Page 7

I drove home from the park with the windows down.

The sweat drying on my neck was a reminder of the sin I'd committed.

When I stepped into the kitchen, Sloane was sitting at the table with Violet asleep on her lap, one arm curled protectively around our daughter.

A plate of cold dinner sat on the counter and the ice in her tea had melted.

It was at that moment, right there in the doorway, when I realized how small I’d become.

How far I’d fallen. Not just as a husband, but as a man.

Even as the heat of Angie’s touch clung to my skin, I couldn’t stop seeing Sloane’s slumped shoulders, the weariness evident despite feeling the vindication I needed.

Like a child throwing a tantrum, I couldn’t see that I had it all and was destroying it piece by piece from the inside.

My narcissistic nature believed I could still control the narrative, bend the truth to serve me, twist guilt into justification.

But all I was really doing was digging deeper, blind to the wreckage I was leaving behind.

I kept telling myself I couldn’t stop. That it wasn’t about the sex.

No, it was about the attention. It was the illusion of being valued that I drank like poisoned wine.

Angie and I continued to meet for weeks. We met in parking lots, cheap hotels, her home. I either didn't notice or didn't care that it was always her calling the shots, always whispering things that rewired my brain.

“You shouldn’t have to beg to feel wanted.”

Meanwhile, Sloane was forgetting to eat because Liam was sick and Violet’s tooth was loose and there was a puppy on oxygen in the ICU and a dozen other battles Sloane was waging without me.

During all of this, I was lying to her face… but reality always comes calling.

The first crack was Liam’s thirteenth birthday. I’d forgotten to RSVP to a skating party. One job. That’s all I had to do. Sloane didn’t yell. She just looked at me like she was so tired of being disappointed. Like she had stopped expecting anything better.

“Why can I never rely on you?” she asked.

Instead of answering her, I got defensive.

Classic Old Me. Rather than sit with the truth of what she was sharing, I twisted it, turned the whole thing into an attack.

I lashed out, accused her of not wanting me anymore, of making me feel like a burden in my own damn house.

It was easier to turn the mirror on her than look into it myself.

That argument spiraled fast with sharp words flung like knives, both of us bleeding pride and somewhere in the middle of all that venom and fire, we crashed into each other like a storm meeting the sea.

An angry, frantic, bruising kind of sex where clothes were ripped, lips bitten, nails dragged across skin like we were trying to mark territory.

It was the hottest and most toxic sex we’d ever had. Rage disguised as passion, our bodies saying what our words couldn’t. We weren’t making love that day. We were trying to outrun the distance between us, and prove we could still feel something even if it was through pain.

When it was over, we didn’t collapse into each other like we used to with our post sex apologies and reconnection.

Instead, it was a cold and suffocating silence.

We got dressed in separate corners of the room, as if we were nothing more than strangers after a one-night stand, then walked away in opposite directions.

We were somehow both angrier and emptier than before.

The truth was, I didn’t like the mirror she held up.

I didn’t want to see what I was turning into.

I hadn’t fallen into an affair because Sloane failed me.

I fell because I failed Sloane. I was the weakest man in the room.

I confused validation for love. I confused sacrifice for neglect. I confused comfort for boredom.

My ego couldn’t handle the passive-aggressive comments she made over the next day or two.

“You spend more time at the gym than at home.”

"You are way too distracted, Levi."

My guilt, thinly disguised as feeling unappreciated, had been festering for weeks; ever since the affair with Angie started.

That guilt twisted itself into something louder, something I could no longer ignore or excuse.

I lied to myself that I was justified; that I deserved more.

But the truth was simpler. I was a coward looking for a way out that didn’t make me the villain.

I had already started packing. Bags stashed in the garage like ticking bombs.

A few nights after mine and Sloane's rage fueled fucking, on an evening we were meant to review the kids' schedules for the upcoming school year, I confessed to her.

We were supposed to sit down at the kitchen table like we were still teammates, as if we still lived on the same side of the battlefield.

But I couldn’t pretend anymore. I couldn’t meet Sloane's eyes across that kitchen and act like I wasn’t already halfway gone.

She looked too tired, too thin. She was a hollow eyed revenant of the woman I'd married, worn down from years of struggling alone; Old Me was too blind to see that he had done that to her. Fuck, Old Me was too immature to admit that he'd done anything wrong.

She was rinsing a glass in the sink when I said, “I need to tell you something.”

Sloane didn’t look at me. “Is this about the school forms? I signed them and left them in Liam’s folder.”

“No,” I said. My throat burned, but I forced the words through anyway. “It’s worse than that.”

She stood there, averting her gaze, hands under the faucet, water running over her fingers like she hadn’t heard me.

“I cheated.”

No drama. No explanation. The truth, laid out cold on the kitchen floor.

She slowly looked up at me. Her face was eerily serene, but her eyes locked on mine, and in that moment, I knew I had detonated something we would never return from.

“With who?” she asked. Her voice was calm; far too calm. My mouth was dry and I'd realized then that I was genuinely afraid; she might have murdered me then and there.

I opened my mouth.

“Do not lie,” she said, sharper now. “If you even think about sugarcoating it, Levi, I swear to God-”

“Her name’s Angie. From the gym. ”

Sloane’s lips parted, a dry sound escaping her throat. Not quite a gasp, more like a breath cut short. She laughed. Just once. One broken, humorless sound that made me want to crawl out of my own skin.

“From the gym ,” she echoed. “Jesus. Of course it was.”

“I didn’t mean for it to happe-,” I began, but she held up her hand like a teacher reprimanding a toddler.

“Don’t. Don’t you dare give me that cliché garbage. Do you think I’m stupid? You didn’t ‘mean’ to lie to me for who knows how long? You didn’t ‘mean’ to betray me every time you came home and kissed me goodnight with her sweat still on your skin?”

Her voice cracked. The tears were there, welling fast, but she wasn’t letting them fall.

I shook my head and stepped forward, heat rising in my chest. “I was lonely, okay? You were never around. Always working, always busy with the kids, the house, everything.” I let out a bitter laugh.

“It’s not all on me. You were taking care of anything and everything else except us . At least someone made me feel wanted.”

“Wanted?” she said, voice rising. “I gave you everything , Levi. I carried your goddamn ego on my back for years. I was up at 5 a.m. packing lunches while you slept in. I was cleaning vomit, paying bills, calling teachers, handling vet emergencies and you were what? Out screwing some gym rat?!”

I looked down, my hands clenched at my sides, heat pulsing in my temples. I was angry… at her, at myself, at life.

“You disgust me.”

Those words hit harder than any slap ever could and just like that, something in me shut down. I told myself I couldn’t stay. That it was easier to walk away, to start over with Angie, instead of face what I’d done. The truth? I was a coward and I hated her for making me feel like one.

“I’m moving out. I’m going to live with her,” I said, steady and unapologetic. At that moment, the words didn’t taste bitter. It felt like a release.

Somewhere along the long and twisted path that led me here, I had stopped seeing her as my wife and started seeing her as the reason I felt so small. To me, this felt like the next step. A natural result of weeks of what Old Me thought was being overlooked, unappreciated, and shut out.

Sloane didn’t say anything at first. She stared at me like she didn’t recognize who I was. The silence in the kitchen pressed down on me harder than any shouting ever could.

Then, she asked in broken, trembling whisper, “When?”

I gripped the edge of the counter, not because I was falling apart but because I needed to stay calm and in control. “Tonight.”

I'd said it as a simple fact. As if it was the only logical conclusion. Why drag it out? Old Me thought he'd already given enough of himself; certainly more than anyone ever gave him.

A sharp sob broke out of her. “And the kids?”

I shook my head. My eyes stayed fixed on a crack in the tile because I had been too much of a coward to look at her. “We’ll figure it out.”

Leaving that night was the stupidest mistake I have ever made. But the worst part, the part I hate myself for the most, is that I didn’t betray just my wife - I betrayed the mother of my children and the woman who gave up everything to build a life with me.

There were a thousand things Old Me could have done differently, could have done better. But Old Me picked the worst possible decision at every point and kept going… now I'm crawling through the wreckage and trying to rebuild something I'd set on fire.

If Sloane even lets me try, I know that every moment of healing, every tender glance from her, every night we spend rebuilding what I shattered, is a debt I know I’ll never fully repay but… I am going to keep trying even if it takes the rest of this fucked up life.