Chapter 12
The quiet in the bedroom felt artificial, like the kind of silence that only exists when something awful has already happened. I sat there for a few more seconds, pressing my palms into my thighs, whispering to myself under my breath.
You can do this. You’re not imagining things. You deserve the truth.
It wasn’t much of a pep talk, but it kept me breathing for another moment.
Turning around, I headed back to the living room to wait for him to exit the bathroom.
The hallway felt longer than usual as I walked back toward the living room.
My breathing stayed slow, deliberate. No sudden jolt, no spike.
My cardiologist’s warnings lived in the back of my mind like a metronome.
Ten minutes later, Callum came out of the bathroom with his hair still dripping wet, with a towel around his neck and his phone gripped tightly in his hand. When we made eye contact, his shoulders tensed in the way people tense when they’re preparing a lie.
I stopped a few feet away from him.
“Callum.”
His eyes flicked up to mine, guarded. “Yeah?”
“I want to talk.” My voice didn’t shake, which surprised me.
He forced a breath out, like he’d known this moment was coming but hoped I’d avoid it anyway. “Okay. Sure. What’s going on?”
I stared at the phone still half-hidden in his hand. “You said you were talking to someone from work.”
He hesitated, too long for it to be believable. “Yeah.”
“You also said Ashley.”
He blinked. Just once. A tiny, involuntary tell. “Gin—”
“Is it the same Ashley?” My throat tightened. “Your ex?”
He swallowed hard, a flicker of guilt crossing his face.
“Callum, I’m your wife. You have made a lot of promises to me over the years, and I am asking you directly now - honour your vows.
Honour your promises. Honour me. Tell me the truth, all of it.
” I said, trying to stay as calm as possible, despite part of me wanting to smash a vase over his head pre-emptively.
His jaw flexed, his eyes flicking away for just a fraction of a second before meeting mine again.
“I… she reached out,” he admitted quietly, voice low and ashamed.
His hands twitched at his sides, clenching and unclenching, and I noticed the slight shake in his shoulders, the way he seemed both reluctant and resigned, like he had been carrying a weight he didn’t know how to set down.
“Reached out?” I pressed, my voice barely above a whisper, though each word felt heavy on my chest. “After all this time?”
He hesitated, gaze dropping to the floor for a long moment before flicking back to mine, hesitant and careful. “Yeah,” he muttered. “I… I swear, she is nothing. She doesn’t matter to me. I didn’t want to say anything to you until I knew what it was about.”
I felt my stomach twist, a subtle flutter at first, then more insistent, tugging at my ribs. “And you didn’t tell me because…?”
He looked away. Not down, away. The kind of avoidance that came from shame, not irritation. “I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to—”
“Stress me out,” I finished. “Right?”
He winced, which told me I’d guessed correctly.
My hands folded over each other in front of me. A self-soothing instinct. “Tell me why she called.”
He rubbed a hand over his mouth, stalling. “It’s complicated.”
“Try me.”
He flinched at the edge in my voice. Then he finally spoke, low and reluctant. “She’s dealing with… something. Something serious.”
I didn’t breathe. Not yet.
“What kind of something?”
“She thinks she’s being stalked,” he said, the words spilling out in a rush, like he wanted to get them over with. “She said it started a couple of months ago. She’s getting messages, photos, and someone keeps showing up where she is… she’s scared, Gin.”
I felt the ache bloom beneath my ribs, spreading slow, hot, bruising. “And she came to you?”
“She said she didn’t have anyone else she trusted,” he said quickly. “And she didn’t know what to do. She was panicking. She still is.”
“So you’ve been talking to her.”
He didn’t respond. He didn’t have to.
“How long?”
“A few days. Maybe a week.”
I nodded once, controlled, even though a tremor threatened to build in my chest. “And you didn’t think to tell me.”
“I didn’t want you to worry. I didn’t want to make things worse with your heart acting up, and you’re on leave, and you’ve been tired and—”
“That’s not your decision to make.” The words came out sharper than I expected.
His expression tightened, wounded but defensive. “I wasn’t choosing her over you.”
But it felt like that, didn’t it?
Late-night calls. Secrets. The quiet distance creeping in like fog. A name I wasn’t supposed to hear.
“Don’t you understand, Callum? Are you that fucking gullible?
She has been lying to you! I’m sure she has told you that you’re the only one she can turn to, and has sent you all sorts of screenshots and photos.
I’m also sure that she has been faking this whole thing!
So that just makes me wonder - did I marry an idiot?
Or did I marry someone who was smart enough to guess the truth, but betrayed his wife anyways?
” I said, my voice rising with every word.
“Gin, I swear - she has sent me so many things as evidence, it got hard to deny it. I tried and tried to get her to go to the police, anyone else but me.” He replied, a defeated look spreading across his face.
“You’ve been hiding her,” I said softly. “That’s what hurts. Not even the fact that she called. The fact that you kept it from me.”
“It wasn’t hiding,” he insisted, but his voice faltered. “I just… I know what she’s like when she gets scared. I wanted to stabilize things before bringing it to you.”
My chest prickled, anger, disbelief, heartbreak mixing together. “You don’t need to protect me from the truth.”
“Yes, I do,” he said, too fast, too desperate. “Your health is everything to me. But Gin, she’s terrified. She thinks her ex is behind it. He’s unstable—”
“That is not your responsibility,” I snapped.
He blinked like I’d slapped him. “She asked for help.”
“And you always say yes,” I whispered.
Silence dropped between us, thick enough to choke on.
He raked a hand through his hair, pacing a few steps before turning back to me. “Look, I shouldn’t have kept it from you. I get that. But she’s not some threat, okay? She’s not, she’s not trying to get between us.”
“She doesn’t need to,” I said quietly. “You’re doing that yourself.”
He froze, eyes widening just slightly. Guilt flashed across his face so quickly most people probably would have missed it, but I caught it immediately.
I swallowed hard, forcing myself to stay grounded, stay steady. “Every time you look at your phone, you tense. You angle it away from me. You don’t talk to me. But you talk to her.” My throat tightened around the last word. “Do you understand how that feels?”
“I’m not… I’m not choosing her,” he said again, weaker this time. “I just didn’t know how to handle it. She’s spiraling. She’s convinced her ex is going to show up. She’s crying nonstop. I’m trying to get her to file a report—”
I lifted a hand. “Stop.”
He did.
I stepped forward, just one slow step, so I could see him clearly. The lines in his face. The frantic pulse in his throat. The way his shoulders curled toward himself, like he already knew exactly how badly he’d messed up.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Tried again.
“I didn’t want you to think there was anything going on.”
My chest cracked on the inside. “Then you should’ve told me first.”
His breath hitched. “Ginny, I swear to you, it’s not like that.”
“I want to believe you,” I whispered. “But you haven’t given me anything to hold onto.”
He stepped forward then, hesitant, reaching like he wasn’t sure if he was allowed. His fingertips barely brushed my arm before I pulled back.
He drew his hand away slowly.
“Please,” he said, voice breaking around the word. “Let me fix this.”
I blinked against the burn in my eyes. “I don’t know how you can.”
He looked gutted.
Another silence fell, heavy, strained.
I inhaled carefully, keeping my ribs steady, keeping my pulse slow. “I need some air,” I said. “And space.”
His face fell, but he nodded. “Okay. I’ll give you whatever you need.”
I backed away before I could crumble right in front of him. Before the weight in my chest could collapse entirely. Before he could say something that made everything shatter even more.
But as I turned towards the bedroom, he said my name quietly, almost pleading.
“Ginny… I’m sorry.”
I didn’t respond.
I couldn’t, not yet.
My feet felt like lead on the few steps to the bedroom.
I closed the bedroom door behind me and leaned against it, letting the faint click settle through the quiet.
My body felt too light and too heavy at the same time, like gravity couldn’t decide whether to catch me or let me fall.
My pulse stayed mostly steady, barely elevated, but the emotional heaviness behind it made my chest feel thick.
I didn’t cry right away.
I just stood there, staring at the laundry basket in the corner, the half-folded blanket on the bed, the mug on my nightstand I kept meaning to take to the sink. All of it looked foreign, like someone else’s life I’d accidentally walked into.
When the tears finally came, they slid down my cheeks in quiet, warm streaks that barely reached my chin. The kind of crying you didn’t hear until the room got too silent.
I moved slowly to the bed and sat down on the edge, trying to breathe evenly.
Inhale. Exhale. Keep the rhythm steady. Keep the world from going blurry around the edges.
My cardiologist’s instructions repeated in my mind like a guided script: No sudden panic.
Ground yourself. Slow breathing. Name what you feel.
I felt… everything.
Betrayed. Hurt. Idiotic for not realizing sooner. Sick, not from my actual diagnosis, but from the weight of what I now knew, what I had heard him say, what he had confessed only because he was cornered.
From what he said, he hadn’t touched her. Hadn’t kissed her. There was no dramatic affair to point to, no single moment that neatly explained the damage.
But emotional distance had teeth.
And secrecy had claws.
And hearing another woman’s name, spoken soft and worried, felt like a bruise blooming where no one could see.
I wiped at my face with both hands and inhaled through my nose until the trembling eased. I needed something, someone, to anchor me before the spiral tightened.
Thalia.
My fingers moved on their own, unlocking my phone, tapping her name. I didn’t even bother with a text. I hit call.
She answered on the second ring. “Gin? Hey, are you okay?”
My breath wavered. I closed my eyes. “Can you come over?”
Even without an explanation or context, she didn’t hesitate.
“I’m already getting my keys,” she said. I heard a shuffle, a slam of a door, the rustle of her jacket. “I’ll be there in ten.”
The relief wasn’t a rush; it was a soft exhale, like my lungs had been waiting for permission to let go.
I hung up and curled onto my side on the bed, pulling my knees up just enough to make myself feel held.
I’d learned this position during the worst nights after my diagnosis, the nights when adrenaline spiked without warning, when fear took up too much room in my ribcage.
My therapist called it a grounding posture. I called it my survival shape.
Minutes passed in slow drips. I heard Callum move in the living room, quietly, carefully. His footsteps paused near the bedroom door twice, like he was considering knocking. He didn’t.
He’d told me he wasn’t choosing her.
But he had chosen secrecy.
He had chosen late-night conversations he couldn’t explain.
He had chosen to be her protector.
And he had chosen to leave me in the dark.
I pressed a hand to my sternum and counted my heartbeat again, making sure it stayed steady. I couldn’t afford to fall apart physically when the emotional pieces were already scattered everywhere.
A soft knock echoed from the front door a few minutes later. Thalia wasn’t loud. She never was when she knew I wasn’t okay.
I sat up slowly, wiped my face again, and made my way down the hall. Callum was standing in the kitchen, pretending to clean the counter but really just gripping the edge like it kept him upright. He looked up when I passed him.
“Ginny,” he murmured.
I didn’t stop walking. I opened the door.
Thalia’s face was tight with worry, but when she saw me, her expression softened in that way only best friends could manage. She reached for me immediately.
I didn’t even try to hold it together.
Her arms wrapped around me, warm and firm and familiar, and I let myself fold into her, my forehead pressing into her shoulder. The sob that broke out of me was quiet but raw, scraping free from a place I’d been trying to ignore.
“Hey,” she whispered, stroking my back. “I’ve got you. I’m here.”
And for the first time all night, the tension in my chest loosened just enough for me to breathe without forcing it.
Thalia held me as she shut the door behind us, guiding me toward the bedroom with gentle hands, as if I were made of something delicate.
Maybe I was.
Maybe I’d been delicate for longer than I realized.
She sat with me on the bed, her arm around my shoulders as I tried to explain without unraveling completely. My voice cracked twice. She didn’t interrupt.
When I finally choked out Ashley’s name, Thalia went still, her grip tightening, protective in a way that made my eyes sting all over again.
“Oh, sweet girl…” she murmured, pressing her cheek to the top of my head. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I closed my eyes.
This, Thalia’s arms, the safety of being held, the steady rhythm of someone else’s breathing, felt like the first stable thing I’d had in hours.
The rest could wait.
Right now, I just let myself be held.