He Put Our Love on Pause, Then Married Her Behind My Back novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: Open the Door

Travis came to my door at 9:40 that night, drunk, with flowers from a gas station.

I knew it was him by the knock.

Three taps, a pause, one more tap. He has knocked like that for four years.

Roz was on my couch with a bowl of popcorn and her feet on my coffee table.

"Don't," she said.

"I'm not opening it."

"Say it out loud."

"I'm not opening it."

"Jen." His voice came through the wood, soft and rumpled. "Jen, it's me. I know you're in there."

I put the chain on and stood back from the door.

"Go home, Travis."

"I can't go home. Brooke's mad at me. She wants to talk about the reception, and the seating, and her mother." He laughed, short and sad. "I've had a day."

"Go home to your wife."

"She's not my wife."

I stopped.

"She's paperwork," he said. "You know that. You're the only one I ever talk to. I'm pausing it, Jen. Pausing Brooke. Two weeks. Then I'm all yours."

Roz put her popcorn down very slowly.

"Did he just say that out loud," she whispered, "in a hallway, with neighbors?"

He had. The door across the hall opened an inch, and a woman in a bathrobe looked out and closed it again.

"You can't pause a wife," I said through the door.

"You can pause anything."

"No. You can't."

"We always come back," he said. "That's the whole thing about us, Jen. We always come back."

He said it gently.

That was the worst part.

For four years it had worked, because every time it sounded like love.

I turned the chain lock all the way and slid the deadbolt with a loud, clean sound.

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