Chapter 14
The Things We Don’t Say
H e was always home late now. The office needed him. Deadlines. Meetings. Investors. Travel. It was easy to lie when the world expected so little from a man who wore a suit and carried a phone that never stopped buzzing.
And it helped that Lila had stopped asking. She no longer waited up. No more questions.
No more late-night arguments about where he’d been or why his shirt smelled like hotel soap and perfume she didn’t wear. He told himself she was tired. That she didn’t care anymore. That maybe she was seeing someone too—though even he didn’t believe that.
The truth?
He didn’t want to be the one still holding guilt when no one was holding him accountable.
Camille filled that silence. Every stolen hour with her felt like a breath in a room that had been suffocating him for years. She was wild. Unapologetic. She gave him everything Lila used to, and then things she never did. Or wouldn’t.
“You overthink too much,” Camille murmured one night, as he sat at the edge of her bed with his head in his hands.
“You always come here acting like I’m your worst decision. And then leave like I’m your only salvation.”
He looked at her, jaw tight.
“Maybe you’re both.”
She only smiled, wrapped in a silk robe, sipping her wine like she didn’t have a care in the world.
“Then keep choosing me.”
And he did. Because guilt was a dull throb now. Familiar. Easy to ignore. He buried it beneath the way her mouth felt around him, the way she moaned his name like she needed it to breathe, the way he felt more like a man with her than he had in years.
Lila
She hid the pill bottles in a shoebox beneath the sink. Not because she was ashamed, but because she didn’t want her children to ask questions she wasn’t ready to answer.
The diagnosis was official now. Cancer. Aggressive. It wouldn’t kill her overnight, but it would steal things slowly—energy, stability, strength.
Time. She had always been the kind of woman who planned for birthdays a month in advance.
Now she was writing lists for things she hoped her children would never have to read. Instructions. Notes. Memories.
She started a journal—something small and leather-bound. She didn’t label it. Just wrote. Little pieces of herself she wanted them to have.
For Ava: Don’t ever shrink for anyone. Not for love. Not for comfort. Speak louder when they try to quiet you.
For Caleb: Your softness is not weakness. Your tears are not failures. Be gentle in a world that often isn't.
For Nate, she wrote nothing.
Not yet.
Instead, she began organizing their medical records. Updated the will. Scheduled appointments around her children’s school events so no one would suspect.
Made casseroles and froze them. Replaced lightbulbs. Took walks with her sister without saying why her legs ached more than they should.
And each time Nate came home late, smelling faintly of sweat and citrus and something else she didn’t recognize anymore… she said nothing.
Because what was the point? Some truths break louder when spoken. Others break quietly, in the way someone stops reaching for you. She still made dinner for him.
That night, it was roasted chicken and rosemary potatoes. He sat across from her and the kids, chewing slowly, watching as she smiled gently when Caleb told a story about his science teacher fainting in class.
Ava barely looked up from her phone. The table was full, but everything between him and Lila felt hollow. A performance. She looked paler lately. Thinner. But he didn’t ask.
He didn’t want to know. Because if she was sick, it would mean something was wrong. And if something was wrong, it meant he’d failed her in more ways than just betrayal.