the nickname. “That was a long time ago. A lifetime. What did you want to know?” Cassie seemed completely unfazed by my asking, almost like she had expected the question.
“How did you forgive him?” I couldn’t imagine.
Her smile softened. “It wasn’t easy. Forgiveness for something that devastating is really hard. It eats you up day in and day out if you let it. And people said a lot of horrible things about me online. They called me a doormat. They said I was weak,” she admitted with sadness, but I still heard the strength in her voice. I knew all the things she had accomplished in her life, and Cassie Carter was the opposite of weak. “The thing is, it’s really easy to judge a relationship from the outside when you’re not the one in it.”
I nodded in agreement because that was exactly what I had done when I first read about it online. I judged. I made assumptions. I’d put myself in her position and convinced myself that I’d never be able to forgive that kind of indiscretion. I assumed that once a guy did something like that, he could never fix things. Once trust had been obliterated, it would never rebuild the same way. I had no idea how someone could forgive a cheater, but here I was, looking at a woman I completely respected, unable to imagine her married to anyone else.
“But other people have no idea what goes on behind closed doors. They think they know everything, especially when a celebrity is involved. So, maybe from the version of my and Jack’s relationship they had in their heads, I appeared weak to them. I know that I wasn’t. I know that there’s strength in forgiveness.” She looked past me as she said those words, and I thought she was looking for her husband.
I glanced at the field but didn’t see him when Cassie continued, “To be honest, Danika, no one else saw how sorry Jack was. They have no idea how hard we worked to rebuild the trust we’d lost. They didn’t know the things Jack did to make sure that I was okay or how he made sure to never put me in a position where I felt vulnerable or unloved again. He worked to prove to me that I was the only woman for him. And he’s proven it every day since.”
I listened as she talked, unsure of what to say in response. My words felt inadequate, like I didn’t have the life experience to even attempt to contribute.
“He made a mistake,” I said, finding some words after all.
“Yes. He made a mistake, and people make those. He was sorry. I didn’t have to forgive him. It would have been really easy to walk away with my pride, but I would have missed out on all this love.” She closed her eyes for a moment before reopening them. “I can’t imagine going through this life with anyone else.”
“There was no way you were ever going to end up with someone who wasn’t Jack Carter,” Melissa added before wiping at her eyes. “Sorry, but your story always makes me a little emotional. And as someone who watched the whole thing unfold, Jack deserved to be forgiven, and you can never convince me otherwise.”
“She’s only saying that because if I never forgave Jack, she wouldn’t have ended up with his brother.”
“That is not true.” Melissa got animated. “Okay, okay. It’s totally true.”
Cassie laughed before sucking in a long breath. “You know, people have strong opinions about cheating. They take it so personally that they lose the ability to be rational, or see things from different angles. The whole thing becomes very black and white to most people.” She chopped the air with her fist.
“But you didn’t see it like that?”
“It wasn’t black and white. Situations rarely are. And look, I’m not saying that everyone deserves to be forgiven because they don’t. And some people don’t deserve second chances. But Jack did. And I don’t subscribe to the theory of once a cheater, always a cheater or else I wouldn’t have taken him back and we wouldn’t still be together.”
“I always thought that cheating was just in someone’s nature,” I admitted, feeling a little naive. “That if they did it once, they’d do it again.”
“I think most people think that. Jack’s the prime example of that not being true,” Cassie said matter-of-factly, like there was no question.
“You never worried that he might cheat again?”
“Of course I worried.