Chapter 22
Gabrielle's POV
The slamming of the door pulls me out of my dream. I drank quite a bit, and by now I’ve slept off the alcohol.
Sitting up on the couch, I notice Lincoln, that disgusting piece of shit, walk through the door, his head lowered in shame. I don’t want to talk to him. He pours some water and then stands in front of me.
“I know there’s nothing I can say… I’m not even going to ask you to forgive me… I’ll give you the divorce,” he says so quietly it’s hard to hear him.
He stands there for a while. What the fuck is he waiting for? A reply?
It makes me so upset that he quickly agreed to the divorce, like he was waiting for an opportunity.
So that’s it then.
He never loved me.
Good fucking riddance.
After he goes to the guest room, I feel the tears start cooking within my eyes. How could he be so cold? How could he treat me like this? What did I do wrong?
Does he love Sarah?
He lied to me. And was he only in a very good mood fucking me because he was fucking Sarah?
Who am I to stand in the way of a good thing.
If Sarah is who he wants then Sarah can be who he fucking gets.
I don’t know why, but I never thought Lincoln would ever do this to me. I could see him emotionally cheating, but going all the way like that, to the point where he’s in this woman’s bed smoking a blunt with her and shit… this is crazy. And the thing is, I can’t talk to anybody about it.
It’s embarrassing, and the biggest problem is where I’m going to live. If I go to live with my dad, it’s going to raise questions. Ones I don’t want to answer.
Not right now anyway.
Getting off the couch, I head for the bathroom. I need to pack a bag. Even though my body wants Lincoln, my heart is so done.
There’s a crazy part of me that even says I’d take him back if he grovels. But that’s the appetite for dick talking. My husband does have some good dick. Other women have gone after him before, but he’s never caved. Then again, he’s never worked so closely with them day in and day out.
He never set those boundaries because he never wanted to.
Climbing the stairs, there’s a sound, very unfamiliar, coming from the bedroom. The door is closed so it’s muffled. As I get closer, I hear crying. It’s a quiet but pain-filled sound.
“So stupid. So fucking stupid,” I hear Lincoln say amidst tears and the sound of smacking.
Maybe he’s hitting himself or something. Whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it over and over again, and it’s skin-to-skin contact.
Steeling my face, I enter the room and grab my luggage and start packing things.
Lincoln stops crying for the moment. He’s still sitting on the bed, his face red and wet, his hair a mess.
The dude looks terrible.
I almost jump out of my skin when I turn around and see him standing there. He’s shaking, his eyes darting around like he doesn’t want to meet my gaze.
“Could we… can I just say something?” his voice cracks.
“No,” I say coldly, feeling empowered by the fact that he’s falling apart.
“Gabby—”
“I just said no,” I say, still packing.
He sniffles, and the truth is I want him to say what he’s going to say. As he turns away, sniffling again, he turns back to me, speaking loudly in distress, his sobs breaking through every now and then.
“I really never meant to hurt you. I never… I… I’m so sorry,” he says, sniffling.
“Are you now? Let me guess. This is the first time you did this. Who else? Or how many times with Sarah?”
The fact that he’s remaining quiet tells me everything I need to know.
“Uh huh. So how sorry are you really? It’s funny how people who do things to hurt others are only sorry when they get caught. So forgive little old me for not believing you.”
I head to the bathroom to get my hair appliances, my moisturizers, panty liners, the works. Oh yeah, my toothbrush.
“I don’t love Sarah.”
“But you don’t love me enough to not fuck Sarah. Right? You think I didn’t want to fuck people either, Link? But you bet your ass I will now. You can do whatever the hell you want to do. I didn’t know we were rolling like that, so now I’m going to do whatever I want to do,” I shrug.
“You deserve to be with someone who makes you happy.”
“You did make me happy, motherfucker,” I yell, turning to face him. “I thought we made each other happy,” I say, pointing between the both of us.
“That’s the point. You only cared about making yourself happy. That’s why all thoughts of me just went out the window whenever you were with Sarah. You’re so fucking selfish. Even when I told you how I was feeling you didn’t care. So don’t give me that bullshit like you suddenly care about me!”
“I did care about you! I mean… I do care about you.”
“And you really expect me to believe that, Lincoln? After you done FUCKED your coworker that you claimed you didn’t like, that you know likes you?
You turn off your phone and you avoid me…
you know how I even found out? Do you know how I even found out, you piece of shit?
” I ask as I push him once with my hand.
“I came to your job to look for you so we can have a little picnic together out on this place by the ocean, out on the jetty. All I was thinking about in that moment was ‘wow, this is really nice. My husband would like this place. It’s so peaceful. I want to do something nice for us because we haven’t had a picnic in a long time.
’ And I couldn’t reach you because I was trying.
Only to come there and find out you had clocked out of work three hours before.
You fucking piece of shit. And you left your phone off all that time.
You know what? Fuck all the way off,” I say with nonchalance, and I truly feel it.
My emotions are just completely dead toward him. All my respect for him is gone. I can’t get out of this house fast enough.
“Baby, I… I’m so—”
“Sorry, I got it. Fuck you. I do not accept your apology. And you know what?” I say, smiling at him sarcastically. “I actually don’t fucking want it. Yeah,” I dramatically think before looking back at him.
“I don’t need it, and I don’t fucking want it, not from a piece of shit like you.
You are the bottom of the barrel, nasty as fuck, the most pathetic man I have ever met.
You and Sarah deserve each other. I don’t even want half of everything you got.
Just enough money for me to get by for a few years.
But as for everything else, you can fucking keep it. ”
“Gabby…” his voice is quiet and pleading.
“You can even keep Walnut. Just remember to feed him when you get a break from swimming in between Sarah’s legs.”
I close my luggage bag and start pulling it down the stairs, causing it to slam down every step.
Lincoln follows me like a depressing wraith.
“You don’t have to go. I can leave. You deserve to be in a warm house and bed,” he says with assurance, like he’s doing me a favor.
“Who says I don’t have one waiting for me where I’m going?” I ask, heavy with the implication.
“I’m just… I’m just s—”
“You thought you were the only option? Bitch, I have options. I just never took advantage of them because you know, when I decided to marry someone I forsook all others. When I fell in love with you, there was nobody else. But you think that men didn’t try?
You don’t think I know exactly which man I could call up and they would come running?
Not that I need a man, but what I certainly don’t need is you. ”
His face shifts for a quick second, almost, until the sadness is pushed to the background and replaced with indignation.
“You don’t need me? I paid off all your debts.”
“Yeah, and that’s what I would have done for you too, asshole.
Honestly, I would have rather taken the debts than this horrible heartache that you gave me as payment for paying them off, you fucking piece of shit. I hate you and I wish you the worst luck in life,” I say as I walk away and down the street.
When I get to my hotel and settle down after taking a shower and washing my hair, I lotion my body, and when I finally take a breath and everything is quiet, all of my emotions come crashing down and I release all the pain that I’ve been holding, pretending that I didn’t feel it just to be strong in front of Lincoln.
The truth is I love him so much. If I didn’t, it wouldn’t hurt this bad. I wish more than anything there was a way to turn off these emotions.
It almost feels like this isn’t my life. Like he wasn’t my husband and this is all a bad dream I’m going to wake up from. But this isn’t a dream.
This pain is too real, so stark that I would have woken up by now.
“Lincoln…” I cry as I fall onto my side from my seated position, crying into the pillow, hugging it tightly, missing him so much. Missing when I thought he loved me more than anything, when I thought just recently that we would be okay and that nothing could ever pull us apart.
For me he was my soulmate, but clearly he didn’t feel the same.
Why did he marry me?
Why did he do all of this and let everything get this far just to leave me wounded like this?
Everything I said to him about how I was affected by it.
I meant it.
Maybe not in the heat of the moment, but my heart is aching for him, and I would give everything to turn back time so I could hold him again, make love to him once more, and have him tell me that I was truly the only one for him… and mean it… and me to believe it.
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