Page 53 of Love Complicated

“In what world am I still your wife?” He stares. No answer. “Youfiled for divorce. Not me. And now we’re legally separated.” My hands rise to his chest, attempting to push him back but he resists, fighting against me. “And you don’t think they’re already talking when they see you walking around town withher?”

His brow pulls together, cold blue narrowing. “Hername is Brie.”

“You say that awfully seductively.” My face heats with the words. “Rolls off your tongue easily, doesn’t it? Probably about as easy as it was to get in her skanky pants?”

“You’re just jealous my tongue isn’t on you anymore,” he spits back, amusement flashing in his eyes.

I gag. “Nope. I’m not.” I shove him back away from me. “But I bet it’s been on her for years, hasn’t it?”

He catches himself against the kitchen island, rage racing through his veins at the accusations. “What’s it to you if it has been? Does it really matter anymore?”

And then he’s quiet, staring at me in shock that he’d just admitted to me he’d been with her long before I found out in July.

Austin regards me with uncertainty, my face the focus of his indiscretion. Chewing on the words, his brow caves, eyes glazing over with what looked like tears threatening. Bullshit. “I’m. . . not having this conversation with you today.”

Every muscle in my body tightens. “When? When was the first time?”

His lips part and he heaves in a long-winded breath, then blows it out slowly. “It doesn’t fucking matter. You kicked me out.”

There’s a night in July. . . A blistering hot day where he didn’t come home and I followed him, only to find his car parked at my best friend’s house. It’s a night that shattered my heart into a million pieces. The two people who I trusted the most, betrayed me, together.

I’m right back there, emotionally.

Silence spreads throughout the house.

His brow furrows and then draws in another heavy breath.

My thoughts feel numb, noises around me too loud to decipher where they were coming from. It’s the beating of my heart as I ask, “Was that the first time?”

Say yes. Don’t do this to me.

And then he says, “No. . . .” And his answer collapses my breathing into gasping, because of the realization. He isn’t who I thought he was.

“When. . . was the first time?”

He doesn’t look at me as he slides his hands into his pockets of his jeans, his head hanging low. His lips part and I know it’s coming, the answer, the devastation. “I fucked her a week before we got married.”

You’ve destroyed any love I had remaining for you.

He gives me a moment to ask more, accuse, react, and then he nods, muscles in his jaw locked.

You son of a bitch. You were cheating on me and made me feel like the one who caused this.

I didn’t think hearing he cheated on me the entire time we were together would hurt like this, not after the initial shock of the news, or him asking for a divorce, but it does. It hurts just as bad because I married Austin because he was the stable one, the one who had his life planned and knew what he wanted out of life. Sure, I was pregnant, and that’s why we got married so soon, but I loved him despite the unplanned pregnancy and knew in my heart I wanted to marry him, someday. But this man, he’s not who I thought he was, or maybe he was never who I thought he was.

My voice breaks, tears falling when I tremble over the words, “How many others have there been?”

He’s looking out the window, leaning into the island, watching the boys. His eyes cut to mine, a sideways glance that’s brief. “Just her.”

Just her?

So she was special enough that it wasjust her?

I hold back a sigh, biting back so much. And then I’m angry. Fucking pissed. Is murder legal in California? If I buried him in the backyard, would the stray cats eventually eat his remains?

Wanting to scream at him for attempting to make me feel guilty, a wave of emotion hits me, it nearly knocks me off my feet, utterly unexpected. Kind of like him telling me he wanted a divorce. No, let’s work it out, just bam, fuck you, I want out. Not that I was going to work it out given the cheating, but still, I wasn’t expecting to get divorce papers on our kids’ birthday.

Gathering a deep breath in my lungs, it’s everything I can do not to goFight Clubon his ass. “So while I was at home raising your sons, you were fucking my friend the whole time?”

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