I recalled it taking a bit to get the news. I’d checked with Kalea a few times a week since our visit to see if our results were back yet, and she kept saying that they hadn’t called.
Learning I had low sperm count was… Well, I wasn’t sure what. I felt like I should feel something—disappointment, frustration, emasculation—but at the moment, all I felt was surprised. It might hit me harder later.
Then a thought occurred to me that turned my surprise into sickening rage. “Did you fuck another man to ‘protect’ me from finding out I have low sperm count? Did you honestly think my ego was so fucking fragile that you needed to go out and fuck another man just to get pregnant?”
Kalea shook her head so quickly that her hair got caught in her gaping mouth and she had to push it back out. “No! No! God, no!”
I wasn’t sure if that made me feel better or worse. “Continue,” I instructed when she didn’t.
Kalea rubbed the back of her neck. “Like I said, it was a weird coincidence. Right after I got that call, there was a knock on our back door.” She looked over her shoulder like she wanted to verify the door was still there. “A man was at the door.”
My eyes narrowed. “And you opened it?”
She licked her lips, straightening in her chair again. “He told me things. Things that scared me.”
“What things?” I growled, clasping my hands together on the table in front of me. “Who the fuck was it?”
But she shook her head. “Heknewthings, things I didn’t want anyone else to know. And… And he promised to keep his mouth shut so long,” her voice got lower and lower, “as I slept with him.”
I stared at her, my brain not comprehending. Was she sayingwhat I thought she was saying? That Pua’smakuakaneblackmailed his way into her, our, bed?
“I didn’t want to,” her chin trembled so badly that her words were almost undiscernible. “I begged… I kept praying you would walk through the door… But he wouldn’t… He didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. I either slept with him or he would talk.” Her teeth were chattering now between each word. “So I slept with him.”
I got up from the table. The chair scraping angrily across the tile floor. I didn’t go far, just paced between the table and the fridge for several long minutes as my brain tried to process what I’d just been told. Kalea had been raped—I didn’t give a fuck if legally it was considered sexual extortion—she’d been fuckingraped. Right here in our fuckinghome. Possibly in ourmarriage bed. And I hadn’t known. I had no idea. Rage surged through me, and I knew I was going to end up with blood on my hands before the end of the day.
“Who?” My voice wasn’t much better than hers, but whereas she felt misplaced shame, I felt wrath.
But Kalea just shook her head again.
“WHO!” I bellowed, not giving a damn if Mrs. Mahoe across the street could hear me.
And still, she shook her head.
I grabbed the chair I’d been sitting in and threw it against the kitchen wall. It shattered, sending splinters and chunks of wood everywhere. Kalea jumped and the wall clock that was in the shape of a fucking bird house that I had always thought so fucking ugly crashed down to the table. I had no idea if it was damaged, and I didn’t give a damn if it was.
My voice was nowhere near under control as I asked again, “Who?”
“I… I can’t tell you that,” she stammered.
I did not have the emotional maturity to go round and round with her again about the difference between “can’t” and “won’t”. “Then tell me what the fuck he has on you that you would rathersleepwith him than tell me?”
Kalea brought her feet up to her chair, wrapping her arms around her legs. Dropping her head down to her knees, she fucking shook her head again.
Pua’s booster seat went flying as yet another chair hit the wall. I shouted out my rage, my helplessness. “I was your fucking husband! It was my job to protect you! And you would rather make a cuckold out of me than tell me what the fuck you’re being blackmailed with?” I was aware it was a poor choice of words, that I was placing the blame where it did not belong, but the words still spewed from my mouth like vomit. “Who the fuck was it, Kalea?”
Maybe if I could find out who, I could then find out what. Or how. Fuck, or how manytimes.
My pacing froze mid-step at that thought. I rounded on her. “Was it just once?” When she didn’t respond, I reiterated, “How many times did he come to our home, Kalea? How many times did you kiss me and send me off to work like a fucking fool before you allowed that man into our home?”
The dam broke, and Kalea sobbed into her knees. Her shoulders shook as her arms tightened even more around her legs. Fuck!
I dropped my face into my hands, the heels of my palms digging into my eyes. I couldn’t… I needed to breathe. I needed to take a minute and get a hold of my anger. I was pointing fingers at her when she was the victim. Fuck, I was no better than those fucking bastards who claimed women needed to take responsibility for what they were wearing as to why they’d been raped. It didn’t matter the cause of the blackmail. It didn’t matter the guilt I felt for having failed to protect her.
Kalea hadn’t had an affair. She hadn’t been seduced by a man at a bar or been filled with mindful lust and slept with a neighbor. No, she’d been forced. Maybe not physically, maybe on some level she’d been compliant, but it made it no less rape.
I fell to my knees, the tile colliding with my kneecaps and shooting pain up my entire body. I didn’t give a fuck. For nearly two and a half years I had blamed Kalea for our failed marriage. Called her all sorts of wicked things, even if it was only inside my head. She’d broken my heart, and I’d walked away to save myself more pain.
I never stopped to consider if she was in any.