Page 84 of Cursing My Cheating Husband

Especially now that the curse was off! There was nothing restraining him anymore.

This was ridiculous. He’d done nothing wrong. He’d smiled politely at a server and asked about wine. That was it.

But my feelings didn’t care about my attempts to reason them away. They crashed over me anyway. Thoughts of every time he’d mentally undressed someone while I stood beside him, oblivious. Every lie, every betrayal, every moment I’d trusted him while he was calculating whether someone else was worth the risk.

Nausea and dizziness swept over me. That same awful sensation that took over my body the night of the discovery was back again.

“Callie?”

I suddenly became aware they were both staring at me, Valentina expectantly and Maddox with concern.

“Umm… just water for now…” I stammered.

Valentina moved off, and Maddox fixed me with those eyes again. Those incredible eyes, that I’d fallen right into the first time I met him.

A devastating clarity struck me, like ice water.

He could be perfect from now until the end of time, and it wouldn’t matter. I would always be waiting for him to slip. Always waiting for the other shoe to drop. After how deeply I had been hurt, I would always fear relapse. This was a wound that would never fully heal, and even something as simple as a polite smile could rip it open.

I took a deep breath, gathering my resolve. “Maddox, I’m so sorry.” I took his hand. “I can’t do this.”

CHAPTER 36

MADDOX

No. No. I can’t lose her again, not after everything. Not after this day.

“But why? I don’t understand,” I pleaded.

Callie looked away for a moment, and then back at me. “The way you looked at the waitress… it just brought it all back.”

Fuck. Of course that would be a trigger. How could it not be, given my past behavior?

Why hadn’t I been more thoughtful?

Possibly because it hadn’t crossed my mind to see the waitress in a sexual context. Whatever she looked like, her appearance had made no impression on me whatsoever.

“Callie, I’m so sorry. I didn’t think. You’re absolutely right. I promise, I can be more sensitive.”

“But you didn’t do anything,” she said, with the smallest, saddest smile I’d ever seen. “You just smiled at a waitress.”

“But… if I didn’t… I don’t understand?”

“It wasn’t what you did, Maddox. It’s what I felt. If we stay together, this’ll be the rest of our lives. You’ll never know when some normal interaction will set me off. You’ll feel like you’re living in jail.”

“Being with you could never feel like jail!” I blurted. “No matter what sets you off, you can take it out on me. Don’t hold the pain inside. Pass it to me however you can. Blow up at me, tell me off, send me back to the basement. Anything that helps you get over this, I will do, and I’ll do it forever, and I’ll never complain.”

“Treating you that way would eventually just make me feel worse,” she said quietly.

“But it shouldn’t,” I insisted. “It’s my fault if a normal interaction sets you off, so I’m the one who should carry that, not you.”

Callie squeezed my hand. “I wish that would be enough. But I don’t want to live fearing these reactions. I don’t want to always worry I’m suddenly going to spiral just because you acknowledge another woman.” Her shoulders sagged. “I just know… it’s always going to be there. That fear that you’re going to go back to your old ways.”

“The memory magic,” I said quickly. “Use it on me every day. You can have total access to my consciousness. There’s no other woman I want. I’ll prove to you every day that you’re the only woman I’m even thinking of.”

“Maddox, I don’t want a relationship with a man whose mind I have to scan seven times a week. I want what we had today. Connecting just from being together, and talking, and…” She trailed off for a moment. “I want all that, with a man I can trust to never cheat on me. And you can’t ever be that man.”

Hot tears made their way down my face. “I’ve changed, Callie.”