Chapter 10: Leverage

Jubal read it over my shoulder.

His jaw went hard under the beard.

"He's been following you."

"He's been paying somebody to."

"I'll find out who."

"No." I put the phone face down on the counter where we'd just been. "You won't find anybody. You'll go home and sleep, and so will I."

"Haddie."

"I'm not going to hide it. And I'm not going to let him decide what I'm ashamed of."

At nine that morning I was in my lawyer's office with the photo on my phone and no sleep.

She looked at it for a long time.

"Well," she said. "That's a nice-looking man."

"Can he use it?"

"Tennessee lets a judge weigh fault when he splits property. Your company isn't marital property, so I'm not scared. But he'll wave it around."

"Then I'd rather go first."

So I did.

I wrote a statement in my own words.

That I had separated from my husband the night he chose his assistant in front of forty people.

That I had kissed another man once, after. That I wasn't sorry.

My lawyer filed it with the clerk that afternoon, with a copy of the photo attached.

When I got back to the warehouse, Jubal's truck was in the lot.

He was in the break room, making the coffee wrong.

"You don't have to come by," I said.

"I'm returning your dollies."

"I didn't lend you any dollies."

"Then I'm here to see if you're all right."

I closed the door so the crew couldn't hear.

"I'm all right. And I have to say something, and you have to let me say it all the way through."

He put the coffee pot down.

"I'm not going to sneak around," I said. "I'm not going to let that man say I did anything behind his back, because I didn't."

He waited.

"Last night was real. But I'm still married on paper, and I'm not doing anything else with you until I'm not."

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