My gaze locked onto those eyes, the ones I'd fallen for a thousand times over, searching desperately for even a flicker of guilt in their depths.
There was nothing. He didn't even glance my way.
A bitter smile tugged at my lips before I could stop it.
Right. A man who didn't care about his wife or his children could hardly be expected to remember a phone call that had never been hung up.
I didn't know how much time passed before the sharp sting of disinfectant pulled me back.
I opened my eyes. Alexis's face filled my vision.
The moment she saw I was awake, her eyes lit up.
She set the apple and paring knife in her hand aside, dug into her bag, and tossed a stack of paper onto my bed.
"You're awake! Quick, tell me if this love letter turned out okay."
The sheets were a collage, pieced together from strips of paper covered in handwriting I knew by heart.
Beside the meticulously assembled creation sat a notebook, its pages ripped apart without a shred of care.
I recognized everything on that bed in an instant. My breath stopped.
Those were my love journals. Ten years of them.
The pieced-together letter began: To my beloved, Alexis.
She must have caught the color draining from my face, because Alexis tilted her chin up, her expression still perfectly innocent.
"Bertram told me yesterday he wanted to use these to buy one of my smiles."
Pain lanced behind my eyes. Every word out of her mouth was a blade, and it was suffocating.
So that was why he hadn't answered his phone. He'd been with Alexis.
He'd shredded everything I'd written without a second thought, just to piece together a love letter for her. Just to make her happy.
The taste of blood seeped between my teeth. My voice shook when I finally spoke. "Are you done with the act?"
Alexis blinked, then shrugged like it meant nothing. "He told me he'd always have my back. No matter what."
My eyes flickered.
She wasn't wrong. Bertram had always shielded her.
The first time, she'd "accidentally" fed me abortion pills disguised as vitamins. His punishment? Making her post a public apology on social media.
The second time, she'd faked a stomachache right as I was going into labor, delaying delivery until my baby suffocated. His punishment? Grounding her for three days to "reflect."
I'd sobbed to Bertram about how unfair it all was. He'd looked at me with flat, distant eyes and said:
"She already knows she was wrong. Be the bigger person."