Page 76 of Anywhere with You
“How long did you know?” I went from staring at her to not being able to look at her at all.
“Months,” she said.
I tried to breathe through the nausea. Months? Months? “You didn’t tell me,” I accused. “Months, and you didn’t tell me.”
I stood and paced the living room, clenching my hands together to stop the trembling.
When she’d come into the store that first day, she’d looked demolished. She’d asked, first thing, if I’d known about Bridget and Lorenzo, and I’d been so wrapped up in howI’dbeen betrayed, how angryIfelt, that I hadn’t even returned the question.
Because of course I hadn’t known. If I’d known, I would’ve been a decent human being and told her.
I put my shaking hands over my face.
And I’d feltguilty. Going to her apartment to apologize for being an ass, I’d regretted not reaching out to her after Lorenzo and Bridget left us. I’d sat at her table, commiserating like she was just another abandoned spouse. I’d apologized to her for not calling.
Ihad apologized. And all that time, she’d been part of it, part of keeping the secret, part of keeping me in the dark.
All that time. All that time on the road, all those days and nights together, being more open with her than anyone since Bridget, maybe even including the years I spent with Bridget, and Cara had listened and never said a word.
I forced my hands down to my stomach and wrapped my arms around myself, turning to face her. “Why?”
Cara gave one soft gasp, almost a sob, then whispered, “As long as your marriage stayed in one piece, there was a chance mine would, too.”
I walked across the room, unable to be near her. “What are you talking about?”
“If you knew they were together,” she explained, tears running down her cheeks that I wanted to kiss away, even now with anger rising up so strong in me that I could feel it in my throat, “if you knew, then you and Bridget would split up. Bridget would be free to be withLorenzo. Then…then there would be no reason for him to stay with me.”
I tried to listen and to process her words.
She went on, “It’s all I had, that chance that Bridget would decide to fix her marriage. Lorenzo didn’t care about his.” Tears ran down her face. “You don’t have to tell me it’s pathetic. I know.”
“Pathetic,” I murmured, but it wasn’t agreement or disagreement, just a word among a hundred words that made little sense to me at the moment.
“Yeah,” she agreed. “I didn’t want to face what was happening to me, but I should…I should’ve—”
I shook my head, holding up a hand for her to stop, but I was surprised when she actually did. I looked at her, this unbelievably sexy and funny and lovable woman, tears running down her face, her eyes wide and sad.
I’m sorry, I’d said to her, that day in her kitchen, out of sympathy for the collapse of our marriages, our plans, what had felt, at the moment, like our lives.
I’m sorry, too, she’d said.
And maybe she had been. Maybe she was now. But last night, I’d held on to her as though our lives were starting over again, and she had still been lying.
I felt temporarily zapped of emotion, as though my brain had overloaded and needed to cool down and restart.
“I…I’m going for a walk.” I was impressed with how calm I sounded.
“Honey,” she said as I slid my feet into my shoes and walked out the back door.
I didn’t stop.
I started walking down the path to the hot springs, then turned back, disgusted. I walked around the house instead, heading down the gravel road.
I wanted to think about what Cara had said, and at the same time, I never wanted to relive that conversation, ever again.
Cara had let me believe that my marriage was fine, that my wife wasn’t sleeping with anyone but me, when I’d been sharing her for months.
I stopped and threw up in some tall grass at the side of the road.
