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“The affair didn’t start until about a month after we hired her. I’ll spare you the details, but I regretted it. I felt sick. All I could think about was you.”
I sigh and cross my arms. “But it didn’t stop you.”
He winces and shakes his head no. “To my eternal shame, no it didn’t.”
I see the regret burning through him. He shifts and rests his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together as he looks at me.
“The week before you walked in on us, I had been trying to break things off with her. I couldn’t take the guilt, so I planned to end it and focus on our marriage.”
“Would you have confessed if I hadn’t caught you in the act?”
He sighs and looks at the ground. “I want to say yes, but I don’t know. I was a different person. One I didn’t like.”
I appreciate his honesty. He straightens and runs the towel over his forehead. “She must have known I was going to call it off. Out of the blue, she asked to meet me at the house. I didn’t want to keep prolonging it, so I agreed. I had forgotten that it was our anniversary, and we had plans.”Pain fills his eyes as they tighten. “I was a terrible husband to you, and I’m so fucking sorry.” His eyes water, and I reach out and squeeze his hand.
He clears his throat. “When I arrived, she was in this purple lingerie, and before I could even speak, she was straddling me. She must have planned for you to find us. I kept trying to fend her off, but she was persistent.”
“That was my lingerie. I bought it for our anniversary,” I say, my voice quiet.
His brow furrows, and he stares at me, horror painted in his features. “Jesus Christ, Liv. I’m so sorry.”
My smile is sad. I was always so focused on the pain he caused, I never put much thought into his feelings. But now, I see the pain and the guilt he still carries. He takes a deep breath and straightens. “When I saw you standing there, a piece of me died. It will always be my biggest regret.”
I nod and blink back the tears, remembering the moment, the hurt, the betrayal. I let it wash over me for a second and it recedes to the locked pieces of my heart.
“But that’s when things got worse,” he says.
My brows furrow. “Worse?”
He nods. “She showed me who she really was. The second you drove away, my focus became getting you back. But she wasn’t having it. She screamed at me, got violent, and hit me. She threatened to sue me for sexual assault if I left her.”
He moves to the bench next to me. “We’ll be here too long if I tell you all the ways she manipulated me, but it was bad. I was close to my breaking point and then we ran into you at the market. God, Liv, it was like a breath of fresh air just seeing you, even though you’d moved on.”
I nod, remembering how terrible and gaunt he looked.
“When we got home, she was enraged. Throwing and breaking things, accusing me of crazy shit. Then the next day it was like nothing happened. We were this happy couple again, but we weren’t. I tried to leave her so many times, but she refused and threatened me. The breaking point was right before I came to John’s house.”
He reaches over and takes my hand and I let him. He wraps his fingers around mine and holds tight, his other hand pressing over the back of mine. “I saw you with Luke on TV at this charity gala. When it switched over to the next story, Amber had this creepy smile on her face.”
He squeezes his eyes shut and my hand at the same time. “She told me she was working with Luke to set you up. He was making you fall in love with him and was going to dump you and break your heart.”
I heave out a sigh. She wasn’t wrong, but she had nothing to do with it. Luke did that all on his own.
“I lost it, Liv. It sounds ludicrous now, but I believed her. She had me so confused by all the lies she was telling me. I didn’t know what was true anymore.”
My heart hurts for him. I remember the lost, wild look in his eyes that day. She had broken him. “So, you came to protect me, and my brother attacked you.”
He nods. “I’m glad he did. I deserved it.”
“What happened after?”
He stares at our joined hands. “Things escalated. A few weeks later she found out I went to talk to you, and she pulled a gun on me. She threatened to come after you if I didn’t marry her at the courthouse.”
My other hand goes to my mouth. “Oh my God Jeremy, that’s awful.”
He nods. “I called the cops, and they arrested her. She’s in an institution right now, getting the help she needs.”
I bring my other hand on top of his. “And you got the help you needed.”
