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“Do we have to talk about that?”
Cassandra looked at him blankly and asked him what it was he was talking about. She had a feeling he was talking about the divorce, but that was the only reason she was there. There was no other reason that she would have traveled that way. She was there to make the divorce final, even though it felt like Steven was dragging his feet the whole way.
“I don’t think there is anything else to talk about, Nelson. That's kind of what a divorce is. We no longer talk to each other.”
Nelson shook his head. “I can’t not talk to you forever. Whatever this is between us, we aren’t normal.”
“How is it different?” Cassandra wanted to know.
“For one thing, we still love each other.”
Cassandra pressed her lips together. “I still love you, but I don't think I'm in love with you anymore. I don’t know if I have been for some time.”
She had no idea what she was talking about, just that it sounded good enough. He did not take her answer very well though. Nelson looked around, like he wanted to say something that he probably didn't want the other people around to hear. Cassandra could only imagine what it was. Nelson was looking at her as if he wasn't sure if he was going to believe her or not.
“This is not what we are here for.”
Cassandra disagreed, “This is exactly what I'm here for. We needed to have a discussion about all this stuff in the house. I didn't think it'd be a problem. I didn’t realize that we were going to have to figure out who got the couches.”
Cassandra was trying to lighten the mood, but all she accomplished was to piss Nelson off some more, offending him in some way. She wasn't quite sure what he was thinking, but he was hard to deal with.
“Seriously now, listen. If we can't laugh about it, then this is going to be harder than it needs to be.”
“I can't make jokes of this or make light of it. I have told you for a very long time that I do not want to get divorced. I was hoping that you would have come to your senses. You were supposed to miss me and come running back. You didn’t.”
Cassandra shook her head and scoffed, “That’s not going to happen. We are getting divorced, and these decisions need to be made. I don't want you to think that anybody is taking advantage of anyone else. It doesn't have to be a bad thing. I don't think either one of us has been happy for a while. You wouldn't have cheated if you had been happy, right?”
Those were the exact words that he had told her a long time ago when she had first found out about the cheating. In a way he had just blamed it on her, saying that it must have been her fault he wasn't happy or more specifically, she wasn't enough. Some of the words he used that night when he told her the truth had been hard to hear. It had been hard to hear from her husband that she was so boring that he had to find excitement in another woman's arms. She clung to those words now, reminding herself that everything that was happening was for a reason and there was a reason she hadn't called after the separation. Cassandra was the one who wanted the divorce. She wanted it before anything happened with Steven. The divorce was for her. Nelson would never understand it of course, but he didn't have to. The divorce was for Cassandra, not him.
That conversation really went downhill from there. Nelson would not drop the idea that the two of them could somehow magically work things out. Cassandra was so far past that. It was honestly laughable for her to even think about it. He had lost her; couldn't he understand that?
In the end she was so frustrated with all of it, that she agreed to let him have pretty much everything that was ambiguous to the owner. She had wanted a few things and he wanted to fight about all of them. She just conceded, it wasn’t worth it. Cassandra would just buy new stuff, as long as it meant that she was free of Nelson. She needed to cut ties and be done with him. When she left their meeting, Cassandra hoped that she was on the way to that.
Chapter 35
Nelson
He knew that he had made some mistakes. Nelson actually thought though, that he and Cassandra could get through it all and go on. They had been married for five years and in that time, he’d gotten to know his wife quite well. She was what many people would call a bleeding heart. She had always forgiven him in the past, all except that one time he told her that he had cheated on her. Of course, he had done it more than once, but it had taken her months to talk to him after she had found out and when she had finally said something, it was more or less her wish for a divorce because things were never going to be right between them. Naturally, that was not at all what he had wanted to hear. Once again, she had given him another answer that Nelson thought was poorly thought out. While Cassandra was convinced that she wanted a divorce, he knew that she didn't. She just needed some more time to recover. At least that's what he kept telling himself.
So, when Cassandra told him off and then wanted to speak of nothing else but the property, he was beside himself with rage. Nelson had known that something was going on. He wasn't 100% sure what it was, but he did figure that he was going to have to find out what Cassandra was doing eventually. He had to know why she was so easily going to turn away from their love.
That made him follow her back to Hartford. He wasn’t sure what he was going to find, but he followed her back to presumably her new place and wondered what he was going to find. She obviously had someone in her ear, telling her what she should and shouldn't do. He couldn't imagine Cassandra coming up with it herself. She was too sweet to turn her back on him now. His thoughts of her innocence were quickly being shaken and questioned. Cassandra did not go back to the apartment that he knew to be hers. Instead, she went to another house a few blocks away.
Nelson didn’t even know where she was going or who lived there, but it immediately felt like a betrayal. Here he was thinking that he could win her back, but not if she was already moving on with other men. Why had he not even thought that something like that could happen? Nelson knew how beautiful she was, how much Cassandra was desired by all men who met her.
Since he didn’t know whose house she’d gone to, Nelson parked close enough where he could get a good view of whoever opened the door. He had a lot of ideas of who it would be in his mind, but none of those ideas were correct. Of all the places he thought that Cassandra would be, going to see Steven was definitely not one of them. He was still under the impression that it wasn't what immediately came to his mind. Anytime a woman went to a man's house, the immediate response was that they were sleeping together.
He pushed those crazy thoughts out of his head because Nelson knew that there was no way that that would happen. He wasn't sure how he was so concluded to the idea that the two of them couldn't be more than friends. They had been friends for so long in the past, if something was going on, he would know about it.
Then something that blew his mind happened, making him wrong again. Steven leaned in and kissed her softly on her lips, pulling her close and whispering something in her ear, something that made her follow him into the house. What were they doing? He had to know, figured it already, but needed to see it for himself. He strained as well as he could, but there was no telling what was going on. He had a pretty good idea. Steven was now his enemy.
Nelson sat outside in his car for well over half an hour before he got the nerve to open the door and see for himself what was going on. Whether he had a right to say, feel, or do anything was beside the point. There was no way that he could just let it slide. If she had only been in there for a few moments, maybe he could have imagined that they were just talking and that she was upset or something. Maybe she was getting advice, but time crept on, and those ideas were not what was happening. It had been too long. She was still his wife and Nelson fantasized about going in there. He didn’t though. He just sat there, waiting and praying that Cassandra came out and left. That she’d get her fill.
More time elapsed, and he finally got out and he marched himself to the front door, still not sure what he was going to find. All kinds of scenarios were playing in his mind, and he knocked quickly at the door. There was silence on the other side for what seemed like forever. Since he had no idea what was going on, he knocked a little harder. He didn't want to burst into Steven's house, but he was willing to. He was willing to do about anything to get his wife back.
He checked the lock, and it was unlocked, which gave him the idea that this was all supposed to happen. This was the sign that he needed, and he turned it and moved into the very expensive looking house quickly. The sound was what got his attention first. It was a sound that he had heard before, sort of. He had heard Cassandra in pleasure before, but she was louder this time. She seemed to be enjoying herself more, if that was possible, and the idea that she was satisfied more with someone else really bothered him.
Nelson should have walked away. He should have walked right back out because he knew what the hell was going on. It was not a secret. The sounds that were coming from somewhere not too far away made it all pretty clear. What possessed him to go further he had no idea, but it didn't feel like he had a choice. He had to go forward, he had to see what he was so sure of. Maybe he wanted to torture himself a little bit. Whatever it was, he was focused on finding the source of the sound and seeing for himself what was causing it.
