Nine Years Wasted The Betrayal That Set Her Free

"What are you crying about?"

"I bought life insurance."

"If the drinking actually kills me, at least you won't have to suffer alongside me anymore."

Now the villa cost well over a hundred thousand a square foot, and the underground garage was lined with luxury cars we never could have dreamed of back then.

But my eyes were on the screen.

The little minx has all sorts of tricks up her sleeve.

She says on our wedding night, she wants me to get my girlfriend drunk and then sleep next to her.

The comments below treated it like a joke.

But when I pushed open the door, the housekeeper was carrying cases of hard liquor into the wine cellar, box after box.

Why?

We had been one single step away from happiness.

That night, I drank too much. I stumbled out of the villa and got lost.

Disoriented, I called him.

I didn't remember what I said.

All I remembered was crying. Nonstop.

Keith was always terrified of my tears.

His panic sounded exactly the way it used to.

"What's wrong, baby? I'm working overtime. Why are you crying? Did someone upset you?"

In the background, a woman's voice, soft and coaxing, urged him along.

He said something to her.

I couldn't make it out. I just kept crying into the phone, repeating the same words over and over.

"I can't find my way home!"

"I don't have a home anymore!"

"You don't want me anymore!"

Keith's voice turned urgent.

"Stay where you are. Don't move. I'm coming to find you right now."

"Can you do that for me? Just stay put?"

"Okay."

I nodded hard, gripping the phone, confirming again and again.

"You'll come back to me, right?"

Silence on the other end. I thought I heard the faint rustle of someone getting dressed.

When Keith spoke again, his voice had gone soft, the way you'd soothe a frightened child.

"Of course. I promise."

"Before sunrise, I'll take you home."

He had never lied to me before.

He would come back to me.

Holding on to that thought, I collapsed on the steps and fell into a deep sleep.

In my dream, I was in our home, mine and Keith's.

There was a soft bed. On the vanity sat a framed photo of us together.

He was still that boy who used to bike miles through pouring rain just to bring me roasted chestnuts.

A gentle breeze drifted past me. Warm sunlight settled on my eyelids.

Car horns and the hurried footsteps of strangers bled together.

I opened my eyes. A moment of blank confusion, then my phone buzzed, late and insistent.

I tapped in.

The thread had been updated with a new photo.

A rumpled bed. A woman's bare back.

Someone in the comments had tracked down the hotel name.

I looked up.

There it was, spelled out across the massive revolving doors.

The same name.

The hangover made me a beat too slow to put it together.

Over the past eight hours, all Keith had to do was walk downstairs. No, he wouldn't even have needed to do that. One glance out the floor-to-ceiling windows, and he would have seen his girlfriend passed out on the street.

But he didn't.

He was upstairs, having the time of his life.

I was downstairs, dead drunk on the pavement.

Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the numbness that floods in when grief hits its absolute limit.

Either way, once I'd worked through all of it, a strange calm settled over me.

I texted the housekeeper and asked her to pack my things.

Then I booked the next available flight.

And finally, I dialed Keith's number.

A few seconds later.

A familiar ringtone went off behind me.

I turned around.

The first thing I saw.

Hickeys. Covering Keith's neck. A whole constellation of them.