Chapter 2
DENIED
Eliana blamed the novels she read for her suspicious nature. She was self-aware enough to acknowledge that her mild childhood fantasy obsession—which evolved into a fan-fiction fascination, which then flourished into a love for all things dark and gritty—had probably colored her view of the world.
So in the two days that followed the hotel debacle, Eliana thought about the possibilities.
Every potential scenario. She considered it logically, choosing to give her husband of fourteen years the benefit of the doubt.
They’d been inseparable since he’d asked her to be his girlfriend when they were twelve years old, and in all that time, he’d never given her a reason to believe he would cheat.
Lying about the availability of a hotel room did not even necessarily indicate he was cheating.
If he was just there for sex, wouldn’t it have made more sense to be inconspicuous?
Get the cheapest room that nobody looks twice at?
Or simply not swipe the personal credit card at all . . . which she had access to?
Unless it wasn’t the sex itself that motivated him . . . but the thrill of it. Eliana shook her head, banishing the thought. She’d been with him for more than half her life. She knew him. She knew his heart. She was not about to condemn him without any actual evidence.
Maybe he just wanted to stay in a fancy room.
Maybe there was a malfunction in the software.
Maybe the hotel lied to make an extra dollar.
There were options. For two days, she debated asking for clarification, but decided to let it go .
. . choosing to believe it was a fluke. He’d said the charge was getting reimbursed, so it didn’t matter.
And she wanted to believe. More than anything, she wanted to believe.
So when he returned home two days later—she was ready with a smile, having put her worries behind her.
Until later that very same evening, when Jesse was showering, and she found herself, once again, sitting on the side of the bed and staring incredulously down at the phone in her hand.
He’d left it plugged in on the bedside table, as was typical.
However, for the first time in their relationship, his phone did not unlock to her fingerprint.
She swiped up and keyed in the passcode.
Denied.
He’d always saved her birthday as his password on every phone. Always. It was a running joke between the two of them. No better way to remember than by entering it fifty times a day, he’d joked.
She took a slow breath, trying and failing to calm her racing mind. There are other possibilities, she thought desperately. It doesn’t have to be what it looks like.
She stepped into the bathroom, eyeing him through the glass door as the water rinsed the soap from his hair.
“Hey, babe,” Eliana called, working to keep her voice level. “My phone died, and I needed to Google a recipe. But your phone won’t open for me. Did you delete my fingerprint?
“No, that’s odd,” Jesse said, rubbing his face with a towel to see her clearly. “My phone did update last night, though. Maybe something happened to it in the update?”
“What about your passcode?” she asked. “It’s always been my birthday.”
“Yeah, that was part of the security update too,” he said. “I had to reset it.”
Eliana frowned. They had the same phone, on the same plan, and she’d not gotten an update.
“Well, what’s the new code?” she asked nonchalantly while her miserable heart begged, please just give me the password.
Instead, he stepped from the shower with a clear film of soap still clinging to his skin as he grabbed a towel and wrapped it around his waist.
“Here, let me do the fingerprint. It sounds like you’ve tried it a couple of times, and I don’t want it getting locked up if you key it in wrong.”
She stared. “Do you not want me to have access to your phone?”
“Huh?” To Jesse‘s credit, he looked genuinely puzzled, despite the fact that he gently pulled the phone from her grasp. “Why would you say that?”
“Because you still haven’t told me.”
The muscle in his jaw flexed as he gritted his teeth. “I don’t understand where this is coming from. Do you not trust me?”
“This isn’t about trust,” Eliana hissed. “It’s about secrets.”
“I’m not keeping any secrets from you,” he answered, his tone rising.
“Then what is the password, Jesse?”
“It’s your birth year,” he snapped before stomping out of the room, phone in hand. “Are you happy now? I’m going for a drive.”
“But what about din–" Eliana’s arms fell loose to her sides, and her lips twisted in a grimace as the door snapped shut behind him with a note of finality.
Making accusations against a man who had always been faithful and honest. She knew his heart, why was she doubting it now? What kind of wife was she?
Guilt clawed at her heart as she sniffed, blinking against the burn of his dismissal, and straightened her shoulders.
Then she walked out to the kitchen and began prepping a frozen pizza for the girls, having lost her appetite for the fancy pasta dish she’d had in mind.
With all the traveling Jesse did, their nights together were so few and far between.
Why had she gone and made such unfounded assumptions?
What could’ve been a perfectly pleasant evening was ruined . . . all because of her.
The sound of the key turning had Eliana spinning in place, pizza in hand, just as Jesse walked back through the door.
His brow was set, his eyes focused on her, as he ate up the space between them in seconds.
He held out his unlocked phone, the home screen front and center, but Eliana pushed it back, shaking her head.
Neither said a word, but he was quick to step forward and wrap her in a hug.
And, for a moment, things felt right again.
He carried the pizza to the living room for her and flipped on a movie with the girls, joking and laughing together as they always did.
She didn’t even mind when a popcorn fight broke out, knowing she would need to clean it up later.
She felt happy and content and was simply grateful that the evening had been salvaged.
But when it came time for bed, Eliana found that she couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t help the nagging curiosity. The worry—No. The intuition. It pulled at her relentlessly, until she slipped out of the bed deep in the midnight hour and padded around to his side.
For a long moment, she simply stared down at the phone, wondering why she couldn’t just believe. Having no answers, she silently picked it up and, with a deep breath, keyed in her birth year.
Denied.