Page 51 of Knot So Social

“A guy?” I echo, rasping over each word. “Tracey, we’ve promised to marry each other.” I stagger until my back hits the wall. “Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

She draws herself up, arms tight across her chest. “Well, I’ve decided I want more. It’s not like you’re well endowed, even if you are an alpha, and Beau gets two dicks, so why can’t I?”

“You . . . just . . . decided?”

She pouts, trying to look cute. For the first time in our relationship, the gesture elicits no response. “Don’t you want me to have everything I want? This isn’t the tenth century, you know. I’ll introduce you to Mack. I think you’ll really like him.”

“That’s not something you decide on your own,” I whisper. My pulses stutters in my ears.

Inside me, something cracks open, spilling acid through my soul. It eats away at my flesh, the sensation so painful I groan and clutch my chest. Splinters tear at my heart, and my head aches. Hissing between clenched teeth, I drop down on one knee, leaning on the end of the bed to keep my balance. This might be a heart attack, just like how they describe it: pain shooting through your chest and arm, shortness of breath, unable to focus.

Tracey, my cheating fiancé, sits rigidly on the bed, watching me.

After a long, agonizing moment, the room grows still.

I know the name of what just broke. My hopes and dreams of making things work, yes. But specifically, trust. Never again will I be able to leave Tracey’s side without wondering who she’s with and what she’s doing. Whose cock might be inside her—

Oh fuck!

That’s why she was already swollen. And creamy inside? She fucked him raw?? I gag, pressing my fist to my mouth. Just how recently was another man in our bed? Everything about our reunion was a lie.

“Stop being so dramatic,” she chides. “You look like someone killed your dog.”

“No, someone killed my marriage.”

She stares at me, the cogs turning behind her eyes. Her jaw twitches and her hands bunch on the bedcovers as she draws them up over her naked body.

“That someone is you, Tracey.”

Her eyes widen. A second later, she lets out a scream so loud her face turns red. “How could you put this on me, you bastard? What’s so wrong with wanting to open the relationship?”

The dam in my heart breaks loose. “What’s wrong is you fucking a man behind my back and letting him stash his jizz inside your cunt. It’s called cheating, you dumbass! And it makes you a—!”

I choke on the words. I loved her so much.

The nausea won’t leave, sloshing around in my belly. This room, our bed, the entire house even, has been contaminated by her betrayal.

“How many others?” I cry, voice cracking.

“What?” she rears back. The way her eyes dart away from mine tells the bitter truth.

“There were others. Oh, fuck.” I clasp my throat and run for the bathroom, hurling up the beef pie I had as a snack on the way home.

Tears burn in my eyes, but I’m not sure if they’re from the betrayal or the force of my body turning inside out. Not that it matters anymore. I’ll have to get tested for STDs. I’ll have to . . .

Move out.

As the thought comes, so does a soothing wash of relief. I have to get away from her and her choking lies.

I wash my mouth out and rise, the shakiness draining away. With steady hands, I grab my toiletries bag from under the sink and start packing my toothbrush. When I go get my suitcase from the spare room, Tracey starts shrieking at me.

“What are you doing? You’re going to leave, over something like this? I swear, Joel, I won’t take you back this time! You ungrateful bastard! You should be thanking me for having you! No one else would!”

Glass shatters as she takes out her rage on the house.

I continue packing, my life narrowing into a few sets of clothes, my watches, a box of model airplanes, and my laptop. Tracey rips the TV off the cabinet and hurls it to the floor. She may as well be speaking in another language, for all I hear.

I pause at the doorway and glance around the house where I spent the last year of my life, the place I was building my dreams of the future around. Now the elegant rooms feel strangely surreal, as if I’ve never lived here at all. There’s virtually nothing to show my tastes, or that I’ve left any impression on the house.