“And the grandparents story?” I asked, voice oddly steady now.
“I was scared,” he whispered. “I panicked. I knew you… I knew if you thought I’d done nothing wrong, you’d stay. You’d fight for me. And if you knew the truth…”
“I might have left,” I finished.
He nodded again, like he’d been waiting fifteen years for the sentence to land.
And that—more than the affair, more than Jenna’s betrayal, more than anything—was the thing that cracked me open.
Because it wasn’t just that he cheated.
It was that he stole my choice.
He let me burn my life down for him based on a lie. He let me choose him over my parents without giving me the facts that might’ve changed everything.
