Betrayal

Chapter 35

Warren

Everything is fine. I've done the right thing. It's over. It's done with. I can go back to my life and forget about this. Forget about her. It never happened. Just a summer fling. That's all it was.

I smoke a cigarette. I'm driving back to the Hamptons. My hands are shaky and I'm still out of breath. I can't stop seeing her face. How... heartbroken she looked. How sad. Seeing her cry made me feel so sick. It's taking everything in me not to turn back around and take it back.

I can't. It's the right thing. It's what's best. I've done enough damage. It has to stop. I've stopped it. I need to focus on my marriage and my life and forget this ever happened.

But the house, as soon as I see it, makes me think instantly of her. The sun is just about set when I arrive and she's all I can see as I park my car. As if the ghost of her, someone who's still very much alive, is ever present.

I shake it away and force it down as I begin to pack. I make quick work of it, thinking of her the entire time. I pack the children's rooms, Rebecca and mine, Lola's, and Dominic's. I take every suitcase to the garage and pile them into my car, filling the trunk and the backseat, and fill Rebecca's SUV, too.

We've discussed it. We're going back home tonight and having Dominic transferred to Bellevue in the morning. They'll fly him there. We agreed it would be the best thing. To be home and not here. The accident happened not far from this house. I saw his car, or what was left of it. A mangled mess of metal and glass and blood. It was taken to an impound. I went alone. Rebecca wouldn't have been able to stand the sight of it.

The kids are with her parents at our home. I didn't want them to see Dominic like this. They don't need to. Wyatt could handle it, I'm sure, but not Ella. I don't want it to scar them.

It takes me close to two hours to get everything done except for her room. I stand outside of the door for a long time, hesitating to go in, but force myself to. Then I sit on the bed in the darkness. Sweat breaks on my hairline. It's hard for me to breathe evenly. I have to close my eyes.

Thoughts of us being intimate bombard me. The sex, the taste of her, the way she felt, her smile, her laughter, her warmth...

"Fuck," I whisper.

I feel sick. It's a deep, hot stomachache, exacerbated by the thought of her and I together. There's an urge to call her now, tell her I'm sorry and I didn't mean it, and go straight to her. I'd apologize and make love to her and it would all be alright again.

I shake my head at myself and press my hands roughly against my eyes. I can't. It's done. It's going to stay that way.

I turn the lights on and find her suitcases in the closet. I clear the drawers of her clothes, the bathroom of her toiletries, and fold her easel up. Under the bed I find her painting of me.

It knocks the wind out of me and I have to sit again. I clutch it tightly in my hands. Tears sting my eyes. I marvel at her talent and stifle the sob that's trying to come up from my throat. It's hard to swallow. I rest my hand against my chest. My heart is beating roughly. It's aching.

God. I love her so much. And I hurt her so badly. I broke her heart and broke my own in the process.

I'm yours.

I can hear her voice. See her face. How sincere she was when she said it. So many times. I made her say it and made her mean it. She meant it. She wanted to be mine. And for a little while she was. I wasn't hers. I couldn't have been.

And that's why it had to end. Too many complications. Too many emotions. Too much of everything. If I could've just kept it strictly to sex, we would've been fine. I thought I could. I was wrong.