10. 10
10
That night, Ava lay awake, staring at the empty half of her king-sized bed. She draped her arm across the cool pillow and pulled it to her chest. She hadnever once regretted kicking out her ex-husband after findingout about the affair.
It wasn’t much of a marriage to begin with.
Dan’s scent was long gone fromher bedding,ithaving been laundered many times since. Butno amount of fabric softener in the world washed away the terrible past. The loneliness. The feeling of not being enough. The feeling of not being someone’s whole world.
Memories flashed through her mind with the 20/20 clarity of hindsight. Every phony smile, every faked orgasm,every late-night shower, every kiss…all of it was a damned lie . A beautifully curated fallacy she’dorchestrated throughout the years to quell the distrust, all to sootheherself for obviously settling. She could recognize now, in retrospect, that she’d turned a blind eye toevery red flag, every sign. Suspicions wereblanketed over by a forced, blind trust in someone who lied in front of God and their families that he would love, cherish, honor, andbe faithful. From the shadows, reality had slapped her in the face with its cold, lesson-riddled hand.
…Lessons she hadn’t been ready for.
Her mind played back an uglyhighlight reel of painful memories. Perfume on his work clothes. Car seatspushed too far forward. Late-night texts from the office. Strange charges on the account. The rumors at the Christmas party. The marks on his back that looked suspiciously like nail drags.
It had all been lies. Every last moment of their sham marriage.
Did he ever love me, she wondered?
Was there ever a time when the care he showed was real?
During their final blowout, he’d broken down and told her about the affairs. Plural . Ava foolishly recalled thinking they could work through it, using honesty as a foundation to rebuild their twister-ravaged vows.
That was until his current something-on-the-side got pregnant .
Every time Ava thought back to it, her chest ached. Not because of the unfaithful idiot she had married. It ached for the fact that Dan wnow hadthe family she’d always dreamed of having .
She thought the divorcehad absolutely broken her. She wasn’t looking for someone. Nor did she ever think she would want more than a casual flingever again.
She tossed and turned, finally settling on the empty pillow, and triedto imagine Will Jessup laying in bed beside her, caressing the hair from her cheek just as he had tonight when she was teetering on the edge of a dream.
Allinstincts of self-preservationhad been tossed out the window, and asingular, haunting realization had taken their place…
Will was in her head.