Chapter 10
Violet
I will not break down.
I will not...
The truth of the matter was, I had already broken.
I didn’t even know how I managed to get home or how in the hell all the decorations from the party that never happened ended up stashed in my living room.
I stared at the awful reminder. The cheerful balloons floated in the middle of my living room as if in mockery of how happy the day was supposed to be.
They bobbed with the air currents from our vents and taunted me with the knowledge that they weren’t there to commemorate a birthday or anniversary.
They had become silent witnesses to the worst day of my life instead.
I had to think. It was hard to do when my heart was breaking on repeat every time that stupid video call started to play over again in my memory. It was pure torture, but one I seemed incapable to stop.
Why would he do this to me-to us? Ridge always said we were soulmates.
My definition and his were obviously very different things.
I wondered again if it had been the first time or if this was something he had been up to with his assistant for a while.
Maybe some of his other assistants had been fired for reasons beyond what my husband admitted to me.
I had no clue what to believe any longer.
My whole life with Ridge felt like a lie.
Instead of being the most important person in the world to him, I had suddenly become nothing special.
I was the forgotten wife at home on our anniversary while he fucked his secretary and told her how much better she felt than me.
He said she was better than me.
I couldn’t even bring myself to think about which part he claimed was better.
What had I ever done to deserve that?
I loved him with every piece of me. For about the millionth time since I convinced everyone to leave me alone, I couldn’t stop the sobs that wracked my body.
The pain doubled me over as I dropped the rest of the decorations that were a slap in the face to the way my heart felt.
My house appeared as though a celebration had imploded inside it while my insides were liquified with overwhelming sadness that refused to stop leaking from my eyes.
The blue heart balloons were the worst. I wanted to punch holes in every single one of them so they would stop mocking me with their cheerfulness. All the things they stood for originally – our hearts, his favorite color, the love we found in one another on his birthday, our marriage.
Our perfect fucking marriage!
I screamed into the empty room as those stupid balloons continued to taunt me. They refused to fall despite being witness to how my heart shattered.
If someone had asked me yesterday if I thought my husband was capable of cheating, let alone breaking my heart so completely, I would have laughed at them and given a resounding ‘no’ for an answer.
There had never been a sign, not even a warning flag before a red one was raised.
I didn’t even think he had lied to me during our marriage, but I had been so wrong.
So wrong, in fact, that his lies ended with him sinking into another woman while trash-talking me as our families and friends listened.
Some of his employees had been at the party, a couple of his clients, my little brother.
Me. I had been there with the front row seat to my own complete and utter devastation.
When the front door banged open, I realized I’d fallen to the floor right next to the half-full bag of garbage.
Some of our well-meaning friends and family had brought all the party decorations and food back to my house and left it lying around the kitchen and living room, as if I needed a reminder of how messy the day had become.
I had started to shove the party remnants into the garbage before my legs weren’t strong enough to hold my heartache up any longer.
Ridge looked a bit like death warmed over.
His hair was a mess and still damp, whether from his sex-a-thon or a shower I didn’t want to know.
He didn’t appear to be wearing the same outfit he had on earlier.
He’d been dressed in khaki pants then and he wore a black suit now.
At least he had the decency to shower off the stink of his affair before he came back to our home.
“Vi!” How could one syllable sound like the end of the world? “Please, let me explain.”
A dark chuckle escaped my lips. “I always thought that was so cliché. You hear that line in every movie, every book, and even a few songs. I always rolled my eyes because what was there to explain? I saw you fucking another woman on our anniversary. While all of our family and friends were waiting on you to come to our special place in the park for your surprise party that I worked so hard to pull off, you were too busy fucking your assistant to care. Another cliché I was sure would never touch me.”
“It wasn’t like that, Vi. I swear to you, it wasn’t like that. You can even ask Gabby.”
“Gabby?” I asked in an incredulous tone. “Was she there, too?”
“No, she is the one who showed me the real pictures.”
“I have no clue what pictures you’re talking about.”
“I drank a whole fucking bottle of bourbon,” he admitted. Maybe that was his way of excusing the way his thoughts ran away from him. Maybe it was his excuse for the whole debacle. He shouldn’t have been drinking with his secretary though, so that was a moot point.
“No one spoke to me today. Not a single fucking one of my family or friends. It wasn’t just my birthday, but my anniversary – our anniversary, and you were gone when I woke up.
No texts, no phone calls. Months of you acting weird, disappearing, taking calls you didn’t want me to hear, hiding your texts, and… ”
“So, this is my fault? Did you ever think to ask what I was up to?”
“I did!” he shouted. “I asked you and you kept saying it was a party you were planning.”
“And it was. It was your fucking surprise party.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“You weren’t supposed to!” I yelled back.
“You always tell me about the things you have going on and this time it was all secrets and disappearing acts. I worried. Then Moreland was acting strange, too. My wife and best friend. I saw him in town several times and he lied about it. He lied to me. You lied to me. She was there at work. She brought me gifts and a cake and bourbon. She showed me the pictures.”
“What pictures?” I don’t know how I managed to ask that after he admitted the start of his night.
Part of me could see how he might get the wrong idea about what I was up to.
My husband was right; I never failed to tell him about one of my planning projects before.
That was a detail I should have thought about in advance, but then again, I never thought he would doubt me either.
It turned out he was the one I should have been doubting all along.
He pulled his cell phone out and held it out to me. I refused to take it. He moved a couple steps closer until I flinched and crawled backward to get away from him.
The complete sorrow and devastation that drooped his shoulders and sent tears down his cheeks almost made me relent. Almost. Then, that stupid video started a new loop in my mind.
“You and Moreland with your heads together in an intimate, candlelight setting.”
“We have never been in an intimate candlelight setting.”
“Know that now. She must have doctored photos from a lunch you had. Gabby sent me a real picture from that day. It was so different. I could see your planning book and everything in that one. I thought you both betrayed me. I had already taken a couple of shots because I thought everyone, my wife included, forgot about my birthday and anniversary. Felt sorry for myself. She told me she saw you two together and showed me the pictures. I drank some more. Don’t even know how I got into that position with her. I don’t remember.”
I scoffed at that. “Convenient that you’d have selective amnesia.”
“Not kidding. I will look at the security footage from my office tomorrow. Already sent it to my laptop. I must have passed out at some point, Vi. I only realized what I was doing when I heard your dad screaming at me from the phone.”
“Well, let me refresh your memory. Just before my dad yelled at you, you said: ‘Fuck my wife!’ Then we couldn’t make out exactly what you said next, but it sounded a whole lot like you told your assistant that she had better pussy anyway.
” He stood there speechless before I threw the last bit out.
“And then you said something about how you should have taken her up on the offer she made to screw you last year for your birthday. Maybe that was her that mentioned that bit. I honestly don’t know because either way, it was a betrayal then that led to you cheating now”
What little color was still in Ridge’s face drained, and he sobbed as his legs gave out from underneath him. “I was angry. I thought you cheated.”
“I didn’t. I would never!” I shouted at him.
“Know that now. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
“You know what, Ridge?” His eyes met mine, and for a minute I thought it was pointless to even talk to him, but after we were done, I would probably never get the chance again.
So, I continued with the point I needed to make to him.
“Even if you didn’t mean the first part, the second part still happened. ”
“Second part?” he asked. His confused, inebriated brain probably had a hard time following the conversation, but my broken heart didn’t leave a lot of room for patience.
“When you said you should have taken her up on what she offered on your last birthday. You lied to me. Never said a word, despite the fact that we had an understanding that if anything like that ever came up, you would talk to me about it.”
“I thought she was joking.”
“Did it seem like she was joking this year when she brought you liquor, got you drunk, and convinced you that I was cheating on you? Last year was just a forewarning of her plan to get you into bed anyway possible and you let it go. Worse, you never told me about it. You lied to me. This all goes back to a year ago when you broke my trust. I just didn’t know you had done it yet. ”
Ridge looked away, but I moved forward and grabbed his chin to force him to look me in the eye.
“I understand the position you were put in. Considering our behavior over the last couple months, while we tried to surprise you. I could even understand how you could be tricked into thinking Moreland and I were having an affair. I could have forgiven you for that eventually. I’m not stupid, I see how she worked to manipulate you.
The problem is that she shouldn’t have been there to do all that damage.
Had you told me about her coming on to you, offering herself as your present a year ago, she would have never been in our lives to be the catalyst for this nightmare. ”
“Please,” Ridge begged.
“My little brother stood beside me and watched as you spoke that way about me while you were inside another woman. Drake was almost as devastated as I was. My family, your family, people you work with all saw and heard what you were up to. They won’t know all the moving parts that led you to make the decision you did.
They have no clue what happened. Do you know who will have to answer those questions? ”
“You won’t, I swear.”
“I will, because they’ll ask.”
“No.”
“You need to pack a bag. Go back to the office. Go to your parents’ house, if they’ll have you. Go anywhere but here. I can’t look at your face.”
“I don’t want to leave our home.”
“Don’t worry, you can have it back. After what happened tonight, I can’t stomach the thought of spending another day here.
This was supposed to be the house we raised our family in.
We waited to pick out the perfect place that we both loved and in two minutes, you ruined it for me. You ruined everything.”
“Vi,” Ridge pleaded. “No, sweets. We can get a new house. We can work this out. You are the love of my life.”
“If this is how you treat the love of your life, then I don’t want to be loved by you.
” I got up and moved to the stairs. Before I made it up a single one, Ridge managed to stumble to a standing position.
“You know what? You’re in no shape. You should go lie down on the couch. We’ll talk after you sober up.”
I could see the hope in his eyes as he bobbed his head up and down in agreement.
Too bad for my husband that I decided being in this house even one more night wasn’t something I could stand.
As he stumbled over to the couch and crashed almost face first into the cushions, it really hit me just how drunk he still was.
He said he killed an entire bottle of bourbon.
Even if it was a smaller size, that was a lot for a man who rarely ever sipped on one single drink at social outings.
Ridge had never been a drinker, so I knew how much of an impact that had to have on his judgment.
Still, as I said before, that would only have been a factor had I not heard him talk about a prior incident.
An incident he never bothered to tell me about.
It was a deal breaker for me because it meant he put himself into a position to be set up like that.
There was a reason we had that rule in place from the very beginning of our relationship.
It was as much to cover his ass legally as it was to make me comfortable with the people he had to work so closely with.
While my husband was passed out on the couch in our living room amidst the remnants of his ruined surprise party, I packed my bags and took several trips to load up my vehicle.
Thankfully, I had opted for a larger SUV since we planned to have children.
I wanted to get comfortable with a family-sized vehicle before the children came along.
The children wouldn’t factor into the equation any longer but at least I had plenty of room to stow all my luggage.