13. Paige
— ? —
Paige
Three days later, I get the text that changes everything.
I’m at the hotel I’ve been staying at since the motel, trying to figure out what my life looks like now.
The house I shared with Cole is uninhabitable - not because he’s there, but because every corner holds memories I can’t look at yet.
The hotel is neutral territory. Beige walls, generic art, a bed that doesn’t carry the weight of twelve years of lies.
My phone buzzes. An old friend from college - someone I haven’t talked to in months, someone who wouldn’t text unless something was wrong.
Did you know Cole brought Tara to the Whitmore brunch? They’re at the country club right now. Everyone is pretending this is normal. I’m so sorry.
The Whitmore brunch. A monthly social event for our friend group - couples we’ve known for a decade, people who came to the vineyard, people who witnessed my humiliation. They’re supposed to be my friends. They’re supposed to be horrified by what Cole did.
Instead, they’re sipping mimosas with the woman who helped him do it.
I don’t think about what I’m doing. I just grab my keys.
The country club is exactly as pretentious as it sounds - all manicured lawns and white tablecloths and women in Lilly Pulitzer discussing their Peloton routines. I’ve been a member here for eight years. Cole and I hosted our tenth anniversary dinner in the private room.
Today, I walk through the lobby in jeans and a T-shirt I slept in, my hair unwashed, looking exactly like a woman whose life collapsed two weeks ago.
The hostess intercepts me at the entrance to the private dining room. “Ma’am, the Whitmore party is-”
“I’m aware.”
I push past her.
The dining room goes silent.
Cole is at the head of the table, in the chair that used to be mine. Tara is next to him, wearing a soft pink sundress that drapes carefully over her growing belly. Her hand rests on the curve of it - protective, possessive - and Cole’s arm is draped across the back of her chair.
Around them, arranged like courtiers around a king, are the people I thought were my friends.
Melissa, who I’ve known for eight years.
Brad and Jennifer, who we vacationed with in Cabo.
Ryan, who was one of Cole’s groomsmen. All of them frozen mid-bite, their mimosas suspended in the air, staring at me like I’ve risen from the dead to haunt them.
“Don’t stop on my account,” I say. My voice echoes off the high ceilings. “I just wanted to see it for myself.”
Melissa stands up first, her chair scraping against the hardwood. “Paige, this isn’t - we didn’t-”
“Didn’t what?” I step farther into the room. “Didn’t invite me? Didn’t tell me my husband was bringing his pregnant mistress to brunch? Didn’t think I’d find out?”
“It’s not like that.” Melissa’s hands are fluttering, that nervous habit she’s had since college. “We were trying to - everyone’s still processing what happened - no one wanted to take sides-”
“Take sides?” I laugh, and the sound is sharp enough to make someone at the far end of the table flinch. “A man cheated on his wife for twelve years with her best friend, and you didn’t want to take sides?”
Tara starts crying. Of course she does. Big, theatrical tears that track through her makeup, making her look fragile and victimized instead of complicit.
Cole stands, positioning himself between me and the table like I’m the threat here. “Paige, don’t do this. Not here.”
“Where should I do it, Cole?” I take another step forward. “At our vow renewal? Oh wait - you already made that a spectacle.”
“You’re embarrassing yourself.”
“I’m embarrassing myself?” My voice rises, and I don’t care anymore about scenes, about propriety, about any of the social contracts that kept me playing nice for twelve years. “I’m not the one who brought my pregnant mistress to a couples’ brunch two weeks after publicly humiliating my wife.”
“Paige, please.” Tara’s voice is wobbly, tear-streaked. “I know what we did was wrong. I know there’s nothing I can say-”
I cross to the table in three steps, pick up Tara’s mimosa - sparkling cider, I notice, because she’s pregnant with my husband’s baby - and throw it directly in her face.
The liquid drips down her cheeks, her chin, soaking the front of her pink sundress. She gasps, sputters, but doesn’t move. Just sits there, dripping, looking like exactly what she is: a woman who thought she’d gotten away with something and just discovered she hadn’t.
“Twelve years,” I say, and my voice is shaking now because the rage is finally catching up to the shock.
“You sat across from me for twelve years and let me believe I had a best friend. I told you things I never told Cole - about my insecurities, my fears, my marriage. I trusted you with my darkest moments. And you used every single one of them.”
“I know.” Tara’s voice is barely a whisper. “I’m a monster.”
“You’re not a monster.” I step back, suddenly exhausted. “Monsters are fictional. You’re just a coward who wanted what she couldn’t have and took it anyway.”
I turn to face the table - all these people I thought I knew, all these friends who are sitting here eating eggs Benedict while my life burns.
“And all of you.” My gaze sweeps across them: Melissa’s guilt-stricken face, Brad’s determination to look anywhere but at me, Jennifer’s hand frozen on her fork.
“You’re welcome to her. You’re welcome to both of them.
But don’t pretend you’re my friends anymore.
Friends don’t sit at brunch with the woman who fucked my husband for twelve years. ”
I turn and walk out.
The adrenaline is crashing now, replaced by a hollow sickness, and I need to get out of this parking lot before I collapse.
Outside, I’m shaking so hard I can barely find my keys in my purse when I see him.
Wes is leaning against his truck - arms crossed, one boot propped against the tire, looking like a man who’s been waiting for trouble that hasn’t arrived yet.
He’s wearing jeans that fit him too well and a gray T-shirt that pulls across his chest in ways I absolutely should not be noticing while mascara is still drying on my cheeks.
He pushes off the truck when he sees me, and something about the way he moves - unhurried, certain, like he has all the time in the world - makes my breath catch.
“Your college friend texted me too. Pulled my number off the vineyard group chat,” he says. “I figured you might need a getaway driver.”
I should respond. I should say something witty or grateful or at least coherent. Instead I’m staring at the hollow of his throat, at the steady pulse beating there, at the complete absence of panic in his expression.
Cole would be freaking out right now. Cole would be managing optics, worrying about what this looks like, already spinning the narrative. Wes just stands there, solid and calm, like a man who’s never cared what anyone thinks about anything.
My hands are still trembling. He notices - of course he notices - but he doesn’t comment. He just opens the passenger door and waits.
I climb in, and when he rounds to the driver’s side, I watch him through the windshield like I’ve never seen a man walk before. The easy roll of his shoulders. The way his hand grips the door frame. No performance. No audience awareness.
Get a grip, I tell myself as he slides behind the wheel. He’s your brother-in-law. You’re a disaster. This is not the time to notice that he smells like sawdust and something clean underneath.
But I notice anyway.
“I threw a drink in her face,” I say, because I have to say something that isn’t you have really nice hands and I think I’m losing my mind.
“I heard.” He pulls out of the parking lot while my former friends are probably still frozen at their table.
I stare at him - this man who keeps showing up exactly when I need someone to show up. Who doesn’t ask questions or offer judgment or try to fix anything. “How did you know what I would do?”
“I didn’t.” His eyes stay on the road. “I just knew you’d need someone when it was over.”
“My mother is going to have another cardiac event when she finds out.”
“Your mother would have held your purse.”
I laugh. The sound surprises me - genuine and raw, like something cracking open after being sealed too long.
Wes laughs too. And then we’re both laughing, ridiculous and cathartic, and the tears streaming down my face aren’t just from humor anymore.
Wes doesn’t take me back to the hotel. He drives out of the city, into the hills, until the country club and Cole and Tara feel like they exist in a different universe entirely.
The sky is doing something strange - going green-black at the edges, the way it does before summer storms. The wind picks up, bending the roadside trees, and within twenty minutes the first fat drops of rain are splattering against the windshield.
“Storm’s coming,” Wes says, stating the obvious.
“Good. I could use some external chaos to match the internal.”
He glances at me with something that might be amusement, then pulls off at an overlook - one of those scenic viewpoints with parking for maybe six cars and a railing that’s supposed to stop you from tumbling down the hillside. We’re the only ones here. Of course we are.
The rain hits hard, turning the windshield into a wall of water within seconds. Lightning cracks across the sky, close enough that the thunder follows immediately, shaking the truck.
Wes kills the engine. “We should wait this out.”
We sit in silence, watching the storm. The wipers are off now, and the world outside is reduced to streaks and blurs - green hills dissolving into gray sky, lightning illuminating everything in bright flashes before plunging us back into dimness.
I start laughing again.
“What?” Wes asks.
“I threw a drink in her face.” The words come out between giggles. “At the country club. In front of everyone. Melissa’s probably calling her therapist right now. Brad definitely peed a little. And Jennifer - Jennifer was wearing white. If any of that cider splashed-”