“Again,” I said, “you talk as if weather happened to you.”
His hands opened helplessly. “I’m losing everything.”
There it was. Not I hurt you. Not I dishonored your father. Not I lied for nearly two years.
I’m losing everything.
“No,” I said. “You’re losing access.”
His face tightened.
“I did love you.”
“Not enough to tell the truth.”
“I was trapped.”
“In a house my father bought, wearing a watch he helped pay for, sleeping beside a woman who trusted you. What a prison.”
He flinched.
For a moment, I thought he might finally say something real. Something ugly and honest, even if it was selfish. Instead he went soft around the edges, that old practiced remorse.
“We had good years.”
That one hurt, because it was true.Yes, we had good years. Christmas mornings with cinnamon rolls. A road trip up Highway 1 with no destination, just playlists and gas station coffee and my feet on the dashboard. The night we painted the guest room and laughed until two in the morning because he got primer in my hair. The first dog we fostered and failed to give back. The ordinary intimate scaffolding of a life.
Betrayal doesn’t erase that. It contaminates it.
“I know,” I said.
Hope flickered in his face.
And I killed it.