But that night, he forgot to lock the bathroom door. When I walked in, I saw the scratches across his back.
Fresh scratches. I demanded to know what happened.
He answered without missing a beat. Said a cat scratched him.
Even pulled up his rabies vaccination record as proof.
I forced myself to believe it.
But a woman's intuition is a stubborn thing. Even while I was planning our wedding, none of it felt real.
A voice in the back of my mind kept whispering: He finally agreed to marry you because he's trying to make up for something he did.
I buried my head in the sand, too afraid to dig for the truth.
But I wasn't willing to let it go, either. So I started following him in secret.
When I discovered that his "client meetings" were actually visits to Claudia's apartment, I stopped confronting him. I just waited for him to come clean.
That was why I didn't push when he skipped the rehearsal.
That was why I said nothing when he texted me about getting legally married to Claudia at City Hall.
"Excuse me."
I had no interest in wasting words on Claudia. I just wanted to leave.