Page 2

Chapter 1

EVERYTHING HAS AN EXPIRY DATE

M att padded into the bedroom, still damp from the shower, white towel hanging tantalizingly low on his hips. His eyes lit up with expectation as they raked me over in my pretty new lingerie, bought especially for tonight, our fifth-year anniversary.

“You look hot as fuck,” he said.

Oh, I felt hot too. The kind of hot that was about to explode. Instead, I took a deep breath. “How long have you been fucking Carrie?”

His smile froze on his face. “What?”

“How long have you been fucking Carrie?” My heart hammered against my ribs and my stomach trembled, but my voice was calm, as if I was asking a perfectly mundane question. Like, Hey, how do you like your eggs? Or Did you empty the dishwasher? Nothing like the tone of a woman who’d just read several sexually explicit messages between her fiancé and another woman.

I was calm. Good. This was good.

But Matt’s reply not only broke the camel’s back, it pulverized it.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Leela,” he said.

In that moment, I knew what it meant to see red. “I saw the fucking text messages, Matt! Read the most recent forty-seven. Not sure which is my favorite, though. it’s a toss-up between Can’t wait for you to ride my face and Will you let me stick it up your ass again? ”

My chest heaved. I was on my feet. Ready for battle.

His mouth worked for several seconds as if it had forgotten how to form words, and then he said, “You went through my phone?”

The urge to scream at him washed over me in a tidal wave, and I swayed on my feet, breathing to calm the rage that bubbled in my belly.

It passed, and when I spoke my tone dripped with bitter sarcasm. “Oh, I’m sorry, Matt, did I violate your privacy by accidentally seeing a dirty message from your side chick?”

A series of emotions crossed his beautiful, lying, bastard face as he tried to decide how to spin this.

“How long, Matt? How long have you been fucking her?”

His shoulders sagged, and my heart sank because he was about to fess up and slap a huge full stop on our relationship, and yes, of course it was over. I’d known that as soon as I saw the messages, but I guess there was a small, stupid part of me that had expected him to pull a valid explanation out of his ass.

Damn my stupid heart, I’d loved this man. Loved him enough to say yes to marrying him. Loved him enough to give up my studio apartment. Loved him enough to drop out of my media course and take two jobs to help pay for his masters.

Loved him enough to be a fucking sap, and now…now look…

“How long?” There was no fire in my tone any longer. I was done. Wanting it over now.

“Six months.” His words were a gut punch. “When you got the job at the restaurant on top of the admin position…You weren’t here.” He strode over to his chest of drawers and pulled out some clothes. “I barely saw you. I got lonely, and Carrie was…she was here.”

“Here with her legs open. Right. I get it.”

“It wasn’t like that. I?—"

“ I could have been here. But I was working to help pay off your loans.”

His eyes flinched. “So you’re going to throw that back in my face? Getting the extra job was your idea.”

I was momentarily speechless at the lie. “Seriously? Don’t you dare try to gaslight me.”

“Gaslight? I didn’t ask you to leave your apartment.” He tugged on a T-shirt. “I didn’t ask you to quit school and get a job. You offered, remember? You wanted to do it because you never stick at anything for long.” He pulled on PJ bottoms and yanked the towel off. “All these years it’s been one hobby, one project, one job to the next. You’re a jack of all trades but a master of none, and that…Leela, that’s so unattractive.”

“The fact that I can do stuff, that I like to learn stuff, is unattractive?” My voice went up an octave, and I gritted my teeth because I did not want this to turn into a screaming match.

“The fact that you have no real ambition is unattractive. Carrie’s studying law. She wants to be someone, to do something meaningful with her life.”

He might as well have slapped me. “I thought we were meaningful.” But even as I said the words, a tiny voice whispered, Liar . I pushed it aside needing to hold on to my righteous indignation and the anger that accompanied it.

“No, I’m meaningful,” he said, lifting his chin arrogantly. “You just want to ride my coat tails.” He rolled his eyes. Actually fucking rolled his eyes.

When I’d seen the messages on his phone, my instinct had been to storm into the bathroom and confront him. But I’d waited. I’d told myself to be mature about the situation. Not to be the crazy screaming woman that the media always portrays in drama shows. I wanted to handle this situation, this breakup, with dignity. But honestly, dignity was overrated.

“Fuck you, Matt. Fuck you!”

He exhaled and ran a hand down his face. “If it means anything, I was planning on telling you.”

“When? Before or after you fucked me in my fancy lingerie?”

He had the grace to wince. “Look, you can stay here till you find a place, okay? I’m not a monster.”

My eyes welled as pain sliced through my heart as if someone was taking a blade and cutting him out of it. “No offense, Matt, but I’d rather eat glass.”

Stripping off the fancy lingerie, I pulled on regular underwear and the first clothes that came to hand—a long skirt and a shirt—not the best combination, but whatever. I grabbed my bag and coat and headed into the night where rain hammered at my skin like tiny cold pebbles that screamed, Wake up, wake up. Are you awake yet?

Yes, I was fucking awake. Finally.

My car started on the first turn of the key for a change, as if it empathized with my plight and didn’t want to put me under any further duress. I backed out of the drive, mind whirring with what now ? Where to now? Who the fuck was I now that I wasn’t Matt’s fiancée? And when had I lost myself so thoroughly?

How had I let this happen?

And where the heck was I going? Shit. I was on the highway. The signs for northbound flashed by, and suddenly I knew exactly where I was heading.

The one place where there was someone who never allowed me to feel unwanted or judged. A place I should have returned to a long time ago. Maybe never even left.

Yeah, after six years, it was finally time to go home.