Chapter 6
Chloe - Four Days After Chloe’s Birthday
I’d woken up this morning in our bed. I had no memory of coming upstairs. The last thing I remembered was sitting on the couch, Sam saying something about my birthday and a woman named Jenna, and then… nothing.
I must have fallen asleep mid-conversation. Sam must have carried me upstairs and tucked me into bed. I’d slept like the dead — all afternoon, through the night, and into the morning. When I’d finally opened my eyes, sunlight was streaming through the windows, and Sam’s side of the bed was cold.
There was a note on his pillow: Didn’t want to wake you. You needed the sleep. Call me when you wake up. Love, S.
I hadn’t called. Part of me knew I should have — he’d clearly wanted to talk yesterday, had something important to tell me.
But after his attempt to start that conversation, after seeing how serious he’d looked, I felt oddly reassured.
Whatever was going on, he was trying to tell me.
It wasn’t like my birthday when he’d completely shut down.
This felt different. Like maybe it was just a blip, something he’d explain soon.
Though I couldn’t quite shake the fragments I remembered from last night.
Something about lying to me. Something about a woman named Jenna.
My exhausted brain had barely registered the words before I’d fallen asleep, but now in the clear light of morning, they sat uneasily in my mind.
Who was Jenna? What had he lied about? Part of me wanted to know immediately.
But a larger part — the part that had just spent two emotionally devastating days dealing with alpaca births and cattle deaths — trusted that Sam would finish telling me when we were both ready.
I could admit, at least to myself, that I’d created some of this situation.
I could have confronted him at the restaurant. Could have asked him directly what was wrong when he got those text messages and went pale. Could have demanded answers instead of ignoring what I’d heard.
But I’d been scared. Scared that if I pushed, he’d tell me he’d changed his mind about us. Scared that my pushing would become the reason he didn’t want to marry me anymore. So I’d stayed quiet, hoping it would resolve itself, hoping that whatever was making him hesitate would just… disappear.
I’d never been the kind of woman who checked her partner’s phone or went through his things.
But this morning, when I’d seen Sam’s laptop sitting open on his desk, the temptation had been overwhelming.
I’d stood in the doorway of our home office for a full minute, arguing with myself.
He didn’t have a password on his phone or laptop, never locked anything away from me, so it would have been so easy to walk over and look.
I trust him, I’d told myself firmly. Whatever’s going on, he’ll tell me when he’s ready. He was trying to tell me yesterday.
So I’d walked away. Made my coffee, gotten ready for work, and pushed down the nagging feeling that something wasn’t quite right.
That resolve had lasted until ten minutes ago, when my phone buzzed with a notification of a credit card transaction: Purchase - $400 - Millfield Motor Inn.
Millfield. A town thirty minutes away that Sam had no reason to visit.
My hands went cold. I’d discovered my ex-fiancé’s affair through a credit card statement - charges at a hotel neither of us had stayed at. The irony wasn’t lost on me that history might be repeating itself through the exact same method.
I stared at the notification while a litter of golden retriever puppies tumbled around the exam room, their vaccinations complete, their energy boundless.
Normally, puppy appointments were my favorite part of the job – all that fluffy innocence and pure joy.
Today, even their adorable antics couldn’t distract me from the sick feeling growing in my stomach.
Like the way animals sensed when something was wrong in their environment before they could identify the threat, my body was picking up on something even as my brain tried to rationalize Sam’s behavior.
The hypervigilance that kept prey animals alive was kicking in, making me notice things I might have otherwise overlooked.
“Dr. Parker?” Jenny appeared in the doorway with another carrier. “The kittens are here for their second round of shots.”
“Perfect,” I said, forcing a smile. More fluff. More innocence. Maybe six tiny kittens could do what the puppies couldn’t – keep my mind off whatever the hell Sam was doing at a motel in Millfield.
But as I prepared the vaccines, my phone seemed to burn in my pocket. Four hundred dollars at a motel. In a town where we knew no one.
What are you hiding, Sam?
Around two o’clock, my phone rang. Sam’s name flashed on the screen. “Hey,” I answered, stepping into my office for privacy.
“Hey.” His voice sounded tired, strained. “I, uh, I went by the house to see how you were doing. Since I hadn’t heard from you this morning.”
Guilt flickered through me. “Sorry. I didn’t want to disturb you. I figured you had a lot going on, and I had work to catch up on after being gone for two days.”
“Right. Yeah.” A pause. “Chloe, we still need to have that talk. I’d planned to come home as soon as you woke up, but—”
“I know, but I really do have a lot to catch up on here.” I kept my voice light, still clinging to that reassurance I felt this morning. There was a logical explanation for that motel charge. “And you should probably focus on work too. I know how busy Wednesdays are for you.”
Another pause, longer this time. When he spoke again, his voice was careful. “I really need to tell you something. It’s important.”
My stomach clenched. “Is anyone dying? Anyone in imminent threat of death?”
“What? No. No one’s dying.”
“Then it can wait.” I heard the edge in my own voice and softened it. “Sam, I’m still exhausted. I’m going to wrap up here and go home and go straight to bed. And I expect you to stay at work instead of making your team cover for you. Is that clear?”
The silence stretched out. I could almost hear him thinking, trying to figure out what to say.
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” I continued when he didn’t respond. “A proper conversation when we’re both ready. When I’m not exhausted.”
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Clear. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow,” I confirmed, and ended the call before either of us could say anything else.
I stared at my phone for a long moment. Part of me wanted to call him back, to demand answers right now. But a larger part — the exhausted, overwhelmed part that had just spent two days dealing with births and deaths — needed one more night before whatever was coming crashed down on us.
The rest of the afternoon passed in a blur of routine appointments that had been missed over the last two days.
The house was empty when I got home, as expected. I dropped my keys on the kitchen counter and stared at our shared calendar on the refrigerator. Sam’s neat handwriting marked his usual commitments: bar inventory on Tuesdays, delivery meetings on Thursdays, dinner with his parents on Sundays.
This time, I couldn’t stop myself. I opened my laptop and logged into our shared Google calendar – the one we’d created when Sam moved in, the symbol of our domestic partnership and transparency.
The online version showed the same pattern as the paper copy, but with one difference: several entries were marked as “Private.” Blocks of time that simply showed as “Busy” without any details, times when Sam had deliberately hidden what he was doing from me.
What was he hiding?
My body knew something was wrong before my brain fully accepted it.
That’s what I kept telling myself as I closed the laptop and sat there in the quiet house, too nauseated to even think about dinner. Physical symptoms didn’t lie. I was a veterinarian – I knew how bodies responded to stress, to threat, to loss.
Elevated heart rate. Check. Difficulty sleeping. Check. Loss of appetite. Check. Constant low-grade anxiety. Check.
These were the symptoms I’d had with my ex.
In the weeks before I found out he’d been cheating on me with my best friend, my body had been screaming warnings my brain refused to hear.
My stomach had been in knots. I’d lost weight.
I’d started waking up at 3 AM with my heart racing for no reason I could name.
And when I’d finally worked up the courage to ask Sean if something was wrong, he’d looked me in the eye and told me everything was fine. That I was being paranoid. That I needed to trust him. Two weeks later, I’d walked in on him and Kaitlyn in our bed.
I’d promised myself I’d never ignore those warning signs again. That I’d never let someone gaslight me into thinking my instincts were wrong. But I also knew trauma could make you see threats where none existed. The challenge was figuring out which one this was.
And now the same physical responses were starting again.
Except this was Sam. Sam, who’d held me through my grandmother’s funeral last year.
Sam, who knew I needed exactly twelve minutes of silence when I first got home from a hard day before I could talk about it.
Sam, whose hand I reached for automatically in crowds, whose side of the bed felt wrong when he wasn’t in it.
I forced myself to think rationally. Our shared bank account showed a pattern I couldn’t ignore. A cash withdrawal a few days ago. Multiple credit card charges since then — a gas station, a restaurant, Millfield Toys & Games, and now a motel. All in Millfield. All unexplained.
A motel.
I stared at the screen, my veterinary training automatically cataloging symptoms and searching for patterns.
When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.
The horse was obvious: another woman. The evidence pointed to Sam having an affair, probably with someone who had children, someone he was supporting financially and meeting secretly in neighboring towns.
Sean had taught me to jump to that conclusion. To see betrayal in unexplained absences. To assume the worst because the worst had already happened once. Was I reading the evidence clearly, or was I reading it through the lens of old trauma?
What if this time it really was zebras? What if there was an explanation that made sense of all the evidence but wasn’t the obvious one?
In veterinary medicine, you learned to trust your diagnostic instincts but remain open to unusual presentations.
Sometimes a dog’s loss of appetite wasn’t illness - it was stress from a new baby in the house.
Sometimes aggression wasn’t behavioral - it was pain that couldn’t be communicated any other way.
The evidence was circumstantial but damning. A cash withdrawal, secretive behavior, and now a motel charge. But as I sat in our quiet house with my laptop open to our shared financial accounts, I realized something that surprised me.
I wasn’t falling apart.
The last time I’d discovered a partner’s betrayal, I’d been completely blindsided.
Sean’s deception had shattered me so thoroughly that I’d disappeared for days — couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t function.
When I’d finally surfaced from that breakdown, I’d packed up my entire life within a week and moved miles away to start over.
I’d been young, financially dependent, professionally inexperienced.
I’d run because staying felt impossible.
But I wasn’t that girl anymore.
I owned this house outright – bought it with an inheritance from my grandpa, who had always encouraged my plans to be a vet.
I had a business that served this community, relationships with clients who depended on me, a professional reputation I’d spent years establishing.
I had savings, investments, a career that could support me anywhere I chose to live.
Most importantly, I had options.
I opened a notebook and started making notes - the same methodical approach I used for complex medical cases.
I could leave Willowbrook. Start fresh somewhere new, sell everything, run like I did before.
Or I could stay. Keep what I’d built. Face whatever was coming with my eyes open this time.
Or – and this was the option that scared me most – I could fight for the relationship. Make time for the conversation Sam had been trying to have. Face whatever truth was waiting instead of hiding behind exhaustion and work.
But I wasn’t ready yet. Healing wasn’t linear. Sometimes you took steps forward, and sometimes old wounds knocked you sideways, and you needed time to find your footing again.
By six o’clock, exhaustion was weighing on me like a physical force.
Part of me wanted to stay up, to be awake when Sam got home, to finally have the conversation we’d been dancing around.
But I was still drained from the past two days — the alpaca births, the devastating cattle emergency, and now this emotional turmoil on top of it all.
And if I was being honest with myself, I was doing what I always did when my confidence got knocked sideways - hiding until I felt strong enough to face whatever was coming. It wasn’t healthy, but it was survival.
Whatever Sam needed to tell me, I’d handle it better when I wasn’t running on empty.
I closed my notebook and headed upstairs.