Sunday night, these are prime seats, on the front row of the terrace and under a heater. If we don’t pay for a drink, this man will chase us away.

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