"She's right. That boy is in our class. His dad is wonderful. He shows up for every family day to spend time with his son."
The crowd erupted. Fingers pointed. Voices sharpened into blades, all aimed at me.
As if I really were something shameless. Something low.
"His father doesn't want you. Why are you still clinging to him?"
"Disgusting. She's a complete psycho!"
"Look at her. A washed-up nobody trying to steal someone else's man!"
Aileen's son charged at me and kicked me hard in the shin. I nearly fell.
"Get away from my daddy, you evil woman!"
I stood in the center of it all, surrounded, every finger pointed at my face, every mouth spitting venom.
"She's the mistress!" I blurted out. "That boy is illegitimate!"
The words tumbled out in a desperate rush.
No one listened.
My heart went cold. All the way through.
Maybe this was how the world worked. The shameless survived. The shameless thrived.
I was the real wife. The innocent one.
And somehow I'd become the villain in everyone's eyes.
Then Jayden came running over.
I looked up at him, holding on to something fragile and impossible to name. Hope, maybe. A sliver of it, already cracked down the middle.
I hoped he would say one thing for me.
Just one thing.
"It's not what it looks like."
That would have been enough. Enough to prove that the years I'd spent loving him, giving everything I had, weren't completely worthless.
But he didn't.
He rushed past me and pulled Aileen behind him, shielding her with his body.
His voice dropped. Gentle. Tender.
"Are you okay? Don't be scared. I'm here."
It was a softness I had never once heard from him.
Then he turned to me. Shoved me so hard I stumbled backward.
His voice came out vicious, his finger jabbing at my face.
"What the hell is wrong with you? Get lost! I'm telling you right now, you and I will never happen. Aileen is the only woman I love!"
His eyes looked like he wanted me dead.
The pointed fingers, the shouting, the contempt from every direction. Each one was a knife sliding between my ribs, and the pain was blinding.
He wrapped his arm around Aileen and her son, guiding them away, shielding them like something precious.
Aileen glanced back at me over his shoulder.
And smiled. The smile of someone who had already won.
The insults kept coming, wave after wave, but the sound had turned hollow and distant. I stood alone in the middle of it all.
Even breathing hurt.