Erin’s phone didn’t have a password to get into it. She might want to rethink that in the future.
“What are you doing?” Her high, girlish voice trembled.
I scrolled through her contact list.
REX.
I hit call.
“No, Tom, what is she doing?” Erin squealed.
The sound must have made the dog in the apartment below us wince but I didn’t even flinch. I was too focused on destruction.
A deep masculine voice I recognized picked up after the third ring. “Hey, baby, you still at work?”
If I’d been thinking more clearly the affection in his voice would have stopped me from saying anything. But as I later realized, I wasn’t running this show in my right mind. “Rex?”
“Who is this?” He sounded confused, his tone a little sharp, protective.
“This is Bailey Hartwell, Tom Sutton’s girlfriend.”
“Tom, stop her!” Erin cried.
“Bailey, for fuck’s sake.” Tom strode toward me, pleading with his dark eyes.
I whirled away from him and started walking around furniture out of his reach.
“Is that Erin I hear? What’s going on?” Rex demanded.
“I just caught Tom fucking Erin on our couch. I’m guessing since Tom came home last night and showered before getting into bed and then shoved me off him when I tried to have sex with him that this isn’t the first time Tom and Erin have been together.”
“What?” His voice was hoarse, sounding far away.
“We got cheated on, Rex. Just thought you should know.” I hung up and threw Erin’s phone on the nearby chair.
She stood clinging to the throw, her shoulders shuddering as she sobbed.
Her obvious pain made me feel nothing.
Numbness had settled over me. I turned to stare at the man I’d spent ten years of my life with. “I thought we deserved each other. But I deserve better. I can’t believe I wasted ten years on you. In case that wasn’t clear enough: it’s over, Tom.”
I slipped the stilettos back on and strode out, shrugging off his hand as he tried to stop me, ignoring him as he hurried down the stairs at my back, his voice, his presence, like an annoying fly I’d gotten used to hovering over me.
Nothing he said penetrated my fog. I couldn’t feel his touch or what I later remembered as his pleading, his apologies.
Instead I got in my car and pulled away so fast I almost clipped him, vaguely aware of him cursing and jumping out of my way as I drove off.
“I am going to kill that son of a bitch!” Jessica, my best friend, yelled, pacing back and forth in front of me in her living room. Louis the pup followed her every move, so now and then they tripped over one another mid-pacing.
I hadn’t known where I was driving until I’d pulled up outside Jess and Cooper’s place. Cooper was working at the bar but Jess was home.
Somehow I’d found the words to tell her what had just happened and her reaction broke through the numbness that had settled over me.
Nausea was the thing I was feeling most at the moment. Nausea caused by uncertainty, by fear, because suddenly—
“I’m thirty-four, Jess.” I interrupted her pacing. She stopped to stare down at me, her eyes bright with hurt for me. My own eyes filled with tears. “How do I start over?”
“Oh, Bailey.” She sat next to me on her couch, and wrapped her arm around me. Louis laid his chin on her knee and stared at me in what looked like doggy sympathy. “You’ll find someone else. You just need to let your heart mend.”
But that wasn’t what I was afraid of. And I had to wonder if the anger I’d felt in Tom’s apartment was only for him and Erin, or if a big part of it was directed at myself.
“I knew, Jess,” I whispered, letting my tears fall, knowing she was the one person who wouldn’t judge me for what I was about to confess. “I’ve known for a while.”
“That Tom was cheating?”
“No, not that.” I shook my head. “I knew . . . I knew he wasn’t the one.” I stared up at her, her face a blur through my tears. “I thought he was a safe bet. I chose him because I thought he was a safe bet. And it turns out he wasn’t even that.”
Jess was quiet awhile, holding me as I cried.
And then, “I don’t think I understand.”
Wiping at my tears, I pulled away and let out a shuddering sigh. “I should be heartbroken. Grief-stricken. Right?”
She nodded.
“But I’m not. I’m hurt. My pride is hurt considering I’m currently wearing red silk lingerie and a raincoat.” I gave her a wry, sad smile that she returned. “And I’m mortified. Humiliated even. But heartbroken . . . no. I’m—” I sucked in a breath, like I’d just been skewered in the stomach.
“You’re what?”
“Relieved,” I admitted. “Terrified but relieved. Oh, God.” I rested my head in my hands, looking down at the stilettos pinching my feet.
I slipped them off. “Ten years. God, ten years I’ve wasted on a man I knew I would never be madly in love with. I just wanted . . . I wanted a man who made me feel safe and Tom gave me that when we met. I was happy just to feel safe with him, to know that he would give me the things I wanted: marriage and kids. When my parents moved away, leaving me the last remaining Hartwell in town, I’d missed them so much that I’d felt this overwhelming need to start my own family. Tom knew about it. He knew how much kids, family, meant to me. I thought he loved me enough to eventually get around to making me happy. But he couldn’t give me that, and I’d held on, giving him my best years, and the piece of shit cheated on me.