Page 71 of After Everything
"I'm not telling you this for your approval." My voice was steady now. "I'm telling you because you need to understand what you took from me. And what you didn't." I held his gaze. "You took eight years. You took my trust. You took my marriage and my sense of security and my ability to believe in someone completely. But you didn't take me. I'm still here. I survived you."
A tear slid down David's cheek. He didn't wipe it away.
"I'm sorry," he said again. "God, Emma, I'm so sorry."
"I know you are." I sat back in my chair. "I can see that you are. But David, you need to understand… sorry doesn't fix this. It doesn't undo what happened. It doesn't give me back those years or make me trust you again."
"I know."
"Do you?" I studied his face. "Because I need to know that you understand I'm not here because I'm considering getting back together with you. I'm not here because I forgive you. I'm here because I needed to say this. To tell you what you did to me. And to hear you admit it without all the legal language or the careful phrasing."
"I understand," David said quietly. "I don't expect anything from you. I don't deserve anything from you."
I nodded slowly. "Good. Because you don't."
We sat in silence for a moment. David wiped his face with the back of his hand, not bothering to hide it. People at other tables were living their lives around us, ordering lattes, laughing at something on their phones, completely unaware that we were sitting here dismantling three years of wreckage.
I picked up his coffee cup without thinking,turning it in my hands the way he'd been doing when I first walked in. The ceramic was still warm. Three years of wreckage laid out between us, and somehow, we were both still here. And in a way… it didn’t feel wrong. Not right, but not wrong either.
CHAPTER 23: EMMA
"Can I ask you something?" I said, setting the cup down.
"Anything."
"Why her?" I looked him in the eyes. "Of all people. Sarah was your friend. You'd known her for years. Why risk it with her?"
David was quiet for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was careful. Honest.
"Because it was easy," he said. "We had history. We understood each other's work, our stress levels, the pressure of the job. When we started working together on the Henderson case, it felt likestepping back into something familiar. Something that didn't require me to explain or justify or apologize for working late."
"I never asked you to apologize for working."
"I know. But Emma, you'd given up so much for me. Every time I came home late, every time I missed dinner, every time I chose the office over being home with you. I… I felt guilty. And that guilt made me resent you, even though none of it was your fault. It was easier to be with someone who didn't make me feel that way."
I absorbed that. "So you're saying I made you feel guilty, and that's why?—"
"No." He cut me off quickly. "No. I made myself feel guilty because I knew I was failing you. I knew I was taking everything you gave and not giving anything back. And instead of fixing that, instead of being honest and either changing or ending things properly, I found someone who didn't expect anything from me. Someone who was just as consumed by work as I was." He paused. "It was cowardice. Not your fault. Mine."
I looked at him. Really looked at him. There was something different in his face now… not just the apology, not just the remorse, but actual understanding. Like he'd spent three years picking apart every choice he'd made and finally understood how he'd gotten there.
"Did you love her?" The question came out quieter than I intended.
"No." He didn't hesitate. "I thought maybe I did, at first. Or I told myself I did to justify what I was doing. But no. It was just... escape. Novelty. The thrill of something forbidden." He met my eyes. "She ended it fast too. Walked away like it had been nothing. And it had been nothing. To her, to me. Just a massive act of self-destruction that hurt the one person who'd actually loved me."
My chest tightened. "Did you love me?"
"Yes." His voice cracked. "God, Emma, yes. I loved you. I still—" He stopped himself. "I loved you. And I destroyed us anyway because I was too selfish and too stupid to appreciate what I had."
I wanted to be angry at that answer.Wanted it to be simpler: that he'd never loved me, that it had all been a lie, that I could write off eight years as a mistake from the start.
But the truth was messier than that. He had loved me. And he'd hurt me anyway.
Maybe that was worse.
"I see you doing the work now," I said after a long moment. "The DV cases. The pro bono practice. Helping people who actually need you instead of corporations trying to avoid liability."
David looked up, surprised.
