Page 25 of I’m Already Gone

“She… she grabbed my dick, but nothing else happened! I stopped it before it went too far. I swear to God, Sunshine, I stopped it.” The words tumbled out in a desperate rush, but it only fueled the inferno raging inside me.

“Why the hell would you allow another woman to touch you, Ethan!?” I snapped. “The only woman who should be touching and kissing you is your wife! Not your goddamn assistant!”

His chest continued to rise and fall with rapid, shallow breaths. “I’m so sorry, Lily,” he choked out.

“What exactly are you sorry for?” I asked. “If, as you claimed, that nothing happened, then what are you sorry for?”

“For her touching me! Me touching her! For allowing… for that split second… to let it happen!” He threw his hands up in the air.

My eyebrows shot up. “Are you telling me you wanted it to happen?”

He didn’t respond right away. The silence shattered my heart into a million irreparable pieces.

“Wow,” I said, shaking my head.

He could barely bring himself to touch his own wife anymore, but he had no problem letting another woman put her hands on him like she had any right to what I had been begging for.

“Lily, I didn’t want it to happen. But⁠—”

“But what?” I snapped.

“I missed you, Lily. I missed your touch. I missed… us. And yes, for a moment, I wanted to feel desired and not looked at as a failure.” He sucked in a shaky breath before continuing. “And I regret every single fucking second of it. You’ll never know how sorry I am, Lily. I would never cheat on you. Please, you have to believe me,” he pleaded.

My eyes burned, but I refused to let the tears fall. “Then what the hell do you call what you did with her? Ethan, you cheated on me, even it wasn’t your intention.”

He shook his head vigorously. “No, no, I didn’t. I didn’t sleep with her!”

“You kissed another woman, Ethan. Were you turned on?” I whispered. The question burned my throat, threatening to bring up the bile that churned in my stomach, but I had to know.

His face contorted, a mask of pure agony, and beads of sweat formed on his brow.

I fought back the sob that clawed its way up, my voice barely holding together. “Did your dick get hard from her touch?”

His eyelids fluttered shut, and his shoulders slumped, his composure crumbling. “Yes,” he whispered, the word a ragged, shaky breath.

And just like that, the arrow struck, piercing through my already broken heart. The air left my lungs. “You crossed a boundary, Ethan. Whatever your intentions were, you allowed another woman to touch you, to kiss you, to make you feel a certain way. That is a betrayal to me and to our marriage. And you can’t use alcohol as an excuse.”

His eyes opened, glistening with tears. “That wasn’t my intention, Lily.”

The sad part was that I believed him. But it was too late. The damage had been done.

Ethan

The finality of her words struck me with the force of a lightning bolt.

I cheated on my wife. My Sunshine.

It wasn’t something I planned, but still, I allowed another woman to kiss me and to briefly touch my most intimate part of me that only belonged to my wife.

She stood before me, her expression filled with disappointment and deep pain. The look on her face eviscerated my insides to smithereens. I never imagined in a million years that I would see a look of unforgivable anguish on her face. And I couldn’t blame anybody but myself. I had done this. I had broken us. Broken her.

“I can’t do this right now. I need to leave,” Lily said quietly, breaking the tense silence.

“No, please. Not until we talk about this,” I pleaded, reaching for her wrist, but she snatched it away.

“Don’t. Touch. Me.”

“I’m sorry,” I murmured, lifting my palms in surrender. “Lily, please. I want us to fix this. We can move beyond it, together.”