Touch & Go (Tessa Leoni, #2)(31)

Then, his eyes darken, he reaches for you and you don’t think of anything else again.

I knew when I fell in love with Justin. Felt it like the proverbial lightning bolt.

And I thought, That Day, confronting him with the evidence, watching his face pale, then set, that I would feel my love for him die an equally thunderous death. Certainly, I caught my breath. Felt my stomach churn with growing nausea.

As he looked me in the eye and quietly said, “Yes, I’ve been sleeping with her…”

I yelled at him. Threw whatever was closest at hand. Raged and screamed with growing levels of hysteria. Ashlyn came racing down the hall to our room, but Justin turned and, in the sharpest voice I’d ever heard, ordered her back to her room right now. She literally spun around on one toe and went running for the sanctuary of her iPod.

He told me to calm down. I remember that.

I believe that’s when I went after him with the bedside lamp. He caught it, grabbed it with those strong arms I used to love and twisted me around until I was caught in his embrace, my back to his front, my arms locked by my sides where I could no longer hurt him. He held me. And he whispered, softly against the top of my head, that he was sorry. So sorry. So really, really sorry. I felt drops of moisture against my hair. My husband, moved to tears.

The fight left me.

I sagged against him.

He held me up. Supported me in his embrace, and for a while, we stood together, both of us breathing hard, our tears comingling. I cried for the loss of my marriage. For the trust I’d had in this man, and for the terrible, terrible feeling of not just betrayal, but failure. That I had loved my husband with my entire being, and it still hadn’t been enough.

And Justin? Those drops of moisture against the top of my head? Tears of shame? Pain at having caused me pain? Or simply regret at finally being caught?

I hated him then. With every fiber of my being.

But I don’t think I fell out of love with him. I only wished that I could.

Afterward, I kicked him out of the house. He didn’t argue, just quietly packed his bag. I told him not to come back. I told him he was a terrible man and he’d hurt me too much, and what kind of man ripped apart his own family, and what kind of father abandoned his own daughter? And then, for a while, I said things that didn’t even make sense but simply poured out, a raging flow of hurt and spite. He took it. Stood in front of me, holding his black duffel bag, and let me hate him.

Finally, I emptied myself of all words. We stared at each other across the silent space of our bedroom.

“I was an idiot,” he said.

I made a noise. It wasn’t kind.

“This is my fault, my mistake.”

Another noise.

“Can I call you?” he tried again. “In a few days, after you’ve caught your breath. Can we just…talk?”

I regarded him with pure, stony rage.

“You’re right, Libby,” he said quietly. “What kind of man hurts his wife and tears apart his family? I don’t want to be that man. I never wanted to be like…”

He hesitated, and I knew what he meant to say. He didn’t want to be like his own dad.

I don’t know why that should’ve made a difference. Justin’s father had been a hard, misogynistic 1950s man who’d idolized his only son while driving his wife to drink with his nearly legendary unfaithfulness. So the apple hadn’t fallen far from the tree. That’s all Justin’s unfinished statement should’ve meant to me.

Except…it made me remember other things, too. All those quiet moments of true confession during our dating years. The kinds of conversations that occur in the afterglow, sprawled naked on a bed, Justin stroking my bare arm, talking about the man he’d both worshipped and abhorred. Loved as a father, while being quietly appalled by the way he’d behaved as a husband.

Justin had wanted his father’s business sense, but he’d vowed even then to be a better husband, a better man.

Just as I looked back at my own parents and swore never to smoke and to always wear helmets.

That’s the problem, you see. It’s so much easier to fall in love, and so much more complicated to fall out of it. Because I couldn’t just see this moment. I had eighteen years of memories of this man, including our younger days, and the hopes and dreams we’d both nurtured. When we’d magically assumed we could do better than our own parents, because we hadn’t walked in their shoes yet. We didn’t realize just how complicated and lonely even a good marriage can get.

“I don’t want to lose you,” my husband had said That Day. “I’m willing to try harder. I want to do better. Libby… I love you.”

I made him leave. But I did let him call. And later, he settled into the basement bedroom, as we officially moved into the “working on it” phase of our marriage. Which meant he traveled just as much but brought me flowers more often. And I fixed his favorite meals, while withdrawing deeper and deeper inside myself. Both of us waiting for our marriage to magically feel normal again.

Time heals all wounds, right? Or if not, what the hell, six months later, you can always try date night.

I told myself I stayed in the marriage for Ashlyn. I told myself you just don’t walk away from eighteen years together.

But the truth?

I still loved him. My husband had cheated on me. My husband had lied to me. He’d sent texts to another woman using the kind of endearments I thought were once reserved only for me. He’d slept with her. Then, based on what I could piece together, returned home and, on several occasions, made love to me.