Page 57 of Over the Line

“Kids are perceptive,” Liam said softly.

“Yeah. They are. And I knew that, but we still stupidly thought we were doing the right thing. And then…” My shoulders sagged, and it was a struggle to look at Liam. “Well, the reason we divorced when we did is because I was an idiot who made things so much worse than they needed to be.”

His eyebrow rose, but he didn’t ask.

Shame twisted like cold barbed wire around my spine, and I wanted to be sick as I said the words out loud: “I cheated on my ex-wife.”

Liam jumped as if he hadn’t been expecting that. Maybe he hadn’t.

Wiping a hand over my face, I sighed. “I’m not proud of it. At all. Of everything I regret, that one is definitely number one. I…” I shook my head. “I won’t make any excuses. I didn’t even feel good about it at the time. I was just angry and bitter, and I did something extraordinarily stupid and hurtful. If I could go back and change one thing, it would be that. Hands down.”

“I believe that,” he said softly. “I take it she found out?”

I nodded, wincing at the memory. “And she’ll be the first to admit she shouldn’t have told the kids. We both knew we were a mess, and—I mean, she was cheating, too.”

Liam’s eyebrows flew up. “She was? But she told the kids about you doing it?”

“Yeah. She was angry, and—like I said, we were a mess. I think she was so pissed at me for so many things, she just flew off the handle when she found out about that.”

“Do they know about her cheating on you?”

I shook my head again. “No. And they still don’t. By that point, I saw how angry they were at me. How they wanted nothing to do with me, and I had fallen so far from grace in their eyes, it seemed like we could never go back. At that time, I didn’t think we ever would.” I swallowed hard. “They didn’t deserve to lose their mom like that too.”

“Wow,” he whispered. “So you two just… kept that part to yourselves?”

“Pretty much. I told her during divorce proceedings that I knew, but I wouldn’t say anything to the kids. She wanted to include that in the divorce agreement, but I was worried if the kids ever saw that for some reason…”

“Ooh, shit.” Liam straightened. “Yeah, that would be a rude awakening, wouldn’t it?”

“Right? So we just agreed to keep it on the DL. And she actually apologized to me for telling the kids, but I mean…” I half-shrugged. “The damage was done. They knew. They were already pissed at us for staying together for so long when everyone was miserable, and that was just nasty insult to serious injury.”

“Damn. That’s heavy. For the kids, and for you.”

“It is. I’m lucky as hell that three of the four have been willing to make up with me. The fourth…” I grimaced. “I guess time will tell.”

“I guess it will.” He offered a faint smile. “But if the other three came around, there has to be some hope, right?”

“That’s what I keep telling myself.” Sitting back, I rolled my shoulders to relieve some tension that had started creeping in. “If I hadn’t cheated, I still think things would be messy with the kids. We found out way too late that everyone was unhappy during those years. Everyone. Deeply, intensely unhappy. All the problems they had in school? With grades, friends, sports? It all came back to us.”

“Wow,” he whispered.

“Yeah. And they were furious when they found out we’d known all along that we were going to divorce. We tried to tell them we’d just wanted to keep the family together, but they hated us for that. Especially after my dumb ass went and cheated, because…” I laughed bitterly and threw up a hand. “How exactly was that going to keep the family together?”

Saying all that out loud nauseated me. It had killed me to realize in hindsight that even before they’d found out I cheated on their mom, everyone in our family had been unhappy. Though they were all relieved that we’d finally split, they were still angry for all the misery and the lost time, not to mention what I did to their mother. Their teenage years had been marred by the dark cloud that was our doomed marriage, which then culminated in the worst-case scenario. All because I’d been a fucking idiot. Instead of getting a therapist, I’d gotten laid, and my whole family had imploded.

To say I had serious regrets would be a massive understatement.

“If I had it to do over,” I said after a moment, “I’d have done everything completely differently.”

“I believe that. How long has it been? Since the divorce?”

“Six years,” I whispered. “And it took until about two years ago before Chris would even talk to me.”

“Really?”

Grimacing, I nodded. “There was no good time for everything to go down, but I don’t think we could’ve timed it worse for him in particular.”

Liam tilted his head. “Why?”