Chapter 2

~CLAIRE POV~

The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the beeping.

Steady, rhythmic, electronic. Like a metronome keeping time with my heartbeat. The second thing I noticed was the smell….that sharp, clean scent of disinfectant that could only mean one place.

Hospital.

I tried to sit up, but a sharp pain in my side made me gasp and fall back against the pillows. My mouth felt like cotton, and there were tubes in my arm connected to bags of clear liquid hanging from a metal pole.

What happened? How did I get here?

Then it all came rushing back like a tidal wave.

Monica on top of Richard. Our bed. The betrayal. The way Richard looked at me like I was nothing. The room spinning, my knees hitting the floor, darkness swallowing me whole.

I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping it had all been a nightmare. But when I opened them again, I was still in this sterile white room with machines beeping around me and an IV drip in my arm.

"You're awake."

I turned my head toward the voice, and my heart did something stupid…it jumped with hope. Maybe Richard was here because he was worried.

Maybe he had realized what a terrible mistake he had made. Maybe….

But the man standing in the doorway was not the Richard I had fallen in love with.

This Richard wore an expensive suit and a face that belonged in a boardroom, not a hospital room where his wife was recovering from... from what?

"What happened to me?" I asked, my voice coming out as a croak.

"Appendicitis." He stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. "Emergency surgery. The doctor said you were lucky I brought you in when I did."

Lucky. I almost laughed, but it would have hurt too much. Luckily my husband found me unconscious on our bedroom floor after I caught him cheating with my best friend.

Luckily he bothered to call an ambulance instead of just stepping over me.

"How long have I been here?"

"Eighteen hours." Richard sat down in the chair next to my bed, but he might as well have been sitting on the moon for all the warmth in his posture.

His back was straight, his hands folded in his lap like he was waiting for a business meeting to start.

"Richard." I reached for his hand, but he pulled it away before I could touch him. "We need to talk about what happened. About Monica. About us."

Something flashed across his face, but it was gone so fast I might have imagined it.

"You're right," he said. "We do need to talk."

Relief flooded through me. Thank God. He wanted to work this out. We could get through this. Marriages survived infidelity all the time.

We could go to counseling, we could….

Richard pulled an envelope from his jacket and set it on the bedside table.

My heart stopped.

"What is that?" I whispered, even though some part of me already knew. Some part of me had been preparing for this moment since I saw the coldness in his eyes yesterday.

"Divorce papers." His voice was steady, businesslike. "My lawyer had them drawn up this morning."

The words hit me like a physical blow. I flinched, my hand flying to my chest where it felt like something was tearing apart.

"Divorce papers," I repeated because surely I had misheard.

Surely my husband of three years was not sitting in my hospital room, while I was recovering from emergency surgery, handing me divorce papers.

"I want this done quickly and quietly," he continued like he was discussing a merger or a stock trade. "No messy custody battles, no drawn-out proceedings. Clean and simple."

I stared at him, searching his face for any trace of the man I had married. The man who used to bring me coffee in bed every Sunday morning.

The man who used to dance with me in the kitchen while dinner was cooked. The man who used to tell me I was the most beautiful woman in the world.

"Richard, please." My voice broke on his name. "Yesterday morning you told me you loved me. You kissed me goodbye. You said you'd be home for dinner."

"Yesterday morning I was trying to be kind."

Kind. He thought lying to me was kind.

"I don't understand," I whispered. "What about our marriage? What about the life we built together? What about….”

"What life?" The question came out sharp, cutting. "You mean the life where you hover around me like a lost puppy? Where you have no friends except Monica, no interests except whatever I am interested in, no identity except being Mrs. Richard Blackwood?"

Each word was a knife twisting deeper into my chest. Was that really how he saw me? As some pathetic creature with no life of my own?

"I love you," I said desperately. "I have always loved you. I thought you loved me too."

"I thought I did." He leaned back in the chair, completely relaxed, like we were discussing the weather. "But love isn't supposed to feel like suffocation, Claire. Love isn't supposed to make you feel trapped."

Trapped. He felt trapped by my love.

"I never tried to trap you," I argued. "I just wanted to make you happy. I wanted to be a good wife."

"A good wife has her own life. A good wife does not make her husband feel guilty every time he works late or goes out with friends. A good wife does not hang on every word like she's dying of thirst and he's the only water in the desert."

My face burned with shame. Is that what I had been doing? Had I been so desperate for his attention, so afraid of losing him, that I had become exactly what he was describing?

"Monica is everything you're not," he continued, his voice never changing, never showing any emotion at all. "She's independent. She has her own career, her own friends, and her own interests. She does not need me to validate her existence."

Monica. My best friend. The woman who had held me while I cried about feeling disconnected from my husband.

The woman who had told me that Richard was just going through a stressful period at work. The woman who had encouraged me to be more understanding, more patient, more helpful.

Had she been planning this all along? Had every conversation we had about my marriage been her gathering information, figuring out exactly how to steal my husband away from me?

"How long?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.

"What?"

"How long have you been sleeping with her?"

Richard's jaw tightened. For the first time since he had walked into this room, he looked uncomfortable.

"That's not important."

"It is to me." I tried to sit up straighter, ignoring the pain in my side. "How long have you been lying to me? How long have you been coming home to me after being with her?"

"Six months."

Six months. Half a year of betrayal. Half a year of lies. Half a year of him kissing me goodnight with the same mouth he had been using to kiss her.

"Six months," I repeated numbly. "Since your promotion."

"Since I realized what I really wanted in life." He stood up, straightening his tie. "And it's not this, Claire. It's not you."

The words landed like a physical blow. I actually gasped, my hand flying to my chest.

"Sign the papers," he said, his tone final. "The settlement is generous. More than generous. You'll be able to buy a nice condo somewhere, start over."

Start over. Like three years of marriage could just be erased. Like the life we had built together was nothing more than a rough draft that could be crumpled up and thrown away.

"What if I don't sign?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

"Then I will challenge it. I will drag this through the courts for years. I will make sure everyone knows exactly why our marriage failed." His blue eyes…the eyes I had once thought were the most beautiful thing in the world….went ice cold.

"Do you really want the world to know how pathetic and clingy you were? How you drove your husband into another woman's arms?"

The threat hung in the air between us like poison. He would do it. I could see it in his face. He would destroy what little dignity I had left if I did not give him what he wanted.

"Monica and I are getting married," he said like it was an afterthought. "As soon as the divorce is final. I thought you should hear it from me."

Married. They were getting married.

In the house that was supposed to be mine, wearing the dress I had helped her pick out for her cousin's wedding just last month, promising each other forever the way Richard and I had once done.

I looked down at my left hand, at the wedding ring that had lived there for three years. The ring Richard had slipped onto my finger while he promised to love and cherish me until death do us part.

I twisted it off my finger and held it out to him.

"Take it," I whispered.

He stared at the ring for a long moment, and for just a second, I thought I saw something crack in his carefully controlled face.

But then he took the ring and slipped it into his pocket without a word.

"The papers need to be signed and notarized by Friday," he said, back to his businesslike tone. "My assistant will arrange for someone to come here if you're not discharged by then."

He walked to the door, then paused with his hand on the handle.

"For what it's worth, Claire, I'm sorry it ended this way. But we both know this is for the best."

The door closed behind him with a soft click that sounded like the end of everything I had ever believed in.

I stared at the envelope until my vision blurred with tears. Then I reached for it with shaking hands and pulled out the papers. Richard's signature was already there, bold and confident next to his name.

All I had to do was sign mine, and three years of marriage would be over.

Three years of love and dreams and building a life together, were reduced to a legal document that would break up our union like it had never existed at all.

I picked up the pen the lawyer had left with the papers.

My hand trembled as I brought it to the signature line. Claire Blackwood, I started to write, then stopped.

That was not my name anymore, was it? I was not Mrs. Richard Blackwood. I was just Claire. Claire nobody. Claire with no identity except the one I had lost when I had given up everything to be his wife.

I set the pen down and closed my eyes.

Somewhere in this hospital, there were other women recovering from surgery. Women with husbands who held their hands and brought them flowers and whispered words of love and comfort.

Women whose marriages were real, whose love was valued, whose hearts were not being ripped out of their chests by the very person who was supposed to protect them.

But I was not one of those women.

I was Claire, the woman who was not  enough. The woman who loved too much. The woman who was so pathetic and clingy that her husband could not wait to escape her.

I opened my eyes and picked up the pen again.

This time, I signed.