Page 80 of Homewrecker

“Very clinical.”

I pulled back enough to look at him. He smiled then kissed me. When he pulled away, his forehead touched mine.

“Relationships end messy sometimes,” he said. “No matter how bad it was, that doesn’t mean you stop living.”

My stomach dropped. If only it were that simple.

Nash brushed his thumb beneath my eye. “You don’t owe anybody permanent misery because something in your past went bad.”

He had no fucking idea. Maybe if he knew, he wouldn’t be standing here. Maybe if he knew what Gabby knew, he’d understand exactly why she’d looked at me that way. Maybe he’d agree with her. Maybe he’d step back. Maybe he’d stop kissing me.

I had seen the sequence before with friends, clients, and even people who’d loved me. I stepped forward and hugged him again. Mostly so he couldn’t see my face. I was standing there, pressed against a man who thought someone had unfairly used my past against me.

Nash wasn’t defending me because he knew what happened. He was defending the woman he knew now.

I closed my eyes. If only you knew the truth.

12

Blair

BEFORE

I spent the next two weeks at my own house. Not because Caleb and I broke up and definitely not because I suddenly discovered morals. I just needed to remember that I had a fucking address.

Before Caleb, I loved my house. I spent an embarrassing amount of money on lighting, my custom closet, and my bathtub that could fit three people.

It was my home, but I’d started treating it like an expensive storage unit. I’d leave work and automatically drive to Caleb’s. Then one phone call from Ravenna had reminded me that no matter how much of myself I’d placed inside that apartment, Caleb could still leave it to go take care of his wife. So I came my ass home.

Caleb noticed immediately. The first night, he asked if I was coming over. The second night, he offered to bring dinner. I told him I had leftovers, but I ate popcorn and half a bag of sour gummies out of spite. By night four, he stopped asking, which pissed me off because the entire point was to remind him I wasn’t sitting around waiting for him.

Apparently I also wanted him distressed by my absence. Women are complicated. I was women.

He still called, texted, and told me he loved me. I said it back, but I stopped rearranging my life every time he had space for me. If he wanted to see me, sometimes he came to my house. If he didn’t? Fine. I had other shit to do. At least that’s what I wanted him to believe. I needed Caleb to understand that I wasn’t desperate. I wasn’t begging him to choose me. I had watched my mother do enough emotional gymnastics over my father.

I called Klair on a Thursday. Caleb was supposed to meet her last Sunday, but she still didn’t know the most important detail. Every time I imagined sitting across from my sister while Caleb shook her hand, my stomach turned because I knew her. Klair didn’t have a diplomatic bone in her body. She came into this world with no desire to make anyone comfortable and had somehow gotten worse with age. If I introduced Caleb without telling her first, she would know something was wrong.

I called her on my drive home and she answered on the third ring.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

“Then why are you calling me?”

I frowned. “I call you.”

“You text me. You call Mama.”

“Whatever.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Blair.”

I gripped the steering wheel, not ready to admit my moral failures. “I need to tell you something.”