5. She Saw the Friend
She Saw the Friend
Gwen
I drifted through the kitchen on autopilot.
The coffee machine—on.
Blueberries—in the bowl.
After carefully lowering Noah into his highchair and strapping him in, I tickled his chubby belly until he squealed with laughter. A picture-perfect start to a typical day. Almost .
Marnie slumped over the kitchen counter. “It’s against the natural order for anyone to be so happy this early in the morning.” She face-planted into the wood.
“It’s eight, Mar.”
“Don’t you ever sleep?” came her muffled grumble.
“No.” I laughed. “I have a baby, remember?” And a husband who’d never come home…
Reporting the car stolen had achieved nothing.
Rocking in the chair beside Noah’s crib, my mind refusing to be quiet, I’d resorted to my own detective work.
Kayleigh’s existence was at my fingertips.
It hadn’t taken long to find where she lived.
Her friends. Her favorite restaurants. Even the comments she’d posted asking for advice from armchair psychologists were easy to find.
I didn’t choose to fall in love with a married man, but I can’t deny our connection. He’s the first man who understands me.
Pass me the vomit bucket.
I slid a coffee in front of Marnie. “Kayleigh uploaded a new photo—”
She lifted her head off the counter. “What did I say about looking at her social media? I believe it was don’t .”
I shoved my phone under Marnie’s nose. “Just look, okay?” I’d already seen the picture of Kayleigh pouting for the camera in skimpy lace underwear too many times.
Marnie’s nose wrinkled. “Geez, babe. Hit me with a trigger warning first next time.” She gagged a little when she glanced down. “It’s definitely too early for thirst traps, right?”
I jabbed a finger at the screen. “Read what she wrote.”
Yawning, Marnie mumbled out the words, “Tips for redness… I love my man’s beard, but my skin is so sensitive after hours of kissing…” She shoved my phone back. “Stop reading that shit.”
“You didn’t even get to the best part. She finished with, ‘Don’t even get me started about down there.’ Mar—”
Her hand landed on mine to give me a comforting squeeze. “Stop torturing yourself with Kayleigh’s juvenile crap.”
“There’s more to it than that. This is proof—”
“That is proof of nothing except that girl being an attention-seeking wannabe…and that she has gravity-defying tits.” Marnie squinted at my phone again. “Do you reckon that photo is edited? Or is it just the joy of being twenty-something? I’d kill to still have the tits I had in my early twenties.”
“Mar—”
“They were a hell of a lot perkier, let me tell you.”
I rolled my eyes and pretended her comments hadn’t hit a crack in my confidence.
I couldn’t deny what I saw with my own eyes.
Kayleigh was pretty. She had a youthful body, smooth, bouncy, and untouched by motherhood.
Maybe Toby had noticed that too. Maybe he liked that she was too vacuous to keep him up all night worrying about household problems or pestering him about whether he’d had a chance to fix the side gate.
I spared Marnie any more of my inner turmoil and sipped my coffee in silence.
My nerves had only slipped a few notches down the panic scale when the doorbell rang.
I launched forward, but Marnie’s hand landed on my shoulder, encouraging me to stay back.
“Let me get it.” She tried to hide her worry behind a shaky smile. “Stay here.”
The flutter of her skirt disappeared around the doorway.
My foot tapped a beat faster than my heart. An unexpected knock on the door was never a good sign. There was always a police officer waiting on the other side. Growing up, I’d pried open the door to more than my fair share.
The officer would take off his hat, crouch down, and ask, “Is your mum at home?”
And I’d always lied and said, “No, sir, she’s working,” knowing full well she was passed out on the threadbare sofa just out of sight, too drunk to handle another trip to pick up my brother from the station.
The police visits had slowed as the years went on. Not because Liam had changed, but because he’d learned better tricks to avoid getting caught.
Was that happening now? Was a police officer waiting on the other side of my front door? Would he frown as he removed his hat and delivered the type of news no one ever wanted to hear?
I wrapped a protective arm around the back of Noah’s highchair. Instinct. My little boy didn’t have a care in the world. He babbled away as he squished blueberries in his fist and stuffed them in his mouth.
Muddled footsteps echoed from the hallway. Marnie reappeared, but the man behind her wasn’t a police officer.
It was Ian.
She blocked the doorway, but he ducked through the gap to cross the kitchen in three quick strides. My nails bit into my palms. I wasn’t sure if his being there was better…or worse.
“Gwenny.” His arms wrapped around me so tight my hands were stuck useless by my sides.
Over his shoulder, I caught sight of Marnie hovering by the doorway. Her head was cocked, eyes on Ian, tracking his every move. My own thoughts whirred. Why was he here?
Ian stood back. His hands clasped on my shoulders, and he scanned me up and down, a line pinched between his brows. “Are you really okay?”
I waved him off. “I told you last night I’m fine. Noah’s fine. The insurance and a rental car are already sorted.” At three in the morning, doing anything was a better way to occupy my mind than imagining Toby’s body sprawled on top of another woman.
Ian smiled down at me, but he seemed rattled.
His hand lingered a little too long on my shoulder before he slid it away to wave hello at Noah.
After that, he didn’t quite know what to do with himself.
He picked at the cuticle on his thumb, and the dart of his eyes—to me, to Marnie, and back to his hand—made that twitchy energy sizzle my nerves again.
“Gwen… I… There’s something I need to tell you. Can we talk?” He glanced over his shoulder to the doorway where my best friend’s eyes were still zeroed in on him. “Maybe…in private?”
Marnie snorted. “I’m not going anywhere.” She folded her arms across her chest to prove her point. “Say what you came to say and shove off, Ian.”
His jaw clenched, but he said nothing. He wasn’t going to be derailed by Marnie. His focus stayed on me. “I need to talk to you about Toby.”
My stomach plummeted like a skydiver without a parachute. “Is he—? Ian, if something’s wrong—if Toby’s hurt—”
“No, he’s…fine…” Another nervous look turned over his shoulder.
“Just tell me what’s going on.”
Ian took a deep breath. “Gwen, you have to understand… Toby’s my best friend. Jesus, we’re closer than friends. Basically, we’re like…like…brothers, right? But…” He tugged a hand through his hair and dropped his eyes to his shoes. “I lied to you last night.”
I rolled my eyes for Marnie’s benefit. Tell me something I don’t know . Lounging against the archway, she smirked.
“Toby wasn’t at your place?” I asked him.
“No…he wasn’t… And when I think about what you and the little dude went through in the accident… I just…” The shake of his head was slow. “I can’t keep covering for Toby.”
I leveled my gaze on him, unblinking, my heart hardening each time I repeated his words in my head.
He can’t keep covering for Toby .
It was true. It was all true. I hadn’t been crazy.
Ian’s hand reached for mine, almost like he wanted to weave our fingers together. The action seemed to surprise him as much as me. He snatched his hand back with a guilty look.
“I’ve fought myself over whether to tell you,” he said. “It’s been eating me alive for weeks. I wanted to tell you so many times what was going on.”
Ice ran through my veins. There was no risk of my falling apart. “And what’s going on?”
“Toby…and…Kayleigh.” His throat bobbed. “They’re…” He dropped his gaze back to his shoes, his shoulder lifting to fill in the blank.
Not that he needed to finish what he was going to say.
I knew. I’d seen the photo of the party, hadn’t I?
The sight of Kayleigh’s lips on my husband’s cheek was only one piece of the puzzle, but it didn’t take many more to create the full picture.
Toby had been acting weird about Kayleigh for weeks.
Her stupid comment about falling for a married man and the photo she’d posted, oversharing about his enthusiasm between her legs, filled in enough of the gaps.
Marnie cleared her throat behind me, but her voice was scratchy when she asked Ian, “You told Toby about the accident, right?”
“The second you called,” he said. “I kept telling him it was time to leave, but he brushed me off and told me he’s tired of being ignored.” His voice lowered to almost a whisper. “He…he said…it’s been… a while for you guys.” Uncomfortable parting with that detail, he winced.
I stood taller and lifted my chin, too proud to show any weakness, even though my world was crumbling beneath my feet.
Bedroom talk was private. Sacred . I’d never even talked to Marnie about the problems in my sex life, and I shared almost everything with her—including a conversation about the horrors of postpartum poops.
You don’t get much more awkward than that.
“I told Toby none of that mattered,” Ian said, “and he told me to mind my own beeswax.” He sighed. “He’s been saying that a lot lately.”
“And where is he now?”
“He’s there. At Kayleigh’s. He asked me to cover for him. I should’ve said no… I know that… Jesus, Gwen, I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to be the one to tell you.”
I stood still. My body was numb, but I wasn’t choked in a fog of doubt and worry anymore. I understood what was going on. I hadn’t been crazy. I’d been right all along.
Tentative fingers touched the dip in my spine. “Are you angry at me?” Ian asked softly.
“No, of course not. I don’t believe in shooting the messenger…” My husband, however … “You did the right thing telling me the truth.” His body stiffened until I bumped my shoulder against his and offered him a weak smile. “Even if it doesn’t feel like it right now.”
“What do we do now?”
Great question.
My betrayal had been splashed online for the world to see. Screw saying nothing and walking away with my head held high. My revenge needed to be just as devastating. I wanted something public. Something final . An eye for an eye—my brother’s motto.
Not a single trace of my husband could remain.