Page 60 of Chasing the Other Woman

“Yes.”

“You made decisions for me.”

“Yes.”

"You thought you were giving me security when all you were doing was taking away the comfort I so desperately needed. Do you know what I would have given for you to have just held me and told me everything you're telling me now?"

I have to grip the edge of Petra’s cluttered desk to stay where I am. “You're right."

She lets out one breath. It sounds worn thin.

“Do you know what that felt like from my side?” she asks.

I don’t answer. I don’t get to guess anymore.

“I lost the baby too,” she says. “I lost her, and then I woke up and my husband was different. You weren’t grieving with me. You were moving me out of the life we built. One piece at a time.”

I expect her to cry. But there's a little voice in the back of my head that tells me that she's already cried this one out too many times to cry about it now. This is the calloused part that comes after all that.

“I lost the truck. I lost the field. I lost my place beside you. I lost your confidence. Then Luci showed up, and suddenly she had all of it.”

“Sam.”

“No.” She lifts a hand. “Shut up and listen.”

My mouth shuts.

“What if I’d done that to you?” she asks. “What if after the accident, I decided you couldn’t be trusted in the field anymore? What if I put another man in your seat? What if he rode beside me, worked beside me, laughed with me after chases, showed up in every clip beside me until everybody online started talking about how good we looked together?”

It feels like an invisible hand has punched through my chest wall and gripped my heart.

“What if you had to sit behind a desk,” she says, “and watch him live the life that used to be yours?”

I have no answer.

Because that's the second most horrific thing I can imagine.

“You may not have wanted Luci romantically,” she says. “But you replaced me with her everywhere else first.”

The words hurt because they're true. I can blame Luci and Tony all I want for their part in it, but it was me who made it possible.

“Then the clinic,” she says.

My stomach turns.

“When I heard you were hurt, I didn’t care that I was angry with you. I didn’t care what you’d said or what I thought you felt. I just needed to know you were alive.”

I know what's coming but I'm powerless to stop it.

Her eyes finally fill. “Then I walked in and you were holding her. You looked right at me. You saw me, Brooks. You saw what it did to me, and you didn’t let go.”

My lungs stop working.

“You looked almost defiant,” she whispers. “Like some part of you wanted me to see it.”

The ugliest truth in me lifts its head.

“I did.”