Chapter 46
For the Other Woman
I t was late afternoon when Nate opened the second envelope. He found it tucked inside one of Lila’s old sketchbooks, pressed between a half-finished drawing of the kids and a grocery list she’d never thrown out. Her handwriting was unmistakable—elegant, steady, unhurried.
To Camille.
No postage. No salutation. Just a name.
He stared at it for a long time. And then he opened it.
Camille,
You’ve stolen a lot from me.
Let’s not pretend otherwise.
You took my husband. My peace. My sleep. You took years I’ll never get back, moments that should’ve belonged to me. To my children. To the life I built with shaking hands.
But the worst part? You didn’t take him because you loved him. You took him because you wanted to win.
You wanted to be chosen. And for a while, you were. At least physically. In secret.
But Nate was never fully yours, was he? Not even when he swore he would be. Because no matter how far he wandered, part of him still came home to me.
I used to hate you. I won’t lie.
I hated the way you laughed at things I used to say. I hated the perfume you left behind on his shirts. I hated how little you seemed to care that you were destroying someone else’s world.
But now…
Now I just feel sorry for you.
Because you spent over a decade trying to be enough for a man who used you to fill a hollow space inside himself. And I spent over a decade trying to be enough for the same man in a different way.
We both lost.
You never really had him.
And I… I lost him long before you touched him.
Nate stopped reading for a moment. His heart pounded, his vision blurred. But he kept going.
You see, Camille, the real tragedy isn’t you. Or even him.
It’s that my children have to live with the wreckage both of you left behind.
So I’m not writing to curse you. I’m not even writing to forgive you. I’m writing to say: this is where it ends.
You don’t get to haunt them. You don’t get to twist your place in this story.
They don’t need to hear from you. They don’t owe you anything.
And neither do I.
Let me go.
Let them grow.
Let the past rest.
—Lila
Nate folded the letter carefully. He didn’t know what he would do with it. He didn’t know if he would ever give it to Camille. Maybe one day, if she came clawing back into their lives again.
But right now, he tucked it away with trembling hands and sat in the quiet. Lila had written a letter to the woman who helped ruin her.
And still… somehow… she’d managed to keep her dignity intact. He could only sit with the truth of that.
And weep.
The second letter wasn’t in an envelope.
It was folded neatly into one of Lila’s old journals, tucked between pages inked with sketches of Ava in ballet slippers and Caleb asleep with his favorite book.
Nate almost missed it. But something made him turn back, drawn to the uneven edge of a page that looked thicker than the rest.
He pulled it free.
It wasn’t dated. It wasn’t labeled.
Just the first line.
"You and I were never strangers."
His breath caught.
Camille,
You and I were never strangers.
Long before the lies. Long before the secrets. We were girls who shared late-night stories and cheap wine on the balcony of our college dorm. You were the one who held my hand when I cried over my father. I was the one who talked you out of getting that god-awful tattoo in Madrid.
You were there when I wore white and said vows I believed in with my whole heart. You were in the fifth row, wearing blue, smiling like you meant it.
You told me I was lucky.
And maybe that was the first lie.
Nate’s hands shook as he read. He hadn’t known. Not this part. Not that Camille had been there from the beginning.
I often wonder what changed. What broke in you. What made you cross the line from friend to thief.
Was it envy? Or loneliness? Or did you just want what I had because you thought you deserved it more?
You waited. You watched. You smiled to my face while you slept with the man I loved.
And then you acted like you had no choice.
He turned the page slowly, his eyes stinging.
But here’s the part I never told anyone—not even Nate.
There were moments when I saw the truth. Quiet moments. Slips. The way your voice softened when you said his name. The way you avoided my eyes when you asked how things were at home.
I knew.
Not everything. But enough.
And I stayed. I stayed because I was too proud to leave. Too afraid of the silence that would follow.
I told myself that maybe, just maybe, I could outlove the betrayal.
But you can’t outlove someone who’s already chosen someone else.
And you can’t outrun history.
We’re not enemies, Camille. We were never just that.
You were my friend. And you became the sharpest kind of pain.
Nate stopped.
Everything in him stilled.
The betrayal had gone deeper than he imagined. Camille hadn’t just been a mistress. She’d once been family. A sister in all but blood.
And he hadn’t seen it.
Hadn’t questioned her closeness. Her careful words. The way she’d always kept just enough distance to keep him hungry, and just enough warmth to stay near Lila, too.
He folded the letter and pressed it to his chest like it might bleed if he let go.
In the silence of the house, he could hear Lila’s voice in every word.
Clear. Unforgiving. And heartbreakingly human.
He would never stop grieving her. Not just because she was gone. But because now, finally, he was beginning to see her.
All of her.
And it was too late.