Page 55 of Chasing the Other Woman

My fingers loosen around the pen.

“You’re right about one thing,” I say. “Brooks and I were broken.”

Luci blinks, thrown.

“He stopped talking to me. He took me out of the field. He let you sit in my seat. He hurt me.” My voice stays steadier than I feel. “You don’t get credit for knowing where the wound is when you’re the one pressing on it.”

Color rises in her cheeks. “You think you’re so special because you were there first.”

“No. I think I’m his wife.”

“Barely.”

The word cracks across the bar.

Now people are definitely listening.

Luci seems to realize it too late, because stopping now would be like trying to stop a train that's barreling down the tracks. “You don’t know what it was like being there with him every day while he was trying to survive you. You don’t know what he said when you weren’t around.”

My throat tightens despite myself. “Then say it.”

“He said the marriage was over in every way that mattered.”

For a second, bile rises in my throat because I'm primed to believe it. After all, it hasn't been that long since I walked in to find her in his arms.

She was scared.

Because isn't that the thing I'd really feared? That the man I loved had left me in every way except the one that was final? It sounds like my nightmare made real.

But it also doesn’t fit.

Not with his face when I gave him my ring.

Not with SAM.

Not with Tom’s patterns.

Not with the way Brooks’s eyes keep finding me like he can’t help checking whether I’m still there.

“You’re lying,” I say.

Luci’s mouth tightens. “You don’t know that.”

“No,” I say. “But I know you.”

Her face changes.

I take one step closer. “You wanted my seat. Then you wanted my team. Then you wanted my husband. And somehow you’re still standing here pretending this is concern.”

“I earned my place.”

“You earned a job. You mistook it for a life.”

A low sound moves through the room. Someone mutters, “Damn.”

Luci’s eyes flash. “You don’t deserve him.”

Finally, the truth comes out. And boy, is it ugly.