What He Left Behind(71)

That’s not a good sign.

There’s not much I can do about it at this point, though, except get out of bed, get dressed and pour enough coffee down my throat to make it through the day. Worrying and obsessing didn’t help me sleep, and it’s not going to help me work.

By the time I get to the office, it’s pretty clear that nothing short of a miracle is going to help me work. I’m absolutely useless. All day, I’m either struggling to stay awake or trying not to obsess over Ian and Michael and the conversation Ian and I need to have when I get home. Assuming he’s there. He wouldn’t overreact and just walk out, would he? Of course not. Ian’s the rational one. He’s the one who’ll want to talk this all the way through, no matter what. Even if he’s already made up his mind and has one foot out the door and a U-Haul on the way.

No, he won’t make up his mind just yet. Talk first. Decide later. That’s his MO. Now if I can convince my stomach to settle, maybe I can make it through the rest of the day in one piece. Or at least without puking up what little I’ve eaten throughout the day.

And of course, my go-to tic when I’m uncomfortable—playing with my wedding ring—is only making everything worse.

Good God. I’m a wreck.

When the two-thirty slump shows up, I’m done. Just done. I don’t usually play hooky from work, so hopefully my boss will forgive me just this once, and after a quick phone call and some lame excuses, I’m out of there before three o’clock.

All the way home, I’m on the verge of shivering even though I’m not cold. I stay in the right lane on the freeway, not because I want to drive slower than everyone else, but because I want easy access to the shoulder in case this nausea suddenly gets worse.

I make it, though. Up the driveway. Into the garage. Out of the car. Deep breath. Into the house.

Ariel greets me at the door, bouncing and wiggling as she always does, and she gets me to crack the first smile I’ve managed all day. “Hey, sweetie.” I tousle her ears. “You miss me?”

She whips herself in the sides with her tail, and when she spins around in her excitement, she cracks me in the back of the knee with it.

“Hey! Watch it with that thing!” I laugh and pat her side, trying to stay out of the line of fire as her tail continues wagging. “Come on, let’s go see—”

Daddy.

My stomach flips. It’s go-time. Ian’s home, and it’s time to have this out. I scratch Ariel’s back and then continue into the house. Ian’s not in the living room, so with Ariel hot on my heels, I go into the kitchen.

He’s at the table with his laptop, the screen reflecting on his lenses, and he’s surrounded by neat stacks of white pages. As I step into the room, our eyes meet. He doesn’t seem surprised to see me home early, and he doesn’t look thrilled either. Just like last night, his poker face offers nothing.

Without a word, he closes his laptop. He takes off his glasses, sets them on top of the computer, and stands up. Now that his glasses are off, the heavy shadows under his eyes are unmistakable. My guilt burrows deeper—guess I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep last night.

Beside me, Ariel’s tail slows, no longer making whip-whip-whip sounds through the air. Ian’s got one of her toys on the table, one of the ones that can be filled with kibbles, ready and waiting as if he’s been prepared since he got home to gently distract her while we fight it out, so she doesn’t get as stressed. He picks it up and hands it to her. She grabs it out of his hand, drops onto the floor by the sink and starts pawing at it to get the treats out.

For a moment, we stand there, facing each other from miles apart. The only sound is Ariel rolling the toy around and crunching on the treats that fall out, and even that’s barely audible over my thumping heart.

“We should…” Ian swallows. “We should talk. About last night.”

“I know.” My throat tightens, and I take a deep breath. I run a shaky hand through my hair and can’t make myself look him in the eye. “I’m sorry. You trusted me to do this with Michael and not get involved like that, and I…” There’s no explanation. No rationalizing it and making it nice and pretty so he can brush it off and pretend it never happened. The cold hard truth is that my husband trusted me to have sex with another man, and to keep it as sex and nothing more, and I fell for that man anyway.

I make myself meet his gaze. “I’m sorry, Ian. I wish there was something else I could say. But I’m sorry, and I love you, and I don’t want to lose you.”

Please tell me I haven’t already lost you.

Ian comes closer, and my knees are shaking as badly as they did the day Michael forced us to hash it out after that stupid breakup years ago.

He doesn’t say a word. His eyes tell me nothing.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper again, sounding so goddamned useless and pathetic.

“I know.” He wraps his arms around me, and my knees almost collapse out from under both of us. I want to believe this is silent forgiveness, but I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. I’m scared to death he’s just waiting for the right moment to calmly, quietly tell me that he’s going to move in with his brother, and we can talk to attorneys next week, and that he hopes we can do this amicably.

Though I’m not sure I want to know, I ask, “What do we do now?”