Chapter 25
Simon
"Audrey!"
Simon’s voice echoed across the darkening pavement of the clinic’s parking lot, a desperate, scraping sound.
He walked quickly after her, his chest heaving, but Audrey didn't even break her stride.
She didn't look back. She unlocked her dark sedan, slipped inside, and shut the heavy door, sealing herself away from him just as she had done in Dr. Thorne’s office.
Simon stood frozen on the asphalt, watching her taillights disappear down the street.
He walked back to his own car and collapsed into the driver's seat, his hands gripping the steering wheel until his knuckles ached.
He didn't turn the key. He couldn't. His mind was trapped in a suffocating loop, replaying the absolute, devastating agony he had just seen in his wife’s eyes.
He had known his confession would hurt her, but hearing her state with such cold, clinical finality that she was only there to perform the autopsy on their marriage had nearly broken him in half.
I can't let it end, Simon thought, panic rising like bile in his throat. I can't just let her verify the death of our life and walk away.
Needing to bleed off the suffocating adrenaline, Simon started the engine and drove.
He drove aimlessly for nearly an hour, letting the cool night air rush through the cracked window, desperately trying to construct a plan, a lifeline, something he could say to make her see that he wasn't the monster she believed him to be.
Eventually, entirely by instinct, he turned his car toward the suburbs. He drove to their house.
As he turned onto their quiet, manicured street, a strange, prickling sensation of unease settled at the base of his neck. The neighborhood was dead silent, but something felt fundamentally wrong.
He pulled up to the curb, parking a few yards away from the driveway. He saw Audrey’s sedan safely parked. He turned off his engine, unbuckling his seatbelt, mentally preparing himself to walk up to the heavy oak door and beg her to just talk to him for five minutes without the therapist present.
But as he stepped out onto the damp street, his eyes snagged on a vehicle parked just ahead of his.
It was a sleek, dark car. The engine was completely off, the headlights dark, but the chassis was moving. It was a subtle, rhythmic rocking, the heavy suspension creaking faintly in the silent night.
Simon froze. The unease in his gut suddenly crystallized into a cold, terrifying dread.
Slowly, his feet moving as if wading through wet cement, he approached the vehicle. The streetlights cast just enough ambient glow to pierce the tinted windows of the backseat. Simon stepped up to the glass, holding his breath, and looked inside.
The world completely stopped spinning.
Audrey was in the backseat. His brilliant, composed, fiercely guarded wife had her silk blouse pushed down to her waist. She was straddling a man Simon didn't recognize, riding him in the cramped, shadowed space.
Simon couldn't breathe. He was entirely paralyzed, completely locked in a nightmare he couldn't wake up from.
He watched, horrified and suffocating, as the stranger’s mouth clamped down on Audrey’s bare breast. He saw the sheer, unadulterated expression of pleasure wash over Audrey’s face—a look Simon hadn't seen in months, a look he had believed belonged entirely to him.
He watched the man seamlessly guide his mouth to her other breast without breaking the heavy, desperate rhythm of his upward thrusts.
Then, Audrey’s hands tangled fiercely into the stranger’s dark hair. She dragged his head up, capturing his mouth in a bruised, desperate kiss, while the man’s large hands gripped Audrey’s ass, guiding her hips non-stop, taking her exactly where she wanted to go.
Through the glass and the quiet night air, Simon could hear it. The muffled, breathy moans. The raw, unfiltered sounds of absolute pleasure that another man was ripping from his wife’s throat.
Simon wanted to claw his own eyes out. He wanted to instantly go deaf. He wanted the earth to open up and swallow him whole so he wouldn't have to watch the woman he loved give herself to someone else with such reckless, consuming fire.
The rhythm stuttered, turning frantic. He watched their bodies tense, pulling tight as they exploded together. Then, the silence returned, broken by the muffled, breathless sound of their shared laughter as they kissed in the aftermath.
Laughter. The sound shattered the paralysis holding Simon in place. The crushing devastation instantly mutated into pure, blinding, blood-red rage.
Simon lunged at the car, grabbing the handle of the rear door, and yanked it open with explosive, terrifying force.
"Get out!" Simon roared, a feral, inhuman sound tearing from the very bottom of his chest.
Before the stranger could even react, Simon reached into the dark cabin, wrapped his fist tightly into the fabric of the man's shirt, and violently ripped him backward. He dragged him out of the car, throwing his heavy frame hard onto the unforgiving asphalt.
Simon didn't hesitate. He dropped his weight onto the man, his fist flying in a blind, savage arc, connecting with a sickening crack against the stranger's jaw.
"Simon, stop!" Audrey screamed from inside the car, her voice pitching into pure terror.
But Simon couldn't hear her. He pulled his arm back to strike again, but the man beneath him wasn't a passive victim. The stranger twisted violently, planting a heavy knee into Simon’s ribs, throwing him off balance. The man retaliated, his own fist crashing into Simon’s cheekbone with staggering force.
They rolled on the damp street, a brutal, messy tangle of limbs and fury.
Simon tasted copper as a punch clipped his lip.
He swung wildly, fueled entirely by the agonizing image of this man’s hands on his wife's skin.
He landed another heavy blow to the man's ribs, taking a sharp punch to the eye in return.
"Stop it! Stop it right now!"
Audrey was out of the car, her blouse hastily pulled up, scrambling frantically on the pavement near them, but the two men were entirely locked in a violent, primitive brawl, ignoring her completely.
Suddenly, a freezing, high-pressure blast of water slammed into the side of Simon’s head.
The shock of the ice-cold water forced him to gasp, blinding him. The water blasted over both of them, relentless and freezing, forcing the two men to break apart. Simon scrambled backward, swiping his wet hair out of his eyes, chest heaving like a bellows.
Audrey stood a few feet away on the edge of the lawn, clutching the heavy rubber nozzle of the garden hose, her chest rising and falling rapidly.
She twisted the metal valve. The water abruptly cut off, leaving only the sound of it dripping onto the asphalt.
Simon spat a mouthful of bloody saliva onto the street. He glared at the man, who was slowly pushing himself up to his feet, wiping a smear of blood from his split lip.
"If he comes near you again, I'm going to put him in the hospital," Simon snarled, taking a threatening step forward, his fists still clenched so tightly his forearms cramped. "You touched my wife. I will kill you."
The man stood up to his full height, ignoring the blood on his chin, his hazel eyes locking onto Simon with absolute, lethal disgust.
"You didn't remember you had a wife when you were fucking your subordinate, did you?" he fired back, his voice a low, dangerous growl.
The words hit Simon like a physical blow. The absolute hypocrisy of his rage was shoved violently in his face. He saw pure red, all logic completely evaporating as he lunged forward to strike the man again.
"Nate, please stop!"
Audrey stepped directly into the space between them. She placed her hand flat against the center of the other man’s chest, physically holding him back. "You need to go."
Simon froze entirely. The breath left his lungs in a sharp, agonizing rush.
Nate. Nathaniel.
Simon stared at the man’s face, the bruised jaw, the dark hair, the familiar hazel eyes that he had only ever seen in old college photographs.
The realization slammed into him with the force of a freight train.
This wasn't a stranger. This was the man Audrey had loved before him.
The only other man who had ever truly held her heart.
Simon’s blood turned instantly to ice.
Audrey didn't look at Simon. She was looking entirely at Nate, her fingers gently tracing the edge of his bruised jawline.
"Wait here," Audrey whispered to him. She turned and ran up the walkway, disappearing into the dark house for thirty agonizing seconds.
She returned with a blue gel ice pack wrapped in a paper towel.
She handed it to Nate, offering him a soft, incredibly vulnerable look. "I'll call you later. Please, just go."
Nate took the ice pack, pressing it to his lip, but his glare remained fixed on Simon. "I'm not leaving you alone with this idiot."
"I'll be fine," Audrey promised, her voice steady. "Go."
Nate hesitated, the protective fury warring with his respect for her boundaries. Slowly, he leaned down and pressed a soft, lingering kiss directly to her forehead.
The profound intimacy of the gesture triggered a visceral, violent reaction in Simon. He stepped forward, a growl ripping from his throat, ready to tear the man apart all over again.
Audrey spun around. She planted her hand firmly against the center of Simon’s chest, stopping his forward momentum instantly.
For one, fleeting microsecond, the warmth of her palm against his racing heart offered Simon a desperate, pathetic sense of comfort. His wife was touching him.
But then, his brain flashed violently back to five minutes ago. He remembered that exact same hand, those exact same fingers, tangled in Nathaniel’s hair, dragging the man’s mouth down between her bare breasts.
A wave of absolute, consuming nausea rolled through Simon’s stomach. He physically recoiled from her touch, stepping back as if she had burned him, his face twisting into a mask of complete devastation and disgust.
Nate watched them for a second longer before turning, walking to his car, and climbing into the driver’s seat. The engine roared to life, and he pulled away from the curb, his taillights fading into the dark.
The street fell entirely silent, save for the dripping of the hose on the concrete.
Audrey and Simon stood in the damp street, feet apart, a vast, insurmountable chasm of betrayal and ruin stretching between them. She stood tall, wrapping her arms around herself against the cold, her eyes guarded and entirely unreadable.
Simon looked at the woman he had spent ten years building a life with, the woman he had just fought for, bleeding on the asphalt in front of their home.
"Is this why?" Simon asked, his voice cracking, a hollow, shattered sound echoing in the night. "Is this why you don't want to try anymore, Audrey? Because you already found yourself a replacement?"