Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 93270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93270 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 466(@200wpm)___ 373(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Devy stood there, eyeing her husband, as her knees weakened and threatened to give out from under her.
Still, as they stared at each other, neither said anything.
“Why’d you stop, Chad? I’m close.” Ester spoke in a breathy voice, clearly in the process of reaching her peak.
“Devorah.” He said her name quietly and then scrambled off Ester, taking the sheet with him and leaving her naked as the day she was born.
Words failed her. The anger Devy thought she’d feel when she found her husband cheating on her didn’t come forward. Gut-wrenching pain and anguish did, along with tears. She covered her mouth in a failed attempt to stifle a sob and ran from the room.
Chad didn’t follow.
When Devy got outside, she bent at the waist and vomited all over Ester’s spring perennials, heaved in gulps of air, and choked. She felt a hand on her back and flinched. “Don’t touch me,” she screamed. “Don’t you dare touch me.”
“Devorah, lower your voice,” Chad said through gritted teeth. He looked around as if he was embarrassed by his wife losing the contents of her stomach in his mistress’s front yard. The irony of the situation was, if someone came outside and saw his rumpled shirt and messed-up hair, they’d know what he was doing there. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to see what was going on.
“Don’t you dare tell me to lower my voice.” Devy stood, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and looked into her husband’s brown eyes. He was full of shit; that’s what everyone always said about him. Chad Campbell is full of shit. You can see it in his eyes. She never could. She was blinded by love. Devy had fallen for him at the beginning of their junior year of high school and never looked back. Smitten by his charm and good looks. He’d always kept his brown hair short and gelled off to the side. The wild mane before her was a result of fingers brushing through it. She’d done it more times than she could count and loved how he looked after they’d made love. And now he’d allowed someone else to do it. That someone being her best friend.
“We’ll talk about this at home.”
“Why wait?” She raised her voice and threw her hands up in the air.
The front door opened. Ester, with her long blond hair and lean legs, stood against the door casing, wearing a short pink silk bathrobe. Devy knew in her heart there wasn’t anything she could say or do to save her marriage. Chad had already made his choice.
Devy looked at the ground. Her freshly painted toenails matched the color of Ester’s robe. It was a color Chad had mentioned he liked on her.
My bad for assuming he meant me.
“Where are your shoes?” he asked her.
She let out a strangled cry. “You know, I’m not really sure. I think they’re somewhere between here and the video I saw of my best friend admitting to sleeping with my husband. It’s pretty high quality,” she told him. “Do you want to see it?”
Chad said nothing. His expression didn’t even change.
Devy looked at her best—now former—friend. She wasn’t sure why. Maybe an explanation for the utter humiliation, betrayal, and hurt she and Chad had caused her.
Instead, Ester spoke. “He loves me, Dev.”
Devorah’s eyes met Chad’s. He didn’t break eye contact. “It’s true. I’ve fallen in love with her.”
“How long has this been going on?”
Chad looked around. Devy didn’t care if any of Ester’s neighbors came outside.
“How long, Chad?” she screamed.
“A year,” he told her under his breath. “Look, I’m sorry, Dev. I love her, and I’m moving in with her.”
“Wonderful, thanks for letting me know you planned to destroy our family with my best friend,” she muttered as she stepped around her mess in the yard and headed toward her car. It was a good thing her heart was already broken because watching her husband reach for Ester was enough to break Devy in half. He hadn’t even waited for her to pull away from the curb before he’d gone back to his mistress.
Two
Hayden
Hayden McKenna dropped the speed of his dually truck to a crawl at twenty miles an hour when he pulled within the city limits of Oyster Bay, his hometown and a place he never thought he’d move back to. The once-a-year visits had been plenty to appease his parents, especially since they preferred to travel now that they were both retired and had nothing holding them down.
He drove across the bridge slowly, angling his head in every direction to make sure the camper he towed behind his truck had clearance. Normally, once he was across, he’d turn right and head through the heart of town, but with the size of his truck and the extra cargo behind him, he was liable to get stuck. With no choice but to take the long way around, Hayden readjusted in his seat once he’d cleared the bridge and mentally calculated another fifteen minutes to the piece of land he’d bought a few months back. There he’d unhitch and then head to his parents’ place, even though it was getting late.