Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
PAIGE
The next few minutes come to me in flashes.
First, Trevor is panicking, pulling the car over to the side of the road when we aren’t far from our home.
Next, he’s rushing over to me, where I sit in the passenger seat, frozen in shock, in betrayal, in agony.
Then he pulls me from the car and palms my cheeks, looking at me, tilting my face in all different angles.
He runs his hands down my arms to my hands, and finally, he spots the item in my palm. His eyes narrow, blink, then widen.
In recognition?
I stand, numb in my pain, and take in the scene around me with a strange dissonance.
I see the fading light from the sun starting its descent.
I hear the occasional car passing, likely heading home from their own family events.
A dog down the road barks at some unknown object, person, or another, quieter dog.
I feel a gentle breeze teasing my legs, drifting up my dress, making it flutter across the tops of my knees.
I feel my lying, cheating husband holding my face between his palms. In the brief moment of clarity, I jerk out of his hold.
The rage, pain, fear, agony, and decimation of everything I thought I knew is shredding me from the inside and making it nearly impossible to stand up straight. But I do it.
I look at the person who caused this. The one who caused me to feel this way.
Who made choices that led to this moment being my reality.
I clench my jaw against the rising tears because now is not the time to cry.
Now is the time to rage. Now is the time to—to ask questions.
To scream. To hit. And I have never wanted to hit another human being so much in my life.
As the crinkle of the wrapper in my hand invades my heightened senses, I can’t think of anything that I want more in this moment, except …
Except for this moment to not exist at all.
Trevor’s mouth is moving, but I don’t hear the words.
Do the words even matter at this point? I don’t think they do because I’m holding something so much more concrete than any words that he can say to me. He used his words to lie to me.
I turn around and go to his glove box, ripping it open with a small, fragile hope.
A tender hope that maybe it’s not as bad as it seems. But then an open box falls to the seat.
A box that seems to confirm every thought, every crushing nightmare that’s been whispering its venom since Krista invaded our marriage long before I even realized.
Not that I imagined it much, but if I had, I doubt I would’ve imagined laughter as my response to this image.
But yet, I laugh. It isn’t unhinged laughter—I don’t think.
It’s more like a quiet, painful, scraping sound.
A sound of humor, yet I know nothing is actually funny.
Maybe that’s what happens when your soul ruptures.
Your body gets confused, and the normal reactions that you would feel or portray get crossed.
If my soul hadn’t been torn, I would react the way a normal person reacts to pain, but since it’s been ripped, these loose wires that are hanging from my decimated body crossed and are creating this strong, humorless, chuckling heartbreak.
I’m standing here, laughing, chuckling, losing pieces of myself through the rupture, staring at the evidence of my husband’s intent on … on …
I blink again at the packets on the floor of the stupid fucking car. Fucking Car. Fucking in the car.
My laughter stops, but sound still doesn’t come to me in any clear or concise way.
It’s disjointed, loud, quiet, humming, grating.
First, it’s a burst of unrecognizable noise, but through it, a soft, relentless litany penetrates.
A voice repeating the same thing over and over and over again enters my mind.
A voice that used to bring me peace, comfort, and safety.
The voice is now acting as a weapon—a dagger, a sword, a fucking bullet piercing, piercing, piercing my mind, my body, my heart, and my soul.
The words finally register but have no impact on the moment.
“Baby. Listen to me, please. This is not mine. Those are not mine. Please believe me. Paige. Paige. Paige. Believe me. Believe me. Believe me.”
It’s as if Trevor thinks the more he repeats these words, the more I will have to listen. Something in my heart and in my mind will click, and poof, “Okay, I believe you.” But it won’t.
“After what I heard at dinner today?” I whisper. “After what I heard and saw with my own eyes just the other day at lunch?” My voice grows stronger. “After what happened just. Last. Night. When you left me and went with her.”
I drop the wrapper and scrub my hand against the fabric of my dress. Trevor is still speaking. I’m not listening. “It was her, wasn’t it? Krista? That’s who was in here, right?” I watch his face closely, looking for some kind of indication of his thoughts or feelings. I see him hesitate. Damn.
“Paige, you don’t understand. Let me explain. It’s not what it looks like—”
Laughter croaks out of me. It falls from my mouth with no control.
“Of course. I am sure there just happens to be a used condom—you know what? I’m not even gonna make the argument because it is absolutely pointless.
” I toe the wrapper. “Why would I make the argument when the evidence makes the argument for me?” I look at the car and shudder.
“I was sitting where it happened, wasn’t I, Trevor?
You let your wife sit where you fucked another woman? ”
“No!” he shouts and shakes me by my shoulders. “Paige. You have it all wrong. I’ve never touched another woman.”
“What an outrageous and condescending thing to say.” I straighten my spine and look toward our house.
Truly not far away. “Trevor. I’m going to walk home.
” He moves like he’s going to contradict me, but I keep talking, not even bothering to tell him to shut up.
“I am going to go home, and you are not going to follow me. I cannot look at you.” My eyes have already drifted past him, toward my home.
“I cannot speak to you. I definitely cannot smell you, and there is no way on this Godforsaken Earth that I will ever enter that vehicle again.” I gesture vaguely behind me to help him understand which vehicle is no longer a part of my existence.
“So, I am going to go home, and you are going to go somewhere else. I really do not care where. You simply do not talk to me. Do not look at me. Do not follow me.”
I need to call Bethany and see if their Aunty date can extend into an Aunty sleepover so Jacob doesn’t come home to see that his father did not make it back, and that his mother cannot exist as anything beyond a ghost. Just for tonight. Because tomorrow—well, tomorrow, I need to be Mom again.
“We have a lot of choices coming our way.” I step away from him, moving in the direction of the house, and listen as he scrambles behind me.
“There is nothing you can say or do that is going to make me want to change my mind, so I need you to just go.” He walks in front of me, and my body freezes before we make contact.
“I cannot fathom spending another moment in your space, so for my sake and for the sake of the baby growing in my belly, get the fuck out of my face.” He trips at the venom in my tone, but I don’t let up.
A dark part of me wants him to hurt, and I hate that I feel this way.
“You need to go. Do not contact me. I will contact you. Now, please leave, because that’s exactly what I’m doing.”
I sidestep him and leave him standing there—the remnants of my dinner a souvenir of his mistakes.