A moment later, his tone softened, like he was sighing into the phone. “If only you’d been this compliant before, Elise, things could’ve turned out so differently.”
His words reached into my past, pulling out ghosts I thought I’d buried. In the five years of our marriage, countless women came to us.
The arguments.
The constant betrayals.
The parade of women who seemed to get a thrill from rubbing salt in my wounds.
The first time it happened, I lost it. I threw things around, screamed until my throat bled, and demanded answers.
But all I saw in his eyes was exhaustion.
And the same old tired excuses: 'It’s just work. I was just being polite. Nothing is going on. How often do I have to say it before you trust me?'
Apparently, I was the problem. The irrational one. The wife who couldn’t trust her husband.
So I did what I always did—I made myself question everything. Was I overreacting? Was I just too suspicious?
I apologized.
I humbled myself.
I begged.
And then, as if the universe was playing a cruel joke, the news broke.
A photo. Hayes, stepping into a hotel with some B-list celebrities.
I lost it again. Confronted him, but this time, there was no defense.
No excuses.
He just looked at me with an exhausted, almost pitying gaze. “Elise, do you really not trust me at all? If that’s how you feel, then fine. I’ll do what you want.”
And he did.
From then on, the mask came off.
No more lies. No more pretending. No more explanations. Every week, he was in the headlines with a different woman. I even caught him one night, his lips pressed against some woman in his car, like I didn’t even exist.
When I confronted him, he didn’t bother denying it.
Silence.
That was his answer.
In five years of marriage, I lost track of how many fights we had.
But I was so tired. So damn tired.
I thought about leaving, about walking away from this twisted version of love.
But my mom... she was fighting cancer, and her one wish was to see me happy.
She had suffered so much. How could I tell her the truth? How could I break her heart like that?
So I stayed.
I stopped looking. Stopped asking. Stopped reacting to the women who came to taunt me.
I convinced myself that if I just ignored it all, I could keep up the illusion. I could pretend to be fine.
Until that night.
The night she passed away.
Lying there, so frail and fragile, my mom's tear-filled eyes looked at me with a kind of resignation.