My Husband Cheated With My Best Friend, So I Took Them Both novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Nineteen

Juliet's POV

Roz's phone rang before Declan's call had even ended.

She looked at the screen. It said BURLINGTON HOSPITAL HR.

"Take it," I said.

She stood at the window with her back to me.

She said, "Yes," and "I understand," and "Effective today."

She said nothing else for a long time, and she did not turn around.

When she hung up, she set the phone on the sill with great care.

"I'm suspended," she said. "Pending a conduct review requested by the chair of the foundation board."

"Roz."

"Eleven years. I've never had a write-up." Her voice was flat. "I picked up three shifts for a colleague on Christmas."

She had gone silent in the middle of her own sentence. I knew the tell now. It meant she was afraid.

I crossed the kitchen and took her by the hand.

"Upstairs," I said.

"Jules, I should go and find a lawyer, I should..."

"Upstairs. It's ten in the morning. Nobody's coming."

The spare room had a big window and a quilt my grandmother made. The winter light came across the bed.

I sat her on the edge of it. She would not look at me.

"I want it true this time," I said. "All of it. Not the version you told at the table."

"I told you the truth."

"You told me the part that fit in a sentence."

Roz put her face in her hands.

"You kissed me," she said. "In the dorm, the second week of sophomore year. You tasted like cheap wine and cinnamon gum."

"I wasn't drunk."

"I know. You've said. I didn't believe you then." She laughed, wet. "I said go to sleep because if I said anything else, you'd wake up the next day and be sorry. I wanted to be the one who gave you a way out."

"I never wanted one."

"I know that now." She wiped her cheeks. "I went into the bathroom and sat on the tub for an hour. Then I came out and you were asleep, and I stood in the door and looked at you."

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