Chapter 1
Chapter One
It’s not like you imagine it to sound.
Movies tell you that it’s loud, obnoxious even, but hearing it for yourself, your brain doesn’t quite comprehend what’s happening until you’re standing in the doorway of the bedroom you share with your husband of eleven years while he’s balls deep in another woman.
Not only that, but unlike the movies tell you, he doesn’t stop because, in fact, he does not hear you open the door. Instead, he’s busy trying to nut into another woman.
Another woman I did, indeed, know and loathe.
I was numb, unable to make my feet move to leave or to beat the hell out of him, or even to scream. All I could do was watch as he fucked into her with an intensity he’d never shown me.
She saw me.
The sickening smile twisting on her overly filled lips told me she was enjoying the show of watching me realize I’d been a fool to think my husband would ever stay faithful. It was the family trait for us Maxwell’s. Not one female Maxwell had ever had a faithful relationship.
Who was I to think eleven years meant I’d broken the curse.
Carissa ran her hands up and down his arms, stroking him while making all the sounds she was meant to. She was faking it.
Paul hadn’t been great in bed, sure, but he did eventually make you come so I didn’t mind. I loved him, so I learned to live with it, but this…?
Yeah…this was not on my bingo card for this year.
Eleven fucking years.
Carissa made a ridiculous sound as she fake came, much to Paul’s relief, judging by his puffy red face, it looked like he was about ready to have a heart attack.
Somehow, I found the will to walk away, back toward the kitchen of our penthouse apartment.
Panic flooded through as I looked out the window at the city below us.
I’d always thought myself so lucky to get out of the suburbs and live here, overlooking the city, and living happily with someone I thought loved me.
I’d given up on the idea of having children because of him. He’d never wanted them, he had wanted a career, and I had come to terms with that. I didn’t think kids were in my future anyway, I was always so nomadic when I was younger, just like my mother.
Only she was flitting from boyfriend to boyfriend, while I struggled to keep my grades. It was why Carissa had been such a bitch to me.
Well, that and the fact that she was and still is a bitch for no reason other than that was her default setting.
The sound of stiletto heels click-clacking down the hallway over my marble tiles dragged my attention back to the fact that I was about to confront him with his lover.
My stomach was in knots as I turned to watch as the realization dawned over his face.
He knew he was busted.
“Stevie…”
Carissa put her hand on his arm, comforting, but he shucked it off. Carissa’s smile turned into confusion, and then anger, and she crossed her arms over her chest, but made no move to leave.
“Oh come on now, Paul, say goodbye to your lover. No need to be shy now.”
The bitterness in my tone was hard to miss, and it made me angry that I couldn’t put on an act of indifference.
“Paul—”
He held up his hand to silence her, and judging by her pout, I knew she wasn’t used to it.
“Just go,” he said.
“Call me later?”
Her smirk at me was meant to devastate, but I didn’t think anything could do that after seeing the man you loved balls deep in another woman.
Carissa finally left with a departing finger wave before she closed the door behind her. I turned back to Paul, who seemed to be waiting for my explosive reaction, but he wasn’t going to get it.
“Well?” I asked after the silence had gone on too long.
“What did you—”
“How long, Paul?” I cut him off, already sensing the direction he was going to go in.
He didn’t answer, which should have told me it was long enough, but I wanted to hear it. I wanted to know how long he’d been making me a fool in my own apartment.
“Stevie—”
“How long have you been fucking my bully in my own bed?” I asked, my tone rising a little more.
“Stevie, this isn’t high school…”
“No? So why is she all up in my business still?”
Paul sighed. “Look…what I’ve done is reprehensible, I know. I could tell you it wouldn’t happen again, but I find it hard to resist her. I’ll never marry her though, we could have a good life. It doesn’t have to change.”
“You want me to be okay with you fucking that trollop while you’re married to me?” I asked, bewildered at the audacity of this fucking man.
Paul moved to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. Taking a sip, he sat down at the kitchen bench and laid his hands flat down on the marble countertop. He did that when he was trying to figure out how to de-escalate an issue.
“How. Long?” I asked slowly.
“Two years.”
“So I had nine years of fidelity from you?”
His expression was sheepish when he looked up. Oh how daft I had been.
“Have you ever been faithful to me?” I asked, my voice notching a little with the unshed emotion currently coursing through my body.
“Yes,” he said quickly. “It’s not that I don’t love you, Stevie, I do, I love you more than anything but there’s something in me that can’t stop. It’s like an addiction.”
“So sex with me is boring then?”
“No, it’s just…predictable.”
That was a knife right through my fucking chest. I never used to be.
I used to be wild, and untamed, and loved my life but it wasn’t a permanent thing.
Nothing had been permanent and that was the problem.
I was on the way to becoming my mother with a child and an endless stream of useless boyfriends.
I loved my mom, but I didn’t want to have that life.
“I’m not saying I don’t love it, I do. I love making love to you, but sometimes I want to fuck someone like they’re my whore and they don’t get all sad about it.”
“I never said I didn’t want that, you assumed it.”
“Come on, Stevie, you’re not your mom. You love our tidy life, and I love it for my job. We don’t need this to be a thing. I’ll drop Carissa if it bothers you.”
“So you want to be in a marriage of convenience?” I asked him. “If that’s the case, I can have boyfriends too.”
“No,” he said quickly.
“Bit of a double standard, isn’t it?” I shot back. “You can stick your dick in anything that moves, but I can’t spread my legs for someone else?”
Paul was getting annoyed. Good.
“You’re not a whore, Stevie. You’re my wife.”
“No, Paul, I’m not. I’m just Stevie. You lost the privilege of calling me wife the second I walked in to see you fuck the woman who caused me the most pain in high school.
And you knew that too. You knew for two years that you were fucking someone who caused me physical and emotional pain for years. You’re the asshole.”
I grabbed my bag and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” he called out to me.
“You also lost the privilege of knowing the answer to that,” I shot back at him before I slammed the door and moved to the elevator.
Only once the doors opened, did I let the tears fall. Silently, but still enough that it made vision grossly impaired.
Stumbling toward the only place I knew was a safe haven, I blocked out everything else, dried my eyes.
This was the wake up call I’d needed to come home.