Page 7 of Best Kept Vows

CHAPTER 3

Ophelia

My heart soared when I saw Sebastian.

I rose and smiled. He was here! He’d come.

He came close and dropped a kiss on my lips. “Congratulations, baby.”

I wrapped my arms around him, laid my head on his chest, and soaked him in. I loved Sebastian more than he loved me. I knew that and accepted it because I got to keep him; I got him as my husband. I never told anyone about this, not even Sebastian, because it wasmy secret—a dark, shamefulsecret—that I knew he didn’t love me as I did him. None of it mattered because he was here.

I pulled away and took his hand in mine. “Come, sit. Ada, can you ask the server to set another?—”

A voice cut me off. “Seb, we have to leave.” Jane put a hand on my husband’s shoulder and tapped her watch.

Seb?No one called him that. Only I did…and only when wemade love. Otherwise, he preferred to be called Sebastian. OnlyIgot to call him Seb. It wasmine. But was it? When was the last timeIhad called him by his shortened name, i.e. when was the last time my husband and I had sex? It had been a while. Maybe three months? More?

He was always so busy and so tired that….

I had to stop making excuses and face the facts. We didn’t have sex because he didn’t want to. When I initiated, he turned me down, and since rejection was painful, I’d stopped instigating intimacy—and waited and waited and….

I looked at Jane in confusion and then at Sebastian.

My husband released a weary sigh. “Baby, Jane and I were just heading to the factory and?—”

“Dad just wanted to stop by and have a glass of champagne.” Ada stood up hurriedly, glaring at her father.

I put two and two together.

She’d been upset when she came back after using the restroom. She’d talked tohim. She’d seen him withJane. He wasn’t here for me. He’d beenherewithherand….

I plastered a smile on my face, the one I put on whenever I felt I was going to choke on my tears.

Sebastian looked at me, misery in his eyes. “I’m sorry, Lia.”

Jane huffed next to him, her eyes on her phone as she typed away, impatience radiating from her.

“It’s okay, honey.” That was my standard line.

“I’m so sorry I missed our anniversary, but I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

“It’s okay, honey.”

“Damn, you planned that trip forthisweekend? I just can’t, baby.”

“It’s okay, honey.”

“Capstone project presentations are just a formality, Lia—you don’t need me to be there. I have so much going on at work.”

“It’s okay, honey.”

On the tombstone of our marriage, those were the words that would be carved, and the obituary would read, “She was always okay…until she wasn’t.”

That thought squeezed my heart. I hadneverthought our marriage would end, but right now, standing here, watching my daughter look at her father with anger, my husband look at me with a mix of guilt and irritation, and the woman he spent more time with than me, calling himSeb,I knew that we were at the beginning of the end.

I went on tiptoe and kissed Sebastian lightly on his lips. “Y’all have a good rest of the day.”

A server then came by with a bottle of Krug and a wine cooler. “Congratulations,” Sebastian repeated huskily, this time with a small smile.