I felt Simone’s hands on my shoulders the second I walked through the door Wednesday evening, her embrace warm and familiar after thirteen years of marriage. Then she went completely still. “Ethan,” her voice came out strange and flat, devoid of the usual warmth, “what is this?”
I turned, confused by the sudden shift in her tone.
“What’s what?”
She stepped back as if I’d burned her, staring at my shirt collar like it had personally betrayed her, and her finger pointed with trembling precision. There, when I looked down, was a smudge of something peachy-bronze dragged across the white fabric near my shoulder—makeup, foundation maybe, definitely not Simone’s shade. She wore barely-there neutral tones that matched her olive complexion, nothing this warm or obvious.
My stomach twisted into a knot. “I don’t know,” I said, pulling at the shirt, trying to see it from every angle as if a different perspective would make it disappear. “I have no idea how that got there.”
Simone’s face went completely pale, all the blood draining away until she looked like a ghost of herself.
Her jaw set in that particular way it did when she was trying desperately not to cry, a tell I’d learned to recognize over sixteen years together. “You don’t know.”
“Simone, I swear—”
“Don’t.” She held up her hand like a barrier between us, her wedding ring catching the light. “Just don’t.”
She walked past me into the bedroom and closed the door with a soft click that somehow felt louder than a slam, and I stood in the hallway with my shirt collar pinched between my fingers, staring at that impossible stain like it could offer me answers.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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