Page 36 of The Husband I Left

“Why would you do that to me? Why let me think you’d fallen in love with me?” I look him straight in the eye. “Did I really mean so little to you?”

“No,” he says too quickly. “No, Genny, that’s not—”

“You know, if you’d sat me down and told me the truth, I probably would have gone along with it. For the right price.” I laugh, but it’s a harsh, ugly sound, and I know I’m not fooling anyone. “I had student loans to pay off. It would appear that gold digger is your type after all.”

“You’re the furthest thing from a gold digger imaginable,” Oliver says quietly, and I hate that there’s tenderness in his voice. He doesn’t get to be tender right now.

I just look at him, saying nothing.

“Then why?” I ask the window. “Why would you do this to me?”

He’s quiet for a long moment.

“I never meant for it to go as far as it did,” he says. “I thought…I guess I thought I’d make my point, and we’d grow tired of each other eventually and mutually agree to go our separate ways and I’d make sure you were taken care of. I told myself you’d come out ahead. That it would be a fair trade.” He shakes his head. “But I never expected—”

He stops, and the flush deepens, and I realize that he’s embarrassed.

“I never wanted to expect you the way I did. I felt like I’d never get my fill of you. And then I took you to meet my father and there you were in what was probably one of the most uncomfortable lunches you’d ever attended in your life and you laughed and told my mother that her house was ‘a lot’ and that the view was nice but you’d get lost trying to find the bathroom and I realized that I liked you. Really, truly liked you, more than anyone I’d ever known. And that you would be destroyed if you ever learned why I’d married you.”

He leans forward again, his eyes fixed on my face.

“I never wanted to hurt you. From that moment on, that was the only thing I knew for certain. So I resolved to be the best husband I could be to you and to make sure you never, ever found out the truth of how we started. I told myself it didn’t matter why it began, as long as what it became was real. And it was real, Genny. Every bit of it was—”

“You stayed with me out of pity?” My voice comes out higher than I intended, sharp with outrage.

“No!” He looks horrified. “No, Genny, that’s not what I meant. I just didn’t want to hurt you. And somewhere along the way, I…” He stops, swallows hard. “Somewhere along the way, I fell in love with you.”

“I don’t understand. If you loved me, then why Victoria? Why give her space in your life again? Why have you been ignoring me for months? Making me feel like I was nothing to you?”

“Several months ago,” he says slowly, “Victoria came crawling back. She walked into my office acting as if the last two years were a misunderstanding. She didn’t seem to know that I knew. About the money. She still thought I believed my father had threatened her, driven her off. She told me she’d never stopped loving me and I felt—” He exhales. “All the fury I’d shoved down came roaring back up. At her. At my father. And there she was, standing right in front of me, and this time I could do something about it.”

My stomach turns over. I think I already know where this is going, and I want to stand up and walk out and never hear the rest, and I also need to hear it.

“So I let her think it was working,” he says. “I acted as if I’d never gotten over her. I acted as if marrying you had been a mistake I made in a fit of temper. I gave her the job; she needed money, her father’s fortune was long gone, and whatever she took from my father, she’d burned through. I let her sit on my desk and travel with me and stand next to me at parties, and I bought her jewelry and anything else she asked for. I promised her I’d leave you for her.” He swallows. “I told her it was only a matter of time.”

“It was very convincing for a lie,” I say, and my voice sounds strange to my own ears. Distant.

“Genny—”

“Just how far did you go to make the lie look real, Oliver? Did you sleep with her?”

He shakes his head, vehement. “No. I promise you that. I told her I didn’t want to start our life together by cheating on you. I told her she deserved better than to be a mistress.” A muscle jumps in his jaw. “She found that very romantic.”

I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.

“And how long was this little revenge fantasy supposed to go on?” I ask. “What was the endgame?”

He rubs the back of his neck. “I told her I was leaving you after you graduated. That I needed to wait until then, to be discreet, to protect the family name. I told her I’d take her on a romantic vacation to celebrate.” He looks up at me. “There was never going to be a vacation with her. The trip was real. But it was ours. Greece. The honeymoon I promised you. I was going to take you away for two weeks, and while we were gone, she was going to get a call informing her that her employment was terminated. She was going to show up at the airport and my staff were going to turn her away. She’d be left with nothing. She’d have humiliated herself chasing a married man for months and walked away with exactly what she gave me: nothing.”

“How could you justify hurting me like that?” My voice is barely above a whisper. “Didn’t you know how I felt these last few months? Didn’t you see what it was doing to me?”

“My husband had stopped touching me. Stopped coming home. Everywhere I went, there were whispers and pitying looks, and everyone but me seemed to know what was going on, and no one would tell me anything. I felt like I was going mad. I’d lie awake at night wondering what I did wrong. And you let this happen because why? So you could play out some stupid little revenge fantasy?”

When Oliver speaks again, it’s in a whisper. “I thought I’d be able to make it up to you afterward.”

I stare at him.

“I told myself it was temporary, that a few months of distance was a price worth paying, and that once it was over, I’d spend the whole summer spoiling you. I’d take you everywhere. I’d give you everything.” He drops his head. “I didn’t—I didn’t really let myself think about what you were feeling.”