1
LILA
I’ve been fucking your husband. Thought you should know. Cami.
Cami.
The name of a pretty girl with no stretch marks or perimenopausal symptoms. I stared at the text message glaring back at me from my phone, and I read it for the millionth time, wondering if I’d notice more than just her name this time.
I’ve been?—
I sucked in a sharp breath and felt the sting of tears burn against my closed eyelids. Then I slowly opened them, praying this was some kind of prank, that the text message would disappear—that this didn’t really happen.
—fucking your husband.
A hiccup surprised me, half caught between a sob and an inhale.
My husband, Victor. Even his name brought warmth to my heart, images of his chocolate brown eyes and soft, dark curls grazing his forehead as he grinned at me.
My phone burst with sound, and I almost dropped it. I wish I had, then I wouldn’t have had to see what she sent next.
Cami.
It was Victor, shirtless and lying on pink satin sheets. He gazed up at the camera, looking more playful than I’d seen him in years. A tanned hand lay on his chest, with bright pink nails filed into dagger-like tips. Tanned thighs sat on either side of Victor, and I saw his tattooed hands gripping them, denting the perfect skin.
Then came the video.
I’ve never felt pain like it. Ever.
I watched in high definition as my husband railed a petite brunette from behind, her pathetic noises making my stomach churn. But it was his noises that broke me.
His words.
“Fucking take it. Take it all.”
“God, you’re so fucking tight.”
“Look at how good your pussy takes me.”
My Victor. My husband. He’d said those exact words to me so many times, and hearing them, so familiar but spoken to someother woman,was enough to make bile rise in my throat and empty onto the solid wood floor beneath my feet.
I hadn’t even eaten today. I hadn’t had time, and I’d just grabbed my phone for five minutes…
I was still on my hands and knees, retching, when I heard the front door open. There was the familiar sound of keys being tossed onto the counter by the door, probably beside my own set, then I heard my husband muttering to himself as he stomped the rain from his boots.
“Fucking assholes can’t even park right.”
Ah, yes. The neighbours whom my husband detested. The Morani’s. They parked over our driveway just enough that we could make it onto the drive, but far enough that my husband’sbeloved Ford Ranger barely made it. He loved that car more than me, of that I was now certain.
“Baby?” Victor called out, kicking off his boots. “Where you at?”
Hell, I thought.I’m in hell.
And you can’t save me, because you put me there.
“Lila?” He was worried. I normally greeted him at the door with smiles and tales of my day. But I couldn’t get off the floor.
He jogged up the cream-carpeted stairs, and then I saw his feet in the purple socks I’d bought him for Christmas. His jeans fell into my eyeline next, but he moved so quickly to crouch in front of me that the only thing I really focused on were those fucking chocolate brown eyes.
