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“Yes. Bennett, I need to talk to you about Cayden.”
A humorless laugh flees my lungs. “Honestly, I don’t care anymore about the two of you. I’ve met someone else. I’m not saying that to hurt you, but I’m happy with her and?—”
“Bennett, did Cayden ever tell you why he was there in Boston? Did he tell you anything about what happened between me and him?”
That pulls me up short since that’s not at all what I thought she was going to say. “Uh…” I drag a hand across my jaw as I think back. “He said he was here to apologize. To get me to forgive him. He said you forced the relationship between the two of you and he went along with it because he loved you. He claimed he had no idea about the tubal ligation and that you told him that if he didn’t continue the affair, you’d tell me what was going on between the two of you and it would ruin our friendship.”
She sighs. “That’s what he said? That I had blackmailed him into sex with me or I’d tell you and ruin your friendship? How does that make any sense? I didn’t want our marriage to end if you recall. How would telling you that have helped me? You didn’t think that was odd?”
I hesitate because yeah, part of me did when he mentioned it. It just sounded… I don’t know, like it didn’t make a ton of sense as she just said, but I was too upset by everything in that moment to give it further thought.
“Please just listen to everything I have to say because it’s important,” she interrupts my thoughts. “I have no ulterior motive for doing this. Remember that. The first time Cayden and I slept together was after you and I had a fight. I left and got drunk at the bar and you called him to pick me up because you were still too pissed at me to do it yourself. Cayden came and we talked for a while, and one thing led to another. I regretted it terribly and told him it was a mistake and that it could never happen again. He disagreed and started blackmailing me.”
“Blackmailing you?” I parrot, my brows raised and my eyes wide as I change lanes and inch along to a stoplight. “Cayden did this?”
“Well, threatening me is probably the better term. He told me he’d tell you about that night if I didn’t continue to sleep with him.” She swallows audibly. “I loved you and I didn’t want to lose you, but at first, I told him no. I told him I’d come clean to you and throw myself at your mercy, but then he somehow discovered that I… I had taken a lot of money from my parents.”
“You did what?”
She clears her throat, her voice low. “I knew they were losing their company, and I didn’t want to lose all of my inheritance with it, so I… well, I misappropriated funds.”
“Jesus, Liz. Seriously? You never mentioned this to me.” I drag a hand across the back of my neck, twisting my head until my neck pops.
“I couldn’t, Bennett. You know I couldn’t. You never would have been on board with that.”
“Of course I wouldn’t have been on board,” I snap. “For fuck’s sake. Why the hell did you do that?”
“You grew up poor and became wealthy. You have no idea what it is to be threatened with the reverse,” she sniffs defensively. “Your money wasn’t my money. We had that prenup and always kept our incomes separate because of it.”
I hold in my scoff and my snark because I would have given her my money. Though the why didn’t you simply purchase fewer designer things is on the tip of my tongue. Frankly, I’m not interested in fighting with her, and my days of giving a shit about how she operates are over.
I redirect her. “So he discovered what you had done?”
“Yes, and he used that too. He threatened to turn me in to the FBI and SEC for money laundering. I would have gone to jail.”
I’m having such a hard time making sense of this. Of the people I had spent so much of my life with. Liz laundering money, and Cayden blackmailing her into an affair. It’s fucking madness, and it’s making my head spin.
I shake my head, trying to understand everything. “So you started sleeping with him. Fine. How did the tubal come into play?”
“I didn’t want a baby with him, and he refused to use condoms. I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t try to get pregnant with you while sleeping with him. The risk of the baby being his was too great. And…” She trails off to clear her throat. “I didn’t want children that much anyway. I had told you I did because I loved you and was willing to have them for you, but with everything spiraling out of control, I didn’t know what else to do.”
Finally, I reach the garage and pull into my spot. I stare straight ahead through the windshield at the concrete wall, utterly floored.
After a moment, I lick my dry lips and say, “He blamed you for everything, Liz. He said he had no clue about the tubal until after. He said he tried to end it with you several times and you wouldn’t back off. Everything was you and not him. Yet he told me he was in love with you the entire time we were married and that he was jealous of me.”
In fact, he said sometimes he hated me. Right? He said that. And I didn’t put it together. None of it. Despite what he had done to me, I blamed Liz for most of it and was too wrapped up in myself and what was going on with Katy to care about the things he said or the things he was doing.
“God, Bennett, it’s so much more than that. Cayden is sick. He became completely, terrifyingly obsessed with me. He’d follow me everywhere I’d go, sleep in the back seat of my car in our garage, and send me inappropriate texts and packages at work. He was relentless, and when you found out about the tubal and confronted me, part of me was relieved. I couldn’t keep it going.”
She starts to cry, heavy, wet sobs into the phone. Liz had been pulling away by that point. She’d been losing weight. Not sleeping well. After I found out about the tubal and the affair, I assumed that was the reason for all of that.
It’s nearly impossible to reconcile the man I thought I knew with the man she’s describing. Cayden is an actor. He’s always been one. He would sit beside me and listen to me lamenting Liz not getting pregnant. He’d offer comfort and suggestions and act like a best fucking friend would.
All the while he was fucking her behind my back.
And I had no clue.
What he wants the world to see—a charming, wealthy, brilliant neurosurgeon who committed his life to being a bachelor and a good friend—is not at all who he is.
