Matt narrowed his eyes at her. “How often did you think about this?” He was starting to realize that she had been living with this, battling herself and forcing herself to lie to him every day they’d been together. The realization made him sick. “How did you do it? How were you able to look at me every day and know that you’d either take this to your grave, or would one day have to tell me, all the while believing it to be unforgivable at this point?” He stared at her in disbelief, not knowing if he was actually expecting an answer.
He stood back as if he needed to look at her from a different angle. “How do you not stop and make a decision at some point?” Heart thudding faster as he hoped to wake from this nightmare, he ran his fingers through his hair. Fingers he kept clenching to resist punching a hole in the wall. “Was anything real? Did you need to stop and think before you spoke to me for fear it might slip out in some way? Is this how we’ve been living?” His eyes burned, and he squeezed them shut. He was getting angrier, losing control and he didn’t like it. He hadn’t come back here for this.
But somehow, knowing now that she had considered the truth and decided against it each time in the past three years, made this non-existent forgiveness spot on.
“But now you know the truth, Matt. You know and we can try—”
“Only because I overheard you and my brother out on the porch,” he snapped.
No one had willingly confessed to anything here. Thursday morning he’d found them on the back porch of the beach house in what, from the opposite side of the window, seemed like a normal conversation. There was nothing alarming about his brother and his wife talking alone. They were always close. Another thought that made him flare with anger and resentment. He pushed it aside. He knew Liz always thought of Ben as a brother. Until he heard Ben’s words;You think you’ll ever tell him about that night?
Matt immediately pondered another disturbing thought. “Why now? What brought on this conversation now? Do you guys talk about it all the time, or—”
“Of course not. We haven’t talked about it in years,” she insisted. “He just knows how hard it’s been on me keeping this from you.”
“I don’t believe that,” he said coldly. “Nothing, nothing ever gave away that you were struggling with a secret. I’d like to think I would have picked up on it.”
“You would have. And it was so hard to try and act—”
“Exactly. You were acting. When we were back together, when you were saying our wedding vows, our entire marriage was a lie.”
She stood and started to cross to him, but then no doubt thought better of it. “No, Matt, no, that’s not true…”
He fled to the window again. He couldn’t believe the conversation had taken this turn. But it was quickly hitting him that he had no idea who he was married to.
She must have picked up on this as she approached him in tears. Holding her hands out to his chest.
“Matt,” she whispered. “I am so sorry.”
“I heard you perfectly yesterday.” His voice was hoarse, and he was tired.
“Can you forgive me?”
He looked down at her, giving her a puzzled but calm expression. “Well that’s a silly question. I thought you already knew the answer to that.” Despite his sarcasm and belittling, she kept her hopeful eyes on his. He was sickened by the fact that she could have imagined after all the deception and her lack of trust in him, that he could have easily forgiven her. He may have years ago, if she had told him off the bat about her and Ben. Keyword;may.
But not now, not after she’d kept it from him all this time and had made the choices she’d made. Now she was going to live with it.
He gently took her wrists and pushed her back. “No,” he finally breathed out. He never particularly liked that armchair behind her. But as she absently let herself sink into it, he was grateful it was there to catch her.
He swallowed hard, forcing himself to ignore the fresh tears filling her eyes so that he could say the rest. “I can’t forgive you for this, Liz. You—” He looked down at her. Her hands were tight on her knees and her glassy eyes were far away. He knelt down to her and put his hands over her cold ones. “Lizzy,” he called softly, as she looked up at him. His throat was tight but the words weren’t hard to say. “Lizzy, I still love you.”
She looked at him confused. “But you won’t forgive me? So, what—what does this mean?”
“I don’t know. Liz, this all just happened. I can’t just tell you what’s going to happen.”
“I can tell you, Matt.” She stood. Her voice was pleading, shaky. “You have to forgive me. It changes everything if you don’t. How can we go on like this, without trust and—”
“Don’t talk to me about trust, Liz,” he hissed. “You’ve been lying to me for years because you didn’t trust me.” He ran his fingers through his hair again. “What changes? Because the way I see it, there’s still no trust, and we’ll be living with this shadow over us. The onlydifferenceis, that I know about it now!” His voice grew angrier with those last few words.
She stared at him as he took a breath. He needed to calm down. This wasn’t their house. They would need to go home soon. Being that it was after midnight, they were stuck there until morning.
But not necessarily in the same room.
“So, you tell me what changes, Liz.” His voice now a whisper. “Because we’re no worse off than we were last week.” He took another slow breath. “I didn’t come here to fight, or get angry or break your heart.” He walked halfway across the room. “I came here to talk to you about this alone. But I also didn’t expect to find out the decision to lie to me was yours,” he paused. “And I think the reasoning behind it went further than you trying to protect my relationship with my brother.”
“It was.” She was able to get out before he shot her a look to let her know that he was done listening to her. She started to cross to him, then stopped when he’d held up his hand.
“With all the guest rooms full in the house, I’ll sleep in the den tonight.” With one hand on the knob, he willed himself not to look back at her, fearing he wouldn’t be able to walk through it. He hated leaving her like this. It felt odd and unnatural. As if he was the one betraying her.
