Chapter 4
I’m wearing a sundress, one of the few things in my suitcase that doesn’t look like lingerie in disguise.
It clings in all the wrong ways because I’m not in the mood to feel desirable.
I’m at the hotel bar downstairs, which is open to the public, so even at this late hour, there’s a steady foot traffic of travellers and locals looking for a nightcap or a story to tell tomorrow.
I’m not here for either. I’m just here because I couldn’t sit in that room with him anymore.
I don’t care that I’m sitting alone, sipping whisky I can’t stand. I hate it but since I'm in a hating mood, it’s hitting just the right spots. I told Aiden not to follow me, and he didn’t. My bags are still upstairs, along with the dress I took off and the life I used to believe in.
We’re not going to Bora Bora. That much is clear.
But we can’t go home either. My parents are there with the kids, watching them for the week.
Jack and Alex have school and routines. It made sense to let them stay at our house instead of disrupting everything.
A decision I agreed to. A decision I regret now.
Because going home doesn’t mean comfort. It means pretending.
He said it only happened once. But don’t they all say that?
Cheaters. God. I remember the woman who answered his phone when I called, back when Jack was a few months old.
She laughed like I was the punchline to a joke I didn’t know I was in.
Aiden said she was his roommate’s girlfriend.
Swore it. Said I was overthinking. Said he’d never do that to me.
He never let me visit campus. Not even once. Every time I suggested a weekend away for just us, no diapers, no spit-up, no cartoons, he’d dodge it. Come up with some excuse about his classes or a project or his roommate being around. He always came to me, never the other way around.
I went to college too, but mine wasn’t normal.
Mine came with the single mom package. I stayed home with the baby.
Got extended deadlines. No attendance requirements.
The school bent over backwards just to keep me enrolled, because I was a statistic they didn’t want to lose.
Professors offered grace. Advisors offered coffee.
Strangers offered more help than Aiden ever did.
He didn’t get it. He never got it. I didn’t want to visit campus to mark my territory, I wanted to feel like I wasn’t a mother for a weekend.
Just a girl. His girlfriend. His date. Someone who mattered.
I love my kids, I do, more than anything.
But I didn’t get to enjoy my college years. They weren’t mine to enjoy.
I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve gotten drunk, and I’m including this one. If it wasn’t for Quinn, I'm pretty sure I would’ve dropped out when I got pregnant with Alex.
A glass thuds beside mine. I don’t have to look to know someone just took the seat next to me.
There are at least three other empty stools at the counter, which means this is intentional.
It won’t be the first time I get hit on tonight, and it won’t be the last. I’m drunk.
I’m heartbroken. Part of me wonders if I should say yes.
Follow someone to the back, press my body into a stranger, and call it even.
Then apologize to my husband tomorrow. Blame the alcohol. Pretend it wasn’t me. If only that were me.
“Kate,” a voice says, low and close.
I turn my head and blink.
Grant.
Of course. Just what I need.
“Hello, Grant.” My words are steady enough, but my voice isn’t sober. He hears it too.
Arching an eyebrow, he sips his drink with far too much ease. “What are you doing down here? Shouldn’t you be upstairs celebrating ten years of marital bliss?” Then he smirks. “Unless you’re already done.”
His voice isn’t cruel. Just casual, in the way we usually spar with each other, dry and biting but mostly harmless. Usually, I’d meet him halfway with some witty jab, throw sarcasm over my shoulder and wait for him to catch it. But tonight, I don’t have it in me.
I stare straight ahead at the bottles behind the bar, the glint of amber and gold under dim lights. The waiter slides another glass towards me.
I decide to be honest.
“Nah,” I say, voice low but sharp, “I’m just trying to decide whether or not I’m going to leave my husband for screwing a stripper the day before our wedding.”
There’s a long pause. Grant doesn’t say anything right away. He shifts, slightly, and for the first time since he sat down, I feel his eyes fully on me. Not teasing. Not amused. Just... watching.
“You’re serious,” he says finally.
I nod. “Dead serious.”
“Jesus, Kate.”
“Yeah. That’s about the reaction I had.” I sip the whisky, this time forcing it down. It stings less than it did before. Or maybe I’m just getting used to the burn. That should probably worry me.
“He told you this now?” Grant asks.
I huff a breath, half-laugh, half-cough. “I tricked him,” I say. My eyes flick up to the clock behind the bar, blurry around the edges. “Did that thing where I pretended, I already knew, just to see if he’d confess.”
Grant exhales softly, then leans back. “Matthew Osborne’s favourite move.”
I nod. Of course he knows.
We both learned that trick from the same man. The great Matthew Osborne. Administrative head of Jacky’s, the massive restaurant chain that prints money in nine states. Charming, ruthless, impossible to please. He once called me a “feral genius,” and I haven’t stopped using the phrase since.
Grant and I are both his executive assistants.
Well-paid, well-dressed, well-hated by most mid-level managers who think we're just the help.
But our actual job? Spotting liars. Cleaning up rot before it reaches the top.
At first, we competed for the role, both of us cutthroat and with something to prove.
But eventually, Matthew got sick of the bloodbath and split us up.
I handle the East Coast. Grant handles the West. Keeps us both busy and far enough apart to minimize collateral damage.
Most of the time, it’s just logistics and damage control.
Finding out which franchise owner is pocketing renovation money or which general manager is sleeping with a supplier.
Then writing it all up in a clean report and sending it off to Marx Corp, the parent company with skyscrapers, helicopters, and a zero-tolerance policy for bullshit.
Funny, really. I’ve spent the last decade surgically identifying lies for a living. Rooting them out, wrapping them in spreadsheets and quarterly recaps. I’ve shut down multimillion-dollar scams with a smile on my face and heels that never wobbled.
And yet, I stayed married to a liar for ten years.
My laugh slips out bitter and low. I swirl the whisky, watching the light catch on the slow whirlpool of amber.
“I could always tell when a regional manager was covering up payroll fraud,” I say. “But I didn’t see it in my own house. Didn’t even think to look.”
“You weren’t supposed to,” Grant says quietly. “That’s the point of home. You let your guard down.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have.”
I glance over. He’s looking at me like he doesn’t know what to say. That’s rare for Grant. He always has a quip. Always has a comeback. But not now.
Not tonight.
“Eighteen years,” I murmur, more to myself than him. “Eighteen years of covering for him. Of bending my spine until it cracked, I let him hand me crumbs and called it enough because I thought that was just how it worked.”
“You were raising two kids,” he says. “Finishing school. Running half a continent’s worth of restaurants. You didn’t have time to interrogate your marriage on top of everything else.”
I look over at him, lips pressed into a tired line. “Maybe. Or maybe I was just too scared of what I’d find if I really looked.”
He doesn’t argue. I appreciate that.
“Why do men cheat?” I ask, my voice thick with whisky.
Grant looks caught off guard. Good. I want him to be. I want someone to flinch, because God knows I’ve been holding it in long enough.
“You’re a man,” I say, eyebrows raised. “Tell me.”
He exhales slowly and doesn’t answer right away. The silence stretches, but I don’t fill it. I just sit there, watching him wrestle with the question like he’s trying to decide if honesty is worth it.
Eventually, he says, “I can’t speak for all men.
” He shifts in his seat, eyes fixed on the grain of the bar.
“But if I ever cheated… it wouldn’t be about the person I was with.
It’d be about me. About how small I felt.
About not being able to see that I had the world right in front of me, and I let my ego get in the way. ”
I let out a short, dry laugh. “That’s a load of bullshit,” I say, wiping a tear off my cheek with the edge of my hand. “But thank you.”
He doesn’t take offense. Just nods once, solemnly.
I tilt my head, trying to shake off the heaviness. “Then again, I guess you’ll never cheat. You’d actually have to stay with a woman long enough for that.”
It’s meant to sting a little. Maybe even amuse. But he doesn’t even crack a smile. Doesn’t fire back. Instead, he looks at me. Really looks.
“Do you want to know why I left England?” he asks.
I blink. “Sure.”
He takes a long breath. “I was engaged. To the woman I loved. We were walking down to the pub, just a normal day, cold pint, fish and chips, you know. Laughing about something I can’t even remember now. And then she just… dropped.”
My breath catches. The bar noise around us dims.
“I got her to the hospital as fast as I could. But it was an aneurysm. Sudden.. By the time we got there, she was gone.” He doesn’t blink. “Just like that.”
My anger deflates, replaced by something softer. Sadder. “I’m sorry,” I say quietly.
“She was like you, you know.” His voice is steady, but there’s an undercurrent of something sharp and aching. “Fierce. Loyal. Wouldn’t let me get away with a damn thing. Called me out every time I got too smug.”
I smile faintly. I can picture her. Some whip-smart British woman with dark humour and a spine of steel. “Sounds like a handful.”
“She was. But the best kind.”
He glances at me again. “So, if that prick cheated on you, then he’s a bigger idiot than I thought.”
I look down at my glass. The whisky’s almost gone, and I don’t remember drinking most of it. My chest feels hollow and full all at once.
“Yeah,” I whisper. “He really is.”