As if the man who'd just casually announced he'd married another woman wasn't him. As if the man who'd sat here, drunk on the memory of tangled limbs in my seat, was someone else entirely.
The sheer absurdity of it crashed over me, tearing me apart.
I couldn't breathe.
He sighed, as though I were being unreasonable. "I know it doesn't feel great, but she's sensitive. If I show up at the wedding, she'll cry for sure. She's not like other women. She's innocent, kept herself pure. All she wants is someone faithful. I chased her for six months and she gave me her first time. I owe her that much. You've always been understanding. I know you get it, right?"
Six months.
Our wedding had also been six months in the making.
So while he'd been handpicking every detail for me—the venue, the flowers, the invitations, everything exactly the way I liked—he'd also been pouring every ounce of energy into bedding another woman behind my back.
I curled my frozen fingers inward and closed my eyes, numb.
"You married someone else. We're done."
He blinked. Then laughed softly. "Don't say things you don't mean."
"You've been with me since you were eighteen. You've lost two pregnancies for me. Without me, what man out there would want you?"
I stared at him.
My chest felt like a red-hot coal had been dragged across it.
Ten years. We'd slept under bridges. Split a single cup of instant noodles. At our lowest, the only thing filling our stomachs was water.
We couldn't afford birth control. Couldn't afford a clinic.
So I'd stood out in the freezing cold until my body gave in. Climbed to the top of a staircase and thrown myself down.
I endured the pain, crying until I had nothing left as I said goodbye to our two babies.
Blake knelt at my bedside and drove a knife into his own flesh. Twice.
His bloodied hand trembled as it covered my eyes, and his voice came word by word against my ear. "Tessa, I swear I'll give you a good life. If I ever betray you, let me die a wretched death."
That promise carried weight. I believed it for half my life.
But now, he'd been undone so effortlessly by a woman he'd known for six months.
I couldn't understand it. A man who had loved me that fiercely—how could he just rot from the inside out?
His phone rang. The ringtone was distinctive.
It had gone off many times in the middle of the night. Blake always said it was a client.