I guess I should be more surprised it hasn’t happened sooner.

Rubbing my jaw as I take a step back, I give her the only bit of space I’m willing to offer. “I know you still love me,” I tell her and watch as she rips her eyes from me. Her face is blotchy and red and her breathing is frantic.

But she calms as she stands there not able to answer me. That’s all I needed. Just a little bit. Please, Kat. Just hold on a little while longer.

“Just tell me the truth,” she begs me and I wish I could. I feel my throat tighten and my body tense. My hands clench as I swallow.

“I didn’t sleep with her.” I answer without wasting a second and even I don’t believe my words. But it’s not what she thinks. I wish I could tell her, but the moment she finds out, everything will be at risk.

“Why don’t I believe you?” she says and I don’t have the decency to answer.

“I swear, Kat.”

“So you’ve never slept with her?” she asks me and I know it’s over. Her expression changes and her eyes darken when the silence stretches too long. So many secrets have built up. Too many to hide. She was never supposed to know. “Since we’ve been married,” I start to say, knowing I’m toeing the line of truth, “I’ve never slept with anyone. Never kissed anyone but you.” I look her in the eyes so she can see it’s the truth. “The day I put that ring on your finger, it was only you.”

“Then why put me through this?” she asks me with tears in her eyes. “And what were you doing?” I struggle to keep my breathing calm as the questions start piling up. “What were you doing with her in that hotel if you weren’t sleeping with her.”

I lick my dry lips and take a step forward. “Things got out of hand.”

“Why were you with her?” Kat presses and I know she wants an answer right now.

“Because it’s what I had to do,” I say, telling her the truth with my eyes closed.

“What you had to do? You had to go to her hotel at three in the morning?” I can’t look at her as I nod my head. “And you couldn’t tell me this before?” I nod my head again.

“You tell me everything right now, or you leave.”

“Another ultimatum?” The words drip with disdain.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” she says. Her tone is dismissive and I can hear her resolve harden.

“It’s better if you didn’t know everything,” I answer gently yet firmly just the same.

“Are you serious right now? You’re throwing away our marriage over her? Over your job?”

“Kat, just—” I start to say, but she cuts me off.

“Fuck you,” she sneers then yells, “I said get out.”

“I’m not leaving,” I tell her firmly, staring back at her, even as she turns her back to me.

“It doesn’t matter, the weekend’s coming,” she says beneath her breath as she leaves me.

I keep my feet planted as she stomps up the stairs and I wait for more. I wait for her to push me out, to yell at me, to demand more from me. I’m ready to fight, ready for war with her to keep her. But that’s not what I get.

She gives me back exactly what I gave her. Nothing.

Kat

Four manuscripts to go through this weekend.

Four authors waiting to hear back from me.

I doubt I’ll be able to focus enough to comprehend a full page. I’ve been reading the same paragraph over and over and not a damn sentence is staying with me.

It doesn’t matter, though. None of this really does.

All that matters is that I stay in this office for as long as Evan’s here. He’s like a ghost in this house. A ghost of his former self.

So I do what I’ve always done, I’ve bury myself in work. That was the plan anyway, but now I can’t focus on anything but the sounds of him moving through the house.

He walks by the door every few hours, making the floor groan, and I know he wants to open it, wants me to talk to him. All I can hear is him saying it’d be better if I didn’t know. To hell with that.

I’m not going to give him all of me when he can’t be bothered to do the same. There is nothing more important than us. Not a single thing that should come between us; yet it feels like he’s got plenty in the space between my heart and his.

So we’re at a standstill, him refusing to leave and me refusing to blindly forgive.

His voice plays in my head over and over again, telling me it’s only ever been me. I want to believe it. It’s everything I’ve been praying for him to say.

But then what is he hiding?

My eyes flicker to the screen as my nails tap on the pale blue ceramic mug next to my laptop. Tick, tick, tick. I read the line over and over: Love is a stubborn heart.

Magdalene, the editor, highlighted the line. She thinks it’s beautiful and she wants repetition of the metaphor throughout the book.

Love is a stubborn heart.

Is it, though? My forehead scrunches as I think back to the story in the manuscript. The tale about a modern-day Romeo and Juliet. Two families who hated each other and their children who wanted nothing more than to run away together. It’s not a tragedy but it doesn’t have a happily ever after either. It’s too realistic.

If love really was that stubborn, wouldn’t they have been together in the end?

Maybe it wasn’t really love.

Or maybe love just wasn’t enough.

I don’t know that I agree that love is stubborn. I suppose it is, but more than that, it’s stealthy and lethal. I nod my head at the thought.

Love is deadly.

Rolling my eyes. I push the laptop away. My comments don’t belong on this manuscript right now.

I don’t know the very moment I fell in love with Evan. It felt like I was counting the days until it would be over, and then one day, I simply decided on forever. Just like that, a snap of my fingers. Slow, so slow and resistant, and then in an instant, I was his and he was mine. And that’s how it was going to be forever.

I smile at the thought and try to focus on the lines staring back at me from the computer. I try to read the words, but I keep glancing at the wall behind me. At a photo of the first night he took me to meet his parents. It was after I’d decided on forever.

I’d never felt that kind of fear before. The fear of rejection. Not like I did that night and I know why: it’s because I’d never put my heart out there for anyone to take.

I was very much aware that Evan had every piece of me. Unless he didn’t want me. In which case, I’d be broken and I didn’t know how I’d recover.

The thought consumed me the night he brought me to his family home. I was sure his family wouldn’t like me. It’d been so long since I’d been with a family for dinner. I used to go to my friend Marissa’s when I was in high school. But that’s not the same. Not at all. It was also a rarity that I accepted Marissa’s parents’ offer for dinner.

When you lose your parents at fifteen, people tend to look at you as though they’ve never seen anything sadder. I’d rather be alone than deal with that.

So I was, until Evan. And he didn’t come on his own, he had a family that