DEVON
I’m losing her.
I can feel it in the way she moves through our house now—always at a distance, always one room ahead or behind. Like she's making sure we don’t share the same air for too long.
It's been two days since she confronted me about the credit card bill. I need to do something—we need to reconnect somehow.
Tonight, I find her in the living room, curled into the corner of the couch with a glass of wine and her laptop open. She's not typing, just staring at the screen like she prefers it to me.
"Hey."
She glances up. "Hey."
That's it. One word. She can barely look at me.
I cross to the couch, anyway, lowering myself onto the opposite end. The cushions feel like a canyon between us.
“Still researching?”
She closes the laptop. “Yup.”
Fuck. I know what she's researching. Me. Mila. The timeline of that night she's dissecting piece by piece.
"Jade. Can we talk?Actuallytalk?"
She sets her wine-glass on the coffee table with deliberate precision. "About what, Devon? How you lied to me about being with Grant? About how you spent our anniversary getting drunk with the woman who's wanted you since high school?"
"I told you?—"
"Youtoldme a lot of things." Her voice is exhausted, like she’s emotionally drained. "I don't know which ones are true anymore."
What makes this worse is that she's right, and I hate myself for making her feel this way. Making her second guess everything. I should’ve just told her about the stupid kiss, but I didn’t want her feeling like it meant something when it didn’t, didn’t want her questioning herself or letting her insecurity take over. And now I’ve made her insecurity a hundred times worse.
"I love you," I say, even though it’s cliche and desperate. "That's true. That's always been true."
Jade laughs bitterly. "Is it?"
I stare at her.What the hell?
"How can you even ask me that?"
"How can I not?" She finally looks at me—reallylooks at me—and her eyes are red-rimmed, shadowed. "You choseher, Devon—you chose drinks withMilaover callingmeback. You choseherhotel room over going home to your own bed. Onouranniversary, I had to see you withher.”
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
"I didn'tchooseher. I was drunk and stupid, and I passed out in a chair—" I try to defend myself, but she just cuts me off.
"Stop!” She holds up her hand. "I've heard this. I've heard all of this."
All I can hear is my heartbeat thumping in my ears to the beat of how fucking stupid I am. If I’d have just told her, this wouldn’t be happening.
Yeah, because she would’ve left you.
I don’t know what to do. I can't sit here and watch her pull further away while I drown in the guilt of what I'm not telling her.
So, I do the only thing I can think of.
I close the distance between us on the couch, reaching for her hand.She tenses but doesn't pull away, and I take that as permission—maybe the only permission I'll get.
