Chapter 2 #2
The bluntness knocks the air from my lungs. There are years inside that sentence. Hotel rooms where I stumbled in laughing and still reached for her. Nights at home when she shoved water into my hand and I pulled her into my lap.
“I would never do that to you.”
Evie flinches like I touched a bruise. “You already did.”
“I did not sleep with her.” I grip the edge of the island.
“You keep answering the question that makes you innocent.”
“Because it's the question that matters when there's a picture telling the world I cheated on my wife.” My voice rises despite the control I'm trying to force over it.
“The world?” Her grip loosens on the coffee cup. “You're worried about the world?”
“That isn't what I said.”
“You haven't asked me if I'm okay.” Her fingers release the cup completely.
I step around the island. She steps back, opening barely three feet between us, and I hate the space on sight.
“You're not okay,” I say, and hate how useless it sounds.
“Brilliant deductive work.”
“Evie.” I take another half step before her folded arms stop me.
“Don't.” The boundary lands harder than a shove.
I stop. Every instinct I have says cross the distance, get my hands on her, make her look at me long enough to remember who I am. Her arms tighten over her stomach before I move another inch. I stay where I am. She bites the inside of her cheek when she's trying not to cry. She's doing it now.
Years of knowing her, and all I can think to do is reach for her when she has made it clear she doesn't want my hands.
“Tell me what you need,” I say.
“For the last six months not to have happened.” Her gaze flicks toward my phone.
“I can't do that.”
“Then don't ask questions you only want one answer to.” She turns the coffee cup without drinking.
My phone vibrates again. The sound saws through the kitchen. Practice starts in an hour. Mandatory, first round, a room full of men who will already have seen me naked before I've put my skates on.
“Stay,” Evie says, so quietly I almost miss it.
The word hits harder than anything else she’s said this morning. “I can’t miss practice.”
“I didn’t ask what you can’t miss.”
“If I don’t show, this gets bigger.”
She looks at me like I’ve proved her point for her. “It is already inside our house.”
The team can contain this. Communications can pull the statement apart, trace the photograph, force corrections. Facts are solid. Facts can be used.
“I'm going to fix it.” I reach for the certainty of a solvable problem.
“What part?”
“The photo. Her statement. All of it.” My phone lights again between us.
Evie shakes her head once. “You can’t issue a correction for our marriage.”
Something cold goes through me. “Stop talking like we’re over.”
“I'm talking like another woman just announced a claim on my husband and brought proof.” Evie taps one finger against the phone.
“She has no claim on me.”
“She thinks she does.” Her hand stills on the phone, keeping the evidence between us.
“She's wrong.” I close the distance by one step, and she refuses to yield an inch.
“Is she?” She holds her ground.
“Yes.” The answer tears out of me. “You are my wife.”
Evie's mouth bends without becoming a smile. “Thank you for remembering.”
“That isn't fair.” My hands open at my sides.
“No. Fair would've been you remembering while she was collecting pieces of our life.” Her eyes drop to my empty hands.
“She doesn't have pieces of anything.”
“She has your time. Your secrets. Your attention. She became the woman you chose when you didn't feel like talking to me.” Each word pushes me back without her moving.
“I came home to you.” The defense sounds smaller now.
“Eventually.”
“I slept beside you.”
“When you weren't passed out naked beneath her.” Her voice never rises.
“Jesus Christ, Evie.” I drag a hand through my hair.
“Chloe can claim you publicly because you gave her enough in private to make the lie believable.” Her eyes shine, but her voice stays level. “You gave her the right to stand in our marriage.”
“Nobody has that right.”
“Then why have I had to keep asking you to make her leave?” She waits for an answer I don't have.
I stare at her. The phone vibrates once more. My hands close into fists because I need to put them somewhere.
“I have practice.”
The light goes out of her face, and I hear the sentence after it has already done the damage.
“It's mandatory,” I add. “We're in the playoffs. I have to go in, and I need to get ahead of this before it gets worse.”
“Worse for whom?” Her eyes narrow.
“For us.”
“There is no team department for us.” She looks at the directives filling my screen.
I grab my phone from the island. The screen fills with demands the second it recognizes my face. Call now. Do not respond publicly. Report directly upstairs before practice.
At least those tell me what to do. Evie is still standing across from me, waiting for an answer I don't have.
“Calm down,” I say. “Let me talk to communications. I'll find out what the hell Chloe is doing, and we'll figure this out when I get home.”
Her expression stills. “Calm down,” she repeats.
“That came out wrong.” I hear the failure before I finish saying it.
“No. It came out exactly the way you meant it.” Her hand settles beside the photograph.
“I meant don’t decide what happened before I can prove it.”
“You’re asking me to give you the benefit of the doubt.” She turns the screen toward me again.
“I’m asking you to believe me.”
“I did. Last night.” The photograph stays between us.
The words stop me. She looks at the photograph on her phone. “I defended you to myself while you defended her to me.”
My gear bag is still in the hall where I dropped it after the game. I cross to it and hook the strap over my shoulder.
“I'll be back after practice.” Evie says nothing. I grip the door handle. If I stay, I miss the meeting, miss practice, hand the story more blood. If I go, I can force the machine around me to start producing answers.
I pull the door open. “I love you.” I wait one second anyway, but Evie doesn't say it back.
Then I shut the door hard enough to rattle the front glass.