Page 25 of A Song for Another Woman

I lift my phone, and he stops.

“What did you say to her tonight?” I ask.

His face changes. Not guilt, exactly, but something sharper. Recognition with no map. “To who?”

I don’t answer.

His jaw tightens. “Melody?”

There it is. The name between us, finally taking up the amount of room it's been taking for months.

“You said, ‘The only reason I’m not with Melody is because I’m married.’”

He goes still.

I say the rest because I need him to hear it from my mouth. I need him to know what sentence he handed me. “‘If I wasn’t married, I’d be with Melody.’”

All the color drains from his face. “No,” he says.

I almost laugh. It would be easier if I could. “No?”

“That’s not—” He drags a hand through his hair, eyes darting like the right door is somewhere in the room if he can just find it. “That’s not what I said.”

“It is exactly what you said.”

“No, it’s not the whole thing.”

I tap the video before my courage can think better of it. The sound fills the foyer.

Melody’s voice first, thin and bright from a bad phone recording. Then Cade’s, low and clear:The only reason I’m not with Melody is because I’m married.

His face folds in on itself.

The clip keeps going:If I wasn’t married, I’d be with Melody.

Then silence. Cade stares at the phone like it's bitten him.

For the first time since the video found me, I let myself watch his face instead of the screen. I watch the bloodless shock, the quick horror, and the way his mouth opens and closes around words that can’t get out cleanly. He looks wounded by his own voice.

Good, some cold part of me thinks.

Then the part of me that still loves him aches because I know that face. I know the boyish panic under the famous man. I know the way his hands flex when he wants to fix a thing by reaching for it.

He reaches now, but I step back. His hand stops in the air.

“Emmy, listen to me.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.” My voice is quiet, which seems to scare him more than shouting would have. “I’ve been listening to you for a year.”

His throat works.

“I listened when you said I was imagining it,” I say. “I listened when you said the cameras didn’t matter. I listened when you said it was just a bit. I listened when you told me not to make it weird. I listened every time you made my own hurt sound like a misunderstanding.”

“That isn’t what I meant.”