Chapter Sixteen
Lorelie
“Hi… I need to talk to the owner. Are they here?” I ask as I step up to the counter.
The waitress gives me a long look, her eyes flicking down to my pregnant belly before she jerks her chin toward the back. “Giddish is in the office.”
“Thank you,” I say, pulling my shoulders back as I walk toward the hallway beside the bathrooms.
I pause under the camera. One is pointed straight at the men’s restroom, another higher up aimed toward the women’s. Guess you can never be too careful. You never know if a camera is going to catch an assault… or expose a lying husband.
There’s a plain door beside the exit with a small label that reads Manager. My palms go damp. I raise my hand and knock twice.
Silence.
I knock again, a little louder this time.
The door swings open so fast I jerk back. A stocky, gray-haired man stands there. He clears his throat when he takes in the sight of me.
“Yes?”
I clear my own throat, nerves gathering like stones in my stomach. “I… uh…”
“Spit it out, lady,” he says. Not unkind, just impatient.
I bite my lip. “I need some camera footage. From… here.”
He squints at me, then his whole face changes. He stiffens. “Are you the woman?” His tone sharpens. “Do you know what an accusation like that can do to a man?”
My mouth opens, but he keeps going.
“I’ve seen the tape, and I already gave it to the police. You’d be lucky if they don’t come after you for filing a false report.”
A tight smile pulls at my mouth as realization clicks into place. I clear my throat. “I’m not the woman accusing him. I’m… his wife.”
“Oh,” he says, and something shifts in his expression. I can’t explain it. He won’t look me in the eyes, and a hint of nerves flickers across his face.
“Can I see it then?” I ask quietly.
“Uh…” he stammers. “I mean-”
“I know what’s in it,” I say before he can try to wiggle around the truth.
“Oh.” His shoulders drop a little. He definitely thought I was the oblivious wife who didn’t know a thing.
He studies me for a second. “If you know what’s in it, why do you want to see it?”
I give him another tight smile. “Wouldn’t you?”
He lets out a long, tired sigh, the kind you hear from someone who has seen too much and wants no part of any of it. He steps back into the office and grabs his phone from the desk.
“Give me your AirDrop,” he mutters.
I unlock my phone and hold it out slightly. He scrolls through something, taps a few times, and a notification pops up on my screen: GIDDISH J. would like to share a video.
I accept it.
When it finishes transferring, he clears his throat. “I’m sorry,” he says, voice low.
“Thank you,” I say. Then I turn and walk out.
I don’t stop until I reach my car. I know this isn’t something you watch parked on the street, but I can’t wait. My hands shake as I open the video.
It’s the feed from outside the men’s bathroom.
Patrick steps into frame. He pauses at the doorway, like he’s watching something out of frame. Before I can even breathe, a blonde woman walks straight toward him.
I see it immediately. The height. The hair. The clothes.
I understand why Giddish thought I was her. She looks like me, just… me before pregnancy.
The cameras are high quality. Every movement is clear. They’re talking. I can’t hear anything, but I don’t need audio to understand the energy between them.
Then she reaches for him. She takes his hand and pulls him closer. Nausea swirls in my stomach as I watch her shoulder dip, she’s clearly touching him.
My stomach twists watching Patrick lean in. And then he kisses her. With the same kind of passion he kissed me with yesterday.
My vision blurs. I press my hand to my mouth, fighting the sudden rush of nausea. The story he told me, that she came onto him, that he didn’t want it, the footage tells a different truth.
They disappear into the bathroom together.
Each second that passes feels like another crack splintering through my chest. I don’t need to see what happens behind that door. My imagination is enough.
Moments later, Patrick rushes back into frame, fumbling with his belt and moving like he can’t get away fast enough.
I shut off the phone, and for a moment I can’t even breathe. My chest tightens in a way that feels sharp and suffocating, like something inside me is trying to collapse inward.
The air in the car turns thick, my vision blurs, and my pulse thrums painfully under my skin. I press a hand to my chest, trying to breathe normally.
The images won’t leave me. They settle behind my eyes, clear and vivid, like the footage has branded itself into my mind. My husband leaned in; it wasn’t some unwanted advance like he had me believing.
He leaned in first.
He told me he never even kissed her.
It hurts in a way I wasn’t prepared for, because yesterday he touched me like I was the only woman in the world who mattered.
Yesterday he cried into my arms, held me like he couldn’t breathe.
I believed him when he said he regretted everything.
I let him back into my life, in my bed, and in my body.
I thought we were healing. I thought we were finally piecing ourselves together. I was proud of him for giving up drinking before it escalated into a problem.
I believed that the cheating was a single, stupid, drunken mistake he barely remembered. I thought he was honest with me. I thought he was good.
But the video shatters everything. It knocks every bit of progress off its hinges until the only thing left is the truth I never wanted to look at head-on. He didn’t just cheat; he lied about it.
He didn’t confess because he couldn’t stand keeping it a secret. He confessed so he could twist the story, soften his guilt, and push some of the blame onto me. He made it sound like a moment of weakness instead of what it really was.
God. I actually apologized to him. I sat there and took responsibility for my mistakes, for what I did years ago, while he let me believe my choices somehow created the man who stood in that hallway with a woman who looked almost exactly like me.
The betrayal slides in deeper when I think about the bottles in the drawer, hidden so deliberately I wouldn’t have found them unless I was trying to make space for our baby’s nursery. The drinking was never gone. He didn’t stop. He simply moved it to another room and hoped I wouldn’t look.
Another lie.
A sharp curse slips out before I can swallow it. I touch my stomach, trying to steady myself, and the reality hits so hard it knocks the air out of me. I’m about to have a baby with a lying, cheating drunk. The kind of man I never thought I’d end up with.
A bitter laugh escapes my lips. It’s not like I can just leave.
I don’t have a safety net. His family is my family, only not if I leave him.
Genesis lives out of a suitcase and her entire job depends on traveling; she loves me, she loves Milo, but she isn’t going to give up her career to take care of me and a newborn.
And what would I even tell Milo? That the father he worships broke everything? The thought alone makes my head spin.
My stomach twists so violently I press both hands to my belly, not sure if it’s heartbreak, nausea, or the baby reacting to the storm inside me.
I keep thinking about all the time I wasted.
I could’ve been planning. I could’ve been finding an apartment, could’ve gotten him into rehab before it got this bad.
Instead, I buried my head in the sand and convinced myself to get over it.
Now everything is crashing down at the same time. The lies. The drinking. The woman in the hallway. The fact that I let him back into my bed last night thinking we had finally found our way forward.
I sit there in the car, shaking, staring at nothing, asking myself the only question that matters.
What do I do now?
Patrick
“How was school, buddy?” I ask Milo as we drive home from my parents’ place.
“We built a volcano,” he says proudly. “It exploded everywhere.”
“Sounds awesome,” I say, glancing at the rearview mirror as he wiggles his feet in pure excitement. At least his world is still simple.
At the next red light, I check my phone. Nothing from Lore. Not a text. Not a missed call. Just the thumbs-up she sent when I told her I’d grab Milo.
She’s probably stressed. Her schedule. HR. The baby. And my mess. What are the odds that both our jobs fall apart in the same damn week.
My phone buzzed earlier with a call from Internal Affairs.
Detective Salazar. He handles IA for officer misconduct cases, the kind no cop ever wants to hear from.
He already had the footage from O’Reilly’s.
Said he would be interviewing me soon. I’m still surprised at how fast things are moving.
Usually, you have to wait weeks. Sometimes months.
You don’t even hear a whisper until they’re done digging.
My best guess is that because I’m technically still in the probationary window for Sergeant, they want this wrapped up before I become permanent. Better to decide now, before the ink dries on anything.
I grip the wheel tighter and try not to think about the worst-case scenario.
I glance again at my phone.
Still nothing from Lore.
A tightness settles in my gut. Her shift should be over by now. Maybe she’s driving home. I try to tell myself that’s all it is, but the silence feels heavier with every mile.
That heaviness loosens a little when I pull onto our street and see her car in the driveway. Relief sweeps through me so fast I let out a breath.
What throws me is Harvey’s truck parked at the curb.
Milo spots it too and launches into excited chanting, “Havey, Havey!” His little legs kick at the seat, and I can’t help but laugh. I unbuckle him, and set him on the ground just as the front door swings open.
Harvey steps out. He bends down to catch Milo, saying something I can’t hear, too busy trying to pull Milo’s backpack form under my seat. When I straighten, Milo is already inside, and Harvey is standing in the doorway watching me.
He steps back just enough for me to walk in.
I close the door behind me and turn toward him. “What are you-”
I don’t get another word out.
His fist comes flying, a clean, hard punch that smashes into my face and knocks me back into the door with a crack so sharp it echoes in my skull.
“What the fuck, Harvey?” I spit once the ringing in my ears fades. I whip my head toward the stairs, panic shooting through me at the thought of Milo seeing his uncle deck his dad. “Where’s-”
“Lorelie took him upstairs,” Harvey snaps.
Before I can breathe, he grabs me by the collar and drags me toward the garage door. I stumble down the steps as he shoves me inside. The place is a mess of boxes, tools we never use, and crap we swore we’d throw out years ago. Harvey pushes me hard enough that I nearly hit the concrete.
I spin around, anger rising fast. He’s acting like the same asshole big brother who used to push me around when we were kids. Only difference is I’m grown now, and I can swing back.
He folds his arms across his chest and gives me a look that stops me cold.
“What did you do?” he growls through clenched teeth.
My stomach drops. He must’ve heard about the complaint. Of course he would. He’s a Sergeant too. News travels fast.
I huff out a breath. “I know I probably should’ve told you, but how the hell is it any of your business?”
That was the wrong thing to say.
Harvey’s whole body goes rigid. He lunges again, faster than I expect, and this time I’m ready. I fight back, land a couple of solid punches, one to his jaw, another to his ribs. He gets a few in too, enough to knock the wind out of me.
By the end of it, we’re both panting hard, not bloody like the movies, but sore and breathing like we’ve run a marathon. Harvey wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, glaring.
I drag in a breath. “IA called me. They have the tape. It’s gonna show I never forced her.”
He stares at me with a look I’ve never seen from him. Disappointment so deep it hits like another punch.
“Is that supposed to be good?” he asks. “The tape will show the woman you cheated on your wife with wanted it. That’s the big win here?”
My throat tightens. I look away because I can’t stand the truth in his face. This is why I went to Dad instead of him. Dad understands the gray. Harvey only sees in black and white.
“I made a mistake,” I say, forcing myself to meet his eyes. “And Lore and I… we worked through it.”
“Did you?” His voice cracks with disbelief. “Because the woman who called me sobbing sure as hell didn’t sound like someone who worked through anything.”
My heart drops so fast it feels like it hits the floor.
“Lore told you?” I whisper.
He jerks his chin toward the corner of the garage. “She didn’t know how to deal with that. So, she called me.”
My stomach turns to ice. I move toward where he’s pointing. There’s a large black trash bag shoved against a stack of boxes, one I didn’t notice earlier in the chaos of the fight.
My hands shake as I pull it open.
Empty bottles fill the bag.
Harvey’s voice cuts through the silence behind me.
“You have a drinking problem, Patrick. And it’s time to face it.”