“Surely it didn’t start with a kiss. What led to it? It had to be something for that bitch to be staring ME down like I was with HER fucking husband earlier!”
“Bine—”
“TELL ME!”
Sighing, Adair gave in, “everybody went out for drinks…somehow it ended up being me and her and…we were talking, dancing and…it just happened.”
Sabine’s breathing slowed just enough to make room for more tears. She backed away further, her shirt damp, her arms sore, her soul stripped bare.
“Baby, I didn’t sleep with her?—”
“But you kissed her,” she snapped. “And you let her touch you. And you danced. And you laughed. And while I was in labor with our daughter, you were somewhere else smiling and shit with the bitch you told me I didn’t have nothing to worry about when I called her little inappropriate ass looks out BEFORE!”
“I was trying to protect you.”
“No! You were protecting you.”
“I didn’t want to make it worse. I thought if I told you the truth, it would’ve destroyed us.”
“It did!” she screamed, gesturing between them. “You just dragged out the funeral! We’re done, dead!”
Adair closed his eyes hating to see his wife like this.
“I stayed,” Sabine whispered, voice wobbling now. “Even after everything. I fucking stayed. You don’t even know what that took. What it cost me to forgive a man who couldn’t even tell me the truth about the night our baby died.”
Adair turned away, one hand running over his head. “I panicked,” he whispered. “I was selfish. wanted out. Just for a night. I wanted to not feel like I was suffocating.”
“Then you should’ve said that. You should’ve told me how heavy it all was. You should’ve fucking told me you were tired of me.”
“I was never tired of you,” he said quickly turning back to her. “I was tired of feeling like I couldn’t fix anything. Tired of failing you.”
“And you don’t think I was tired?” she shouted now. “You don’t think I was breaking in ways you couldn’t see? You chose to lie. You chose not to be there. And then you chose to pretend you were.”
Adair tried to step forward, but she backed up.His knees gave out like a man who’d taken a bullet, and he dropped to the floor with a thud that shook the room.
“I didn’t mean to,” he sobbed. “I didn’t mean to hurt you like that. I just didn’t know how to carry it and you. I failed you. I failed…her.”
Sabine folded onto the floor, opposite him. They didn’t touch. Didn’t look at each other.
Just sat.
In the ruin.
In the raw.
“I don’t even know who I am anymore,” she whispered, knees pulled to her chest. “I don’t know if I’m your wife. Your ex. Your fool. Your victim.”
“You’re none of those things,” Adair said. “You’re the woman I wake up missing every day. You’re the mother of my son. The mother of the daughter that I would give my life to get back. You’re the only person I ever loved this much.”
Sabine looked up, and something shifted in her expression—grief and rage giving way to exhaustion. That old exhaustion. The kind she knew too well. The kind that said: I want to be done fighting but I don’t know how to stop.
“I just needed the truth,” she whispered. “I needed to know I wasn’t crazy for feeling it. For knowing it. For seeing it in your eyes all this time.”
Silence.
Sabine stood first. Shaky. Quiet. She didn’t yell. Didn’t threaten. Just moved toward the hallway and paused near Ade’s door.
“I’m leaving tonight.”