5. Tests Have An End

The world tilted on its axis. She could hear her heart beating like an angry drum. There was a pitched ringing in her ears. Each breath she took was more painful than the last, like an elderly whale was sitting on her chest. She looked at her husband through a blurry film.

“What?” Her voice was just above a whisper.

Surely, she’d heard him wrong.

“There is no way on this earth I will ever touch you again,” Rafael told her frankly. “So, one way or the other, we go our own ways.”

He watched Adrea open her mouth and close it. She was pale, deathly pale. Her eyes were crammed with pain and unshed tears. He felt a rousing of sympathy within him. Images of her in bed with his brother extinguished that emotion and replaced it with something else... anger and pain. He could never forget the sight of her brother kissing her neck and her holding him close.

He was not blind to her pain. He was hurting too. All because of her. Because of what she did. Her selfish desires were what drove them here. He hardened his heart against her.

He had promised her father that he would take care of her. If he was an honest man, he would admit that he had no choice; he would do it. But he would not be her husband. Maybe on paper and in front of the world and their families, but he was not a man who cared for what everyone else had had a chance to sample. He was not a man who took betrayal and forgave it.

He had thought she was better than that. He had trusted her to be better than that. She was not. He had to move on. This was the only way forward for them.

She blinked, and a tear rolled down her cheek. She swiped it away swiftly. But another rolled down the other cheek, and as much as she tried, her hands were not enough to stop that flood. With an ache in his heart, Rafael rose to his feet.

“I will give you time to think about it,” Rafael said to her before walking out of the room.

As heavy as her heart was, so was each step he took away from her. It took the last strength and will in him to not turn around and fold her into his arms. He could not do that. He would never do that again.

She could not stop the tears, as hard as she tried. She sat there for who knows how long, with tears streaming down her face and a scream itching up her throat, but she would not let it out. She would keep that in her head—a loud, wounded sound bouncing around her cranium. If she let it out, all it would give her was exposure to the shame that came after and none of the salvation she needed.

She lifted her legs to the couch below her and hugged them. So, this was it. She was judged guilty and now had to choose her sentence. That was the little mercy he gave her. He would not listen to her. He did not care what she had to say. All he was going to live on was what he saw and what his brother said. Nothing she said would change the future. Absolutely nothing. Not even her innocence. She was charged with a crime she didn’t commit. And he was living by the rule that every criminal says they are innocent. He forgot that the innocent plead innocent too.

It hurt. But there was nothing she could do. She had to accept her fate and live with it. But that was hard. Even a fish at the end of a line struggled to get free. How could she not? But then again, struggle was always fruitless. At the end of the day, if the fisherman deemed it so, the fish ended up on a plate. She was no different. There was no use struggling.

She saw it now. There was no use struggling. She needed to work with what she had. He had given her a choice: divorce or an open marriage. She could not divorce him. Not without risking her inheritance. He knew that. He had, in truth, given her one choice—an open marriage. She did not see him as a polygamous man. Surely, he was just trying to punish her. Or it was a test. She decided she preferred to think of it as a test or punishment rather than the end. It gave her hope. Because punishments and tests have an end. And at the end… She did not know what came at the end. Maybe forgiveness and understanding. One of the two was better.

One day, he might forgive her. For now, she would bow her head and take her punishment like a good girl. After all, it was her wilfulness that got her to this point in time.

Daylight gave way to night, and Adrea was still in the living room when Rafael came back. When he did, he looked a little green, and he was struggling to walk in a straight line.

He had been drinking. She wondered if he needed a hand navigating the stairs. She thought about asking him but resisted. He would not want her help. She was probably dirty in his eyes. She watched him stumble past her and to the stairs. He took his time clinging to the banister as he went up. She only looked away when he was out of sight. She felt the ache in her chest as she heard a door open and shut behind him.

What was she supposed to do? She had never felt so lost in her entire life. She was all cried out, and she was so exhausted.

Realising that she could not spend the entire night on that couch, she got to her feet. She might have gotten up too quickly because she swayed on her feet. A hand on the back of the couch helped her steady herself. Feeling a little lightheaded, she made her way to her room and went to the spare bedroom she feared she would call hers for a very long time.

She shut the door behind herself, and tears she did not know she’d had began to flow. She moved away from the door and put a hand to her mouth to muffle the animalistic sounds clawing out of it.

As she sat at the edge of her bed, she was sure of one thing. Her marriage was over. The life that she thought she’d had was over. There was nothing she could do, and there was no one to help her save it. She was alone in the world again.

When her father was alive, she could go to him with her problems. But he was gone. She did not have him to cry to. She had thought that her husband could fill that void. She had thought that he would be her new family. But she did not have that anymore. She did not think that she could ever have that again. Unless Felix told the truth, she had no one and nothing. Felix was not going to tell the truth. She saw that now.