Chapter 26
Simon
He stood dripping wet in his ruined suit, the cold night air biting into his skin, the sharp, metallic taste of blood pooling behind his teeth. But the physical pain of the bruised ribs and the split lip was entirely eclipsed by the agonizing, suffocating void opening up inside his stomach.
He stared at his wife. He waited for her to flinch. He waited for a flicker of guilt, a stammered excuse, or even a flash of the panic he had felt when she had caught him in his own web of lies.
But Audrey did not flinch.
She stood on the edge of the lawn, the porch light casting a pale halo around her dark hair. Her silk blouse was wrinkled, her lips were swollen from another man’s mouth, and her eyes were completely, terrifyingly devoid of remorse.
"A replacement?" Audrey repeated, the word slipping past her lips like a shard of ice. A dark, hollow laugh broke from her chest, entirely devoid of humor. "You actually think you have the right to stand there, reeking of your own hypocrisy, and play the victim?"
"We are in therapy, Audrey!" Simon shouted, the feral desperation clawing up his throat, tearing at his vocal cords. He gestured wildly toward the empty street where Nate’s car had been.
"We literally just walked out of a counselor’s office to try and fix our marriage, and I come home to find you getting fucked in the back of a car in our driveway! "
"I didn't agree to fix our marriage, Simon.
I agreed to perform an autopsy," she fired back, her voice raising to meet his, vibrating with an unadulterated, lethal fury.
"And you don't get to invoke the sanctity of our marriage tonight.
You surrendered that right the second you fucked Emily in that hotel room. "
Simon flinched, stepping back as if she had physically struck him again. The name of the twenty-four-year-old girl hung in the air between them, a toxic, undeniable anchor weighing down every argument he tried to make.
"That was a mistake," Simon choked out, the tears finally mixing with the water dripping down his bruised face.
"I am dismantling my entire life to prove to you how sorry I am.
But this? Audrey, you are my wife. Watching him touch you.
.. hearing the sounds you were making for him. .. it makes me sick."
Audrey took a slow, deliberate step forward. The remaining space between them crackled with a dangerous, electric tension.
"Good," she whispered, her voice dropping to a deadly, quiet register that cut deeper than any scream.
"I want you to feel sick, Simon. I want you to feel the exact, suffocating nausea that I have been drowning in for two months.
Every time I look at you, I picture her hands on you.
I picture you smiling at me across the dinner table while you were texting her. "
She stopped just a few feet away, her eyes locked onto his, entirely unyielding.
"I didn't bring another man into our bed," Audrey stated, delivering the final, fatal blow with absolute precision.
"I didn't lie to your face for months. You burned my world to the ground, Simon.
Tonight was just me realizing that I can still feel warmth from the fire.
You broke the vows. Nathaniel just reminded me that I am still alive. "
Simon couldn't breathe. The air in his lungs turned to ash.
He opened his mouth to argue, to beg, to demand that she honor the ninety days he had bought with his surrender, but the words completely dissolved.
He had absolutely no moral high ground to stand on.
He was a man standing in the ruins of a house he had dynamited, screaming at his wife for finding shelter in another man's arms.
"Go back to your mother's house, Simon," Audrey commanded, her tone shifting from furious to completely, agonizingly detached. She turned her back on him, walking up the concrete path toward the porch steps. "Do not come here unannounced again."
"Audrey, please," he rasped, a pathetic, broken sound.
She didn't stop. She walked through the heavy oak door and slammed it shut behind her. The mechanical, heavy click of the deadbolt echoed through the quiet suburban street like a gunshot.
Simon was left entirely alone in the dark.
His legs suddenly gave out. He stumbled backward, his back hitting the wet metal of his car door, and he slid slowly down to the asphalt. He pulled his knees to his chest, burying his bruised, bleeding face in his hands.
The adrenaline crash was violent and absolute. His ribs throbbed fiercely where Nathaniel had planted his knee. His jaw burned. But the physical injuries were nothing compared to the loop playing relentlessly in his mind's eye.
Her hands in his dark hair. The sheer, breathless abandon on her face. The way she had touched the other man's chest to protect him from Simon's rage.
He let out a choked, agonizing sob, the sound muffled by his wet hands. He had believed, with the arrogant, blind optimism of a man used to winning, that the ninety-day stipulation would be his salvation. He thought he just needed time to wear down her defenses, to show her he was changed.
But sitting on the wet street, the brutal reality finally shattered his ego completely. She wasn't just angry. She wasn't just hurt.
She was looking at another man the way she used to look at him.
Simon forced himself up off the pavement, his body moving with the heavy, sluggish stiffness of a corpse.
He opened his car door and collapsed into the driver’s seat.
He didn't bother to wipe the blood from his chin or the water from the leather upholstery.
He put the car in drive and pulled away from the curb, leaving the house he had paid for, the family he had built, and the wife he had entirely, irreversibly lost.
As he drove blindly into the night, the silence of the car was absolute, leaving him entirely alone with the ghost of the life he had destroyed.