Page 51 of The Space He Left
“You seem more settled today, Jack,” Dr. Cox began, observing me over the top of his glasses. “Still struggling, but less… raw.”
“The work is helping,” I admitted. “The business is slowly recovering. I’m learning to be a father from a distance. But I still don’t understand how I let it get so bad. I look back, and it’s like watching a stranger destroy my life.”
Dr. Cox put his notepad aside. “Let’s talk about that stranger. We’ve established that your need to be a hero was a key factor.But today, I want to talk about honesty. When Madison first contacted you, did you tell Harper she was your ex-girlfriend?”
The question was simple, yet it still landed like an accusation. “No. I called her a friend from high school.”
“Which is true. But was it the whole truth?”
“No,” I admitted, the shame still fresh.
“Why not? Were you trying to hide something, Jack?”
“I wasn’t trying to hide anything!” The words came out with a familiar, defensive heat, but it was weaker now, tempered by months of self-examination. “It didn’t seem relevant at the time. We dated years ago. I'd genuinely put our romantic history in a box and tucked it away years ago. I honestly thought we were just friends now.”
“I see.” Dr. Cox picked up his pen. “Let me ask you a hypothetical. How would you feel if Harper started spending as much time with an ex-boyfriend as you were spending with Madison? If she left your anniversary dinner to rush to his crisis?”
My jaw tightened. After four months of silence from Harper, of communicating only through an app, the thought of her turning to another man for comfort was a physical pain. “I wouldn’t like that.”
“What if she started staying overnight at his hotel? Just to offer comfort, of course.”
“I wouldn’t like that either,” I said, my voice tight with an emotion I couldn't hide.
“What if you were expecting another baby, and your wife was consistently canceling birthing classes and doctors’ appointments to be with him? What if his name was a constant presence on her phone?”
I didn’t answer. I just stared at the floor, each question a reminder of a specific, painful memory. A missed class. A canceled dinner. A phone buzzing on the table between us.
“And what if,” Dr. Cox continued, his voice calm but relentless, “you saw a picture of them online? Out at a nice restaurant, laughing, looking happy, while she was telling you he was too sick to be left alone. How would that feel, Jack?”
The memory of Harper showing me that Instagram post was burned into my brain. The look on her face - a mixture of hurt and desperate hope that I would finally see what she saw. Instead, I’d dismissed her. The nausea was immediate and overwhelming.
“I would hate it,” I whispered, the words tasting like poison.
“Why?”
“Because it would feel… disrespectful. It would feel like his needs were more important than mine. It would feel like she was choosing him over me. Over our family.”
Dr. Cox let my words hang in the air for a long, heavy moment before he delivered the final blow. “Jack, what you were having with Madison wasn’t a friendship. It was an emotional affair.”
He had said those exact words to me in our very first session. Back then, the idea had hit me like a splash of ice water - a foreign concept I'd immediately wanted to reject. I’d spent weeks turning it over in my mind, resisting it, trying to find a way around it. But after months of living with the consequences, of sleeping in a small apartment above a bar while my family lived across town, the words landed differently this time.
They weren't a shocking, new concept anymore. They were the missing piece I’d been searching for. The one that explained everything. The one that made me a cheater.
“No,” I said weakly, the denial a reflex. “We never slept together. I never even kissed her.”
“An affair doesn’t have to be physical to be a betrayal,” Dr. Cox said gently. “You gave another woman your time, your emotional energy, your intimacy, and your loyalty. You madeher your priority. That is the very definition of an emotional affair.”
He was right. I hadn’t just been a fool.I had been unfaithful.
The air in the room felt thick, heavy. I felt like I was suffocating under the weight of it. All this time, I’d been clinging to the technicality - I didn’t have sex with her - as my one piece of moral high ground. And Dr. Cox had just kicked it out from under me.
“Tell me about the intimacy,” he said. “You said nothing physical happened, but you hesitated.”
I couldn’t look at him. I stared at my hands, the shame so intense it felt like a physical heat crawling up my neck. “I… I held her hand sometimes. When she was scared.” My voice was barely a whisper. “And a few nights, when she was really struggling, we… we fell asleep together on the hotel couch. Under a blanket. Just… holding each other. She kissed my cheek a few times when I was leaving.”
I finally looked up, expecting to see disgust on his face. Instead, I saw a profound, professional sadness.
“You cuddled with another woman,” he stated, not as a question, but as a clinical fact. “You offered her the physical comfort that should have belonged to your wife, who was carrying your child.”
