Page 50 of Cruel Summer

“Please don’t leave me,” he said. “I don’t care that you were with someone else. I was with other people… It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s just sex.”

“It wasn’t for me. It wasn’t. I love him.”

“If he doesn’t want to be with you, then what does it matter?”

How had she ever not realized how differently she and Will saw sex and love? They’d never discussed it. They’d just done it. She’d assumed he felt how she did.

She could see now how wrong she’d been.

“Because I know I can be happier. Because I know that I can be more myself. Because I know that I can have better sex. Because I know that there is more. More out there. I refuse to take less. Don’t take less, Will.

Don’t take less because it’s easier. You don’t love me.

You’re not in love with me. You loved our life.

I get that. I loved our life too. But once I started going over everything that was wrong with it, I couldn’t unsee it.

Once I saw the cracks, I could never not know they were there.

We were breaking. Before you ever told me you wanted to see other people, we were falling apart, but I wasn’t brave enough to look at it. ”

He looked so hurt. So wounded.

But she was done making things easy.

“You started this,” she said. “Have the courage to finish it.”

“That’s not fair,” he said. “You were the one who said…”

“And you were the one who said, ‘Why don’t we see what else there is?’ You were the one who said, ‘Why does marriage have to be this?’ Now I agree with you.

With that question. We needed each other.

For a long time. We needed each other to make this life, to make our family.

But at the end of the day, do we want each other?

All of each other. Because you can’t just want me as a wife who supports you.

As the wife who knows you. Isn’t that just the natural completion of this little midlife crisis that you had?

To go off and screw younger women for fun, and then to get to come back home to me?

The woman who knew you back in high school.

The woman who still sees you as you were. ”

She shook her head. “That’s the easy way out, Will.

You started this. Finish it. Find what you’re really looking for.

Deal with your mortality. Howl at the moon.

Find some woman who’s crazy about who you are right now.

Find someone you have to try for. Work for.

Find someone you have to be better for. Or don’t.

Spread it around. Sleep with half the county, I don’t care, but don’t convince yourself that I’m hurting you because I won’t let you go back to what’s comfortable.

You started this. I was too scared to be honest then, but I am being honest now.

You were brave enough to call it out. That we weren’t happy.

You exposed a bunch of things that I was too scared to look at.

But now I have. Don’t get mad at me because you dragged all that shit out into the daylight. ”

He looked down at her arm. “You got a tattoo?”

“Yeah. I got a tattoo. And a bikini.” And the best sex of my life.

But she didn’t say that last part out loud, because that was petty.

She didn’t actually want to be petty. Because there wasn’t a whole lot of triumph from where she was standing.

It was just growth. As she had established earlier, growth and self-awareness were honestly a little bit overrated. And mostly painful.

“Who is it?” he asked, his voice quiet.

Oh shit.

She took a deep breath. She wasn’t sure she was going to tell him, because honestly, what was the point?

But there was something in the hesitation that clearly got to him.

“Sam…” His gaze was wary. And then…knowing. “Please don’t…”

“If you’re asking me not to… Well, you already know, don’t you?”

His expression was dark then, angry. Angry like they never got at each other.

Angry like they should have gotten sometimes and hadn’t been brave enough to.

This was really the end, and only now was she seeing this part of him.

They had been so scared. They’d had to get here to be brave.

“How…how can you do this?” he asked. “When you acted so outraged that I asked you for an open marriage?” He shook his head.

“And how long… God. I knew that you wanted to fuck him. I knew it.”

“Oh, did you?” she asked, anger spiking now. “You knew? You just sat on that bit of info and kept inviting him to dinner and all our vacations even though you thought I wanted him?”

“Then tell me it’s not true. Tell me you didn’t want to sleep with him.” The denial stuck in her throat, and Will’s eyes widened. He’d been angry, he hadn’t actually believed his own accusations. Now he did, though. “You did, didn’t you?”

She let out a breath. “I didn’t do anything with him when we were together.”

“But you wanted to. That whole time.”

She shook her head. “No. I didn’t. I was attracted to him, and I didn’t acknowledge it. I pushed it away. Because you matter more to me. But then, when I didn’t have an obligation to you anymore, when you were the one who said that we should see other people…”

“He’s my best friend .”

“Yeah, well, are you mad at me, or are you mad at him?”

“He didn’t say anything. I texted him during the summer. I…”

“He was respecting me . The fact that he knew that I didn’t have any contact with you.

He didn’t bring you into what was happening between us.

Because you didn’t need to be involved. You know what, you still don’t.

He doesn’t want to be with me. But it doesn’t change the fact that I’m in love with him. ”

“I feel like you’re going to regret this,” he said. “Breaking everything apart for Logan.”

He didn’t understand. He still didn’t understand her.

But she wasn’t going to spend the rest of her life with him, not anymore.

So she didn’t need him to.

And that, well, that made her feel free.

“I’m not breaking everything apart for Logan,” she said. “I’m breaking it apart for me.”