If I Break THE COMPLETE SERIES Bundle (135 page)

I’ve been trying to figure out how he could lie and betray me and his son, how he could do so without guilt, how he could continue to live as if nothing had changed, and I can’t come up with anything. Christopher lets me go and turns his back toward me, grabbing a towel and wiping his face. I walk past him out of the bathroom and sit on the settee in my bedroom.

“Is your dad still out there?” I ask quietly, gesturing to my bedroom door where his father has been camped out.

“Yeah, he fell asleep.” He’s cross, his jaw tight and his hands clenched into fists.

As angry as I am with William, I loathe what I’ve just seen, the look of hatred and bitterness that flashed across his son’s face at the mention of him.

“You should come back to Chicago with me and Lauren. You can’t stay here with him.”

My thoughts haven’t even gone beyond what I heard tonight, but he’s right. I can’t stay in this house with him. I don’t know if I can stay in this house at all, where they… where he and Lisa…

“This is my fault. If I wasn’t friends with her…” he mutters.

I gently grip his chin and make him look at me. “This is
not
your fault. You had nothing to do with this.” My voice is stern, but he shakes his head. I see his anger intensify.

“That’s the thing. He didn’t think about me. He didn’t think about you! I can’t forgive him for this. There’s no way we can get past this.”

I put my face in my hands and try to think of life without William. A day without William. To think that the William I believed in is no more. He’s a lie, a distant memory. No longer my protector, my confidant, my best friend. I squeeze my eyes shut and rub my temples. How do we get past this? How do I save my family when the damage is beyond repair? I fought cancer with all I had to save my family. I knew the family would crumble without me. At the time, William and Chris had been at odds because of Cal, and without me as their buffer and mediator, I knew they’d be lost. Now at least Chris has his own family, a beautiful little girl and a wife who loves him the way I loved William.

Loved William?

I wish after all of this I could truly use past tense with confidence. At least whatever happens, Christopher will be fine. He has to be.

“Do you want to leave in the morning?”

His question interrupts my thoughts.

“I just want to sleep right now, I think. We’ll figure everything out tomorrow,” I tell him, squeezing his hands.

He looks at me with worry and concern, and a moment later, his face is hard and his expression has gone cold. “Do you want me to make him leave?”

His voice is low and bitter, which makes my stomach drop. I can’t take more fighting, more confrontation, confusion, and anger. Is this all that’s left of my family? No. It can’t be. I want to fix it, but how do I fix it when I’m broken? How do you fix yourself
after
you break?

I
t’s seven in the morning. I’ve been sitting in the chair by my window since five. I’ve been dressed and ready to go since before then, but I can’t seem to bring myself to walk out the door. I watched the sun rise, leaving the darkness of the previous night behind, and living on a farm, early mornings are normal. If only I had a miracle to do the same with my life. I dread the idea of leaving my room. I haven’t seen William working outside, so there’s a good chance he’s still outside my door—camped out, wanting to talk, wanting to apologize, wanting to explain. There’s no way to explain sleeping with your son’s best friend.

There’s no explanation that can make this better, nowhere to move forward. I barely know any details about the how or when. Then again, anything that increases my knowledge isn’t going to help either; it’s only going to hurt. I can’t take any more hurt than I already have.

I still have a son and a family. A family that needs me, that I can’t run away from. My faith teaches forgiveness, but how can I forgive this? How can I forgive
him
and mean it? How can I forgive him for having a child outside of our marriage? How can I forgive betrayal, lies, and secrets? I should have had Chris ask him to leave last night. How can I face him without wanting to rip off his head or bursting into tears?

I open the door and sigh with relief when I see that William isn’t sitting next to it. I’m relieved, but I also feel disgusted with myself because I’m disappointed by his absence. I haven’t felt this conflicted since I was a teenager. I close the bedroom door and cautiously make my way down the stairs to the kitchen. I usually cook breakfast every morning no matter what. This is the first time I haven’t since I was sick. No, that’s not right. There was also that time when Chris went missing and I left Lisa to wait on him while Will and I went looking for him, and… I feel sick.

I try to push her name out of my mind because whenever I think of it, I feel rage boil up from the pit of my stomach. I’m angry at her, at him, at myself. How could I not see it? How could I not have a clue that something was going on between them? How could I not notice my husband was having an affair right under my nose? I have to be the biggest idiot on the planet. Before I step over the kitchen threshold, the smell hits me. As I step in, I see a plate already fixed with waffles, grits, fresh fruit, and sausage.

“Good morning.”

I look up and see Will step into the kitchen from the pantry. He looks a mess. He looks how I feel. I try to speak, but no words come out of my mouth.

“I-I made breakfast. I tried to make it healthy. You’ve been talking a lot about that lately, and I’ve listened,” he says, his blue eyes encapsulated by puffy eyelids. His hair is completely disheveled, as if he’s run his hands through it a thousand times. His five o’clock shadow is pronounced and his dimples absent because his lips are pressed so firmly together.

This is the first time I’ve looked at him since I found out. The first time I’ve ever looked at the man I married and felt anything but love, hope, and strength. It’s funny how a few hours have changed everything for us.

Seeing him makes my emotions crash against each other. Each second I stand here, I become more enraged. How could he do something so stupid, so selfish, and so… unforgivable? And he stands here like nothing has happened, as if we’re going to eat breakfast together and everything will be okay?! Nothing will be okay. I realize this as I stand in my kitchen in front of him, the same place he and his whore ate with me and sat with our family.

“I can’t believe you did this to us.” The words are automatic, as if triggered by his presence. They hurt to speak but hurt even more to hold in.

“Gwen.”

His voice breaks as he tries to approach me, but I step back and push my arms out to let him know to stay back.

“Please, just let me explain,” he begs. His voice sounds pained, and my heart aches for him—for me

“I can’t. I can’t. I don’t want to hear it, and there’s nothing that you can explain. Anything you say will only make things worse!” I’m frantic. It’s a lie; I want to know everything, but I don’t think I can survive hearing it.

“Gwen, you’re my best friend,” he says with tears in his eyes.

I have to turn away. I grab a chair to keep my balance. To see him like this hurts, but I can’t hurt for him. He didn’t hurt for me. I don’t even know if he hurts for me now. I’m sure he hurts for himself.

“I never meant to hurt you. I know how that sounds, but if I could take it back—”

“You did hurt me! Worse than anything I’ve ever experienced, and you cannot take it back.” My voice is loud and unrecognizable.

His gaze isn’t on me but set on the floor instead.

“In our home, William. How could you? With Lisa of all people!” I’m close to screaming at the top of my lungs.

“There’s no excuse for what I did,” he whispers.

His words make me want to throw something. To see him broken… I haven’t seen him like this since I was sick. A chill shoots down my spine.

“Were you seeing her when I was sick?” I ask cautiously. I don’t know if I can take hearing the answer. His eyes widen, and he approaches me; I retreat again.

“No. I stopped before I found out you lost our child,” he promises.

The pain of that memory shoots through me. I know he thinks what he said should give me some consolation, but it doesn’t. It tears open a wound I’ve tried to forget, a wound that has become purulent. “You stopped out of pity. You stopped out of a sense of duty, guilt, and a mournful promise but not out of love. Do you love her?”

He shakes his head. “It’s always been you, Gwen—”

My eyes narrow on his. “Except when you were screwing her.”

He looks defeated, as though he’s given up and realized there’s absolutely nothing he can say to fix this. I feel as though my soul is beginning to crumble. I can’t talk to him about this. I can’t think about this.

“I need you to leave.”

“Gwen, please. I’ll give you time. I owe you that, but we can get past this.” His voice deepens with each word to the more familiar, authoritative tone I’m used to from him instead of the sad, broken one.

“How dare you!” I scream. “You have a daughter, William! A daughter! How can we get past that? Tell me?!”

He covers his face. “I didn’t know.” He attempts to touch me again, and I swat him away.

“You didn’t know? You think that makes it better?” My whole body shakes as I shed angry tears.

Tears are falling down his face now too. He gets on his knees and grabs my waist. “What can I do? Tell me—what can I do? I’ll do anything. Please!”

I try to get out of his grasp, but he holds me tighter.

“We can get through this. I promise you we can,” he cries against my stomach.

I realize getting him to let me go will be futile unless I hit him on the head with one of the table utensils, so I gently grasp his face and make him look up at me. “
We
don’t have to do anything, and
you
don’t get to decide that.
You
decided to ruin us—everything we had, our family, our history,
you
decided that.
I
get to decide whether I can even consider the possibility of looking at you without seeing you as the person who hurt me more than anyone in my entire life.

“You have no idea how this feels, how badly I hurt. You can’t, because if you got it, if you understood, you would leave me alone. You’d know how much it hurts me to see you, to hear your voice as I look around our home and think about how you desecrated and disrespected the place where we built our family. And the very worst part of it all is that I was completely oblivious. I thought we were fine, that we were okay. I’ve been happy!”

“I’ve been happy too! I haven’t been involved with Lisa in years!” he shouts, and hearing him say her name makes my stomach churn.

I cover my face, trying to catch my breath.

“Is everything okay?” my son’s wife, Lauren, says from behind me.

“William was just leaving.”

His face falls, his expression crushed. “We have to talk about this.”

“I need you to go now! Right now, William.” My screeching makes even me flinch.

He glances behind me at Lauren, then he nods. “If that’s what you want.”

He wipes the tears from his face. I’ve only seen William cry once in his life besides today, and that was when his mother passed away. Now I have to squelch the instinct to go to him and hug him and tell him everything will be okay. A task made easier as my urge to lash out at him consumes me.