The Secret Life of Blythe

23. Leo

I speed around the last corner in to our avenue and up the driveway to our home, slamming on my breaks and hitting the key fob for the garage as I wait for the automatic doors to rise. 
Come on, come on, I encourage them.  Once I'm parked and the doors close I steel myself to face this head on.  This is the start of the rest of my life and whatever happens now is all on me. I won't let her down again I know that much, but will she give me the opportunity to show her that? Will she come clean to me about whatever lifestyle choices she's been making too? Whatever she's hiding from me still feels like betrayal. Nothing like the idiocy I've managed to bring to us, but neither of us have been entirely truthful of recent, I want to wipe the slate clean, share every heartbreaking detail of it and lay my heart on the table. for her to decide what she wants to do with it.

The house feels lifeless when I walk in through the door, cold, silent and bare. A bit like how my body feels at this moment.  I walk through the entire house for any sign of her and each room I visit, the less her presence is felt.  It's not until I reach for the fridge that I see it, a letter, that I know is to me, written in her beautiful scripture.  I stare at it for a long time with my back against the fridge.  I know what it is, in my heart I do, and it's going to shred any last semblance of hope I have left in my heart.  When I eventually pick it up and sit at the head of the table, my eyes stay poised to the clock ticking on the wall, my heart racing, unable to look down until I can no longer resist reading her words, so with a deep lungful of air, I steel myself for what's about to come.

Dear Leo,

It was the happiest day of my life when we said I do, on the beach nearly three years ago.  I took my vows seriously, for I meant every single word of them.  I thought you did too, but six weeks ago you made a mockery of those vows to me.  The decent thing to do would have been to divorce me and then proceed to chase that long lost love down.  You didn't, you started an intense love affair.  You left me here in the cold, with no communication while you committed debachery with your lover in your penthouse apartment.  All whilst your wife and unborn baby stayed at home in a catatonic state, wondering what I ever did to deserve such treatment from a man that I gave my everything to.  I gave up my life to bring you back to the land of the living.  I spent months worrying about you.  I gave up everything.  So imagine how I feel after doing all that, for you to go straight back to the woman that gave you to me in that state in the first place.  She gets the best of you and I'm left with the broken pieces?  I knew things about that woman that you do now too.  I could have said them earlier, but I wanted, no needed, you to chose me and end it yourself for my own sanity.  That never happened until the very last minute, that's your only saving grace.  My card was dealt shortly after.  Im glad you realised what you did, in time for me to see it all play out. But overall, this whole thing has broken something inside of me, something's missing, and I believe it's my love.  You took it and threw it away.  You took my respect for you.  You took the chance to be a full time father from our little boy.  You also took my desire for you and cheapened all of our past sexual encounters. I don't know the person you are and I don't particularly like him.  I feel conned, tricked, fooled into marrying you if this is what you've been hiding the entire time. You certainly aren't the man I married, he wouldn't have done this to me.  I don't know what the future holds, I certainly hope you'll be in your son's life, he's the most important thing now and he needs me to be the best version of myself. I can't do that with the person stood reading this letter. I deserve better. 
I've gone to Europe for a couple of months.  Somewhere I can relax and rid myself of the stress I've been feeling.  I hope when I come back I can have the baby in the same relaxed atmosphere but if you decide to leave before, I fully understand.  Please give me the space I deserve Leo, I've given you the same this past six weeks, you can't deny that, so please offer me the same respect. 
Blythe