“Yeah. Okay.”
“So, move. I’m leaving.”
He stood his ground, just looking down at me.
“Get out of the way, Theodore.”
Nothing.
I finally decided to push past him, somehow managing to pull my suitcases with me.
“It’s not over,” he said, following me to the door. “You’re not leaving me.”
“Watch me.”
I pressed the elevator button and walked in, suitcases in hand, not looking back.
Doubt: Wow. I never thought I’d actually be right.
Oh my God. What is wrong with you? Can’t you see I’m going through something?
Doubt: So what? I just came to say I told you so. You think a man like that is gonna go years and years without fucking something? Be fucking for real.
You don’t know him like I do. He’s a good man, he just—Fuck! I sound like one of those sad women who excuse their cheating ass man for their fucked up behaviour. Theo, what the fuck did you do to me?
Doubt: Do you really think he cheated on you, though?
I think…he put himself in a position where he made himself look guilty by keeping it from me. Do I think he slept with the girl? I don’t know.
Ultimately, the damage wasn’t just what he did—
It was him hiding this from me for as long as he did and having me parade around his office like a fool. That did more harm than he could ever imagine.
I want to believe him. I want to believe what he told me—that she slept in the room and he took the couch—because that sounds like the man I know him to be. Or thought I knew.
But the way my mind was fucked up behind this? The way doubt moved in where trust used to live? I don’t know what to think of him right now.
That’s the funny thing about trust. It takes years to build and seconds to destroy.
Especially after the week we just had.
At the front desk, a hotel agent greeted me with a practiced smile.
“Hello, Mrs. Clayton.”
“Call me Carmen, please,” I said, voice tight. “I need a room.”
“Of course. Mr. Clayton called ahead. Here’s your key.”
I blinked. “What? No. I don’t want anything from him. Can I book my own room? Please? Just something for a day or two.”
With the money in my account, I should’ve been able to swing that much. I just needed space until I figured out what’s next.
The agent’s fingers tapped the keyboard. “We do have a room available. Including taxes, that would be fourteen thousand, four hundred seventy-eight euros. Would you like to pay now or at checkout?”
I stared at him. “Fuck.”
Without another word, he slid the keycard across the counter—the one Theo had arranged for me.
