coat, holding me to him, before he stilled. He drew back just enough, so I could see the puzzled look on his face.
He was wondering what the hell I was wearing.
I swallowed down my embarrassment. I’d come here tonight with a plan of seduction, completely unaware my husband was in love with someone else. He’d made me an oblivious fool.
A tiny voice cried out in my head that he’d done this to me on my birthday.
My voice was empty because I’d become a husk. “I loved you.”
“I know,” he whispered. “I loved you too. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
It wasn’t the first lie he’d ever told me, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last either.
I trudged toward the house, carrying the thick envelope along with my thoughts about the fallout that ensued. I’d done my best to stay civil, at first. We agreed via a short exchange of texts that he’d find somewhere else to stay for a few days, and I’d contact him when I was ready to talk.
But Clark couldn’t even give me that.
I’d come home the morning after my birthday from my best friend Jenna’s house to discover him packing his things in boxes, and the Fender American Standard Stratocaster guitar leaning against them.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I was too emotionally exhausted to control myself. “You don’t even know how to play.”
But I did. When we’d met in college, I’d been pursuing my dream of becoming a singer-songwriter. Clark had proposed to me onstage one night after my weekly set, saying my music had captured his heart, and he wanted to spend the rest of his life listening to me.
Clark straightened stiffly, and when his hand flexed possessively around the neck of the beautiful instrument I’d used to create my favorite songs, I felt his fingers on my throat choking me.
His tone was sharp and definitive. “This was a gift from my parents.”
“Yeah,” I snapped. “A wedding gift to us.”
I’d found his parents’ present both romantic and encouraging. Ultimately, I’d failed in my dream, but his parents had been more supportive of my journey than my own family had been.
The guitar was just the beginning.
I could forgive Clark for falling out of love with me. Even his confusion over his feelings developing for someone else . . . especially a man. It was obvious he was struggling with it.
But the year of cheating? And the fact he had no desire to ever come clean about it? Not to mention the way he treated me after he’d been caught . . . that was fucking unforgivable.
Once he’d proven he was a liar, I realized I couldn’t trust anything he said, including that he’d been safe with Derrick, and that he’d had no other partners over the last year. Clark and I hadn’t had sex in months, but there’d been overlap, and if he’d caught an STD, I was now exposed.
He was livid when I tracked down Derrick’s wife and confessed what I’d caught our husbands doing. I’d battled heavily with the decision to tell her. Clark had begged me not to tell our friends and family why we were getting divorced. Neither he nor Derrick were ready to be outed, and I didn’t have any desire to do that.
But his wife had a right to know her husband wasn’t faithful, and I wouldn’t have hesitated if I’d caught him with another woman. I was a firm believer that once a cheater, always a cheater, and if it were me—I’d want to know. Better to deal with the hurt now than waste years with a partner who lied and didn’t love you.
Clark said I’d done it solely to punish him and Derrick, and there was no convincing him otherwise. He turned cold and mean and left rude messages on my voicemail when I wouldn’t answer his calls. Each one of them tore my heart to shreds. I didn’t recognize this man anymore. He wasn’t even a shadow of the person I’d fallen in love with twenty years ago.
The same afternoon I’d had my first meeting with my attorney, I also had my consult with a plastic surgeon. Jenna drove me home after the surgery and stayed with me as my new size D breasts ached beneath their bindings.
It was one of the best decisions I’d ever made. I didn’t care what anyone else thought, because I loved the way I looked now. Feminine and youthful and proportional. I had worked so hard to get