For a moment, things were peaceful. I stopped looking for proof. I stopped expecting the worst.
I let myself believe we were healing. And that’s when everything fell apart.
I didn’t even mean it the first time I flirted with someone else. He was a guy close to my family growing up—familiar, kind, attentive. That was all it took. I left Cole that same weekend because who was I to ask someone to love me after I’d crossed that line?
We were separated for about a month. After long talks, I truly believed we could fix things. And for a while, it felt like we did. He paid attention to us. He touched me. He talked to me. He loved me. Things got so good I stopped snooping.
Then, slowly, everything slid right back to where it had been—only worse. Every argument ended with my mistake thrown in my face, no matter how much I tried to make things right.
I asked for a divorce. I was okay with ending it because I knew we couldn’t heal like this. But I fucking loved Cole, and I didn’t yet know how to stop wanting what I’d been conditioned to want. He refused the divorce and insisted we could work through it. So we tried.
Around that time, Betty got pregnant and Cole’s brother flipped out. She moved in with us—sleeping in my room with me and Little Cole while my husband took the couch. His mom and sisters filled the rest of the house. I don’t know how I missed it, but during that time, Cole and Betty grew close.
Too close.
On my birthday, he kissed her while “fixing her muffler.”
I found out one morning when I went to wake Cole for work. A text popped up under a coworker’s name. I checked it in case it was a call-off. It wasn’t. It was Betty.
My heart dropped. I took the phone into the bathroom and read everything—every message, every picture, every ounce of affection I had begged for now being given to my best friend. The same friend I let live in my home.
I walked into the living room, threw his phone at him, and slapped him across the face. Then I went back to my room, woke Betty up, and told her to get out.
After that, I never trusted another woman who wasn’t related to me again.
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