Oh My Husband and Best Friend Betrayed Me So I Slept With Her Husband and Ruined Them novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Four Blocks

Valeria watches Brett and Lila kiss at the hotel elevators and films it. Tony stops her from storming in and offers a bigger stage: Lila's birthday party. Brett's goodnight text arrives while the elevator climbs.

We walked the four blocks without talking.

Tony kept his hands in his coat pockets and stayed half a step behind me.

I was glad, because I wasn't sure what my face was doing.

The Calloway sat on the corner, with a brass revolving door and a bar that looked straight onto the street.

Tony stopped us in the dark doorway of a closed dry cleaner across the road.

"There," he said.

I looked through the bar window.

Brett sat at a small round table near the glass, in his navy blazer, the one I had picked up from the tailor on Monday.

Lila sat across from him with her elbows on the table.

She was telling him a story, and she used both hands.

Brett was laughing with his whole face.

He had not laughed like that at home in a year.

"She's drinking club soda," I said.

"She's been on club soda for three weeks," Tony said. "She says it's antibiotics."

"For what?"

"A sinus infection. I didn't ask."

I took out my phone and opened the camera.

My hands were steady and I hated that they were.

Brett reached across the table and tucked a piece of Lila's hair behind her ear.

I filmed it.

I filmed her catching his wrist and kissing the inside of it.

I filmed them standing up, and Brett leaving two bills under a glass, and the two of them crossing the lobby to the elevators.

At the elevators he looked over his shoulder, and then he kissed her against the brass doors.

It was not a quick kiss.

I lowered the phone.

My breath was coming too fast, and the cold air hurt my teeth.

I stepped off the curb.

Tony's hand closed around my forearm, firm and not rough.

"No," he said.

"Let go."

"If you walk in there, he says you've got it wrong. Lila cries and says you've never trusted her. Her father calls my father, and by Saturday the whole family believes you had a breakdown."

"I don't care what her father thinks."

"I do," he said. "I want a better room than this one."

I pulled my arm free, but I stayed on the curb.

"What room?"

"Her thirtieth birthday. A hundred and twenty people on my back lawn. Her parents, her flower clients, his boss, the whole church choir she sings with. Everyone who ever called them a perfect couple."

"That's three weeks."

"Yes."

"Three weeks of lying next to him."

"Yes," Tony said, and he didn't pretend it was easy.

I looked at the lobby doors.

The elevator numbers climbed, and stopped on four.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

I looked down.

It was Brett.

Landing late, babe. Don't wait up. Sleep well, love you more than anything.

He had written it while the elevator was still rising.

I could picture his thumb moving, and Lila beside him reading over his arm.

I looked down at the text.

Then I put the phone away without answering, and I felt something in my chest go quiet and hard.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay what?"

"Three weeks. Not a day more."

"Valeria."

"And I'm not forgiving anybody," I said. "I need you to know that now. If you have some idea that I'll cry and take him back, say it out loud so I can tell you you're wrong."

Tony looked at me for a long moment.

"I'd had it in the back of my mind," he said.

"Why?"

"Because every time something was off, you explained it for him. You're good at it."

That landed, and I let it.

"I'm done being good at it," I said.

He nodded once.

"I need to be sure you can do the next part," he said. "He'll come home tonight. You'll have to get into your own bed."

"I know."

"You'll have to let him touch you, and say you love him."

"I know what the next part is."

Tony took a card out of his wallet and held it out.

It was a lumber company card, with a handwritten cell number on the back.

"Any hour," he said. "If you can't stand it, you text me. I'll answer."

I took the card.

I did not tell him that I was shaking now, that it had finally reached my knees.

We walked back to the steakhouse lot, where his grey Volvo was parked beside my car.

He waited until I was inside my car with the engine running before he drove off.

At the first red light, my phone lit up on the passenger seat.

Brett again.

Miss you already. Can't wait to be home.

I took the ring out of my purse and put it back on.

Then I drove home to sleep next to my husband.

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