34. Chapter 34
Caitlin
Adam’s eyes meet mine, and the mixture of shame and resignation in them makes my stomach clench. He takes a deep breath, and I steel myself for whatever is coming next. This is what I asked for, after all. The truth, no matter how painful.
“The cruise,” he begins, his voice quiet but steady.
“I wish I had some noble reason, some explanation that would make it all make sense. But I don’t.
” He rubs his palms against his jeans. “The simple truth is I was a weak coward, Caitlin. A complete and utter failure as both a man and your fiance at that moment.”
I wait for him to continue. The room suddenly feels too small, the air between us charged with things we’ve left unsaid for too long.
“You remember the night I came home and told you about the cruise?” I nod, and he continues.
“That day my mother asked me to stop by her home after work. We talked about how hard the upcoming holiday was going to be for Millie and Rhonda. Thanksgiving had always been Eric’s favorite holiday, and he always went all out.
My mother thought that it would be easier if we went somewhere else for Thanksgiving, to make new memories. ”
I nod, remembering how much it had hurt that night when Adam had come home and told me of his plan. “And of course, this new memory-making cruise did not include me.” It’s not a question; we both know the answer.
“She had an answer ready for that, of course.” Adam’s fingers clench into fists.
“She said she’d wanted to include you, but you’d just started your new job at the diner, and she knew you wouldn’t be able to get the time off on such short notice.
Said she didn’t want to put you in the awkward position of having to say no. ”
I let out a sharp laugh. “How considerate of her.”
“I told her I didn’t want to leave you alone on Thanksgiving, that I didn’t want to go without you.
” His voice catches. “And that’s when she really started laying it on thick.
She got teary-eyed talking about how Millie had been having such a hard time since Eric died.
How she barely ate, barely slept. How Rhonda was at her wit’s end trying to help her.
How happy Millie had gotten when Paula suggested the cruise. ”
I close my eyes, seeing it all so clearly now. The setup, the manipulation, the perfect trap.
“My mother said that Millie had been so excited about the idea of all of us together, making new memories. That it would break her heart if I didn’t come.
” Adam’s voice has dropped to nearly a whisper.
“And then she said, ‘ Millie has lost so much already. Can you really bear to disappoint her? Are you going to take this away from her too?’”
I feel tears prickling behind my eyes, but I blink them back. “What about disappointing me? What about my reaction? What about the guilt of abandoning your fiancee over Thanksgiving?”
“I know.” His voice breaks slightly. “God, Caitlin, I know. And I can’t even tell you why her feelings mattered more than yours in that moment. It makes no sense. You were the person I loved, the person I wanted to spend my life with, and yet…” He trails off, shaking his head.
“And yet you chose her. Again.” The words taste like ash in my mouth.
“As the cruise got closer, Millie seemed better. She wasn’t having panic attacks or calling me crying anymore.
She was excited, planning activities, making lists of things she wanted to do.
” Adam runs a hand through his hair. “I told myself that meant I’d made the right decision.
That somehow, I was helping her by going on this trip. ”
“So your solution to making Millie feel better was to make me feel worse?” I ask, unable to keep the hurt from my voice.
“I’m sorry, Caitlin,” his voice is barely a whisper now, and he keeps clenching and unclenching his hands.
“I could blame my mother for manipulating the situation. I could blame Millie for her dependency and neediness. But at the end of the day, it was my decision to go. It was my decision to put Millie ahead of you.” His voice drops to barely above a whisper. “Again.”
I close my eyes, feeling the weight of his words settle over me.
The worst part is I believe him. I believe that he was caught in a web of manipulation and expectation that he didn’t know how to escape.
But that doesn’t erase the pain of being left behind, of being an afterthought to the person who should have put me first.
“I’ve spent months trying to understand what happened,” Adam continues when I don’t speak.
“How I could have loved you as much as I do and still hurt you so badly. The only answer I’ve found is that I was broken in ways I didn’t even realize.
My sense of obligation, of responsibility for Millie’s happiness, was so distorted that it overrode everything else. ”
I open my eyes to find him watching me, his expression raw with regret.
“I want to hear about what happened on the cruise,” I tell him. “I need to know everything that happened, Adam. Not just why you went, but what happened while you were there.”
The word “everything” hangs between us like a physical thing.
I can see Adam processing my request, weighing how much to tell me, how much I can handle.
But I need all of it, every ugly truth, every painful detail.
Only then will I know if what we had is worth trying to save. I take a deep breath, steel myself.
“Tell me what happened on the cruise, Adam. All of it.”
He shifts uncomfortably, his eyes darting away from mine before returning. “Are you sure? It’s not… it won’t be easy to hear.”
“I’m sure.” My voice sounds foreign to my own ears, too calm, too controlled for the hurricane of emotions building inside me. “I need to know.”
Adam nods slowly. “The cruise was five days. You know we flew to Miami the day before.” He pauses, and I can feel him gathering courage for whatever comes next. “When we got to the port, my mother handled all the check-in. She’d made all the arrangements, so she had the room assignments.”
My stomach tightens in anticipation of what he’s about to say. I force myself to remain still, to keep breathing.
“There were two staterooms,” he continues, his voice dropping slightly. “Side by side, with connecting doors between them. My parents and everyone else had one room.” He swallows hard. “And I was assigned to share the other room with Millie and Rhonda.”
The words hit me like a physical blow, but I force myself to remain composed. “You shared a room with Millie.”
It’s not a question, but Adam nods anyway, misery etched into every line of his face. “Yes.”
“Your mother put you in a room with the woman she wanted you to be with,” I say, the words coming out flat and emotionless despite the storm raging inside me. “The woman who wasn’t your fiancee.”
“Yes.” He looks down at his hands.
I try to picture it, Adam sleeping in the same room as Millie, just feet away from her. Brushing his teeth at the same sink. Changing clothes in the same space. The intimacy makes my skin crawl.
“Why didn’t you refuse?” I ask, my voice finally betraying some of the hurt churning inside me. “Why didn’t you demand a different arrangement?”
“I should have,” he admits. “I was stunned when I saw the room assignments. I asked my mother why she’d done it, and she said it was more cost-effective to get two staterooms.”
A bitter laugh escapes me before I can stop it. “Cost-effective. For a family that could afford a Caribbean cruise.”
“I know. It didn’t make sense then, and it makes even less sense now.” Adam runs a hand through his hair, a gesture I used to find endearing but now just seems like a nervous tic. “I should have stood my ground. I should have demanded my own room, or refused to go altogether.”
“Why didn’t Hailey share with Millie and Rhonda?” I ask, grasping at the one logical solution that might have made the situation less inappropriate. “That would have made more sense than your sharing with them.”
Adam’s face flushes with shame. “My mother said Hailey snores, and Rhonda is a light sleeper. That they’d be miserable sharing.
” He hesitates. “But on the last day, Hailey got drunk and told me the real reason. My mother had told her that she was trying to give Millie and me some ‘quality time’ together. She thought it was quite funny.”
My head spins with the implications. “Your mother was matchmaking. While you were engaged to me.”
“Yes.” The word seems torn from him. “She was trying to push us together, hoping that spending time with Millie would remind me of what we supposedly had in high school.”
“And you went along with it,” I say, my voice trembling slightly now. “You didn’t tell her it was inappropriate, or disrespectful to me, or just plain wrong. You slept in that room with her.”
“I told myself it wasn’t what it looked like,” Adam says, desperation creeping into his voice. “That Rhonda was there as a chaperone, that nothing could happen, that it was just a sleeping arrangement.”
“That’s not the point!” The words burst out of me, louder than I intended. “The point is that your mother deliberately created a situation that undermined our relationship, that put you and Millie together in an intimate setting, and you let her!”
Tears burn behind my eyes, but I refuse to let them fall. My hands are shaking, and I clench them into fists, nails digging into my palms.
“You’re right,” Adam says quietly. “There’s no excuse. I was afraid of making a scene, of confronting my mother, of dealing with the fallout. I told myself it was just a few days, that it didn’t mean anything, that when I got home, we could put it all behind us.”
“Do you have any idea,” I say without turning around, “what it’s like to know that the person you loved, the person you were planning to marry, shared a room with another woman? That he slept feet away from her while I was alone, wondering why I wasn’t enough?”