Page 7 of Never Less

“I could tell something was off between the two of you.”

I wince. “That obvious?”

Marcus nods, chuckling a little.

“I’m… not really supposed to say.”

Narrowing his eyes, Marcus leans back on his hands. “Why? What’d he do?”

“He… I really shouldn’t.”

“Liliana,” Marcus says, the firmness in his tone taking me by surprise. “If my son doesn’t want you to talk about the shit ways he treats you, then he should be a better fucking boyfriend.”

I swallow. Marcus is right, and I know it. But if Nate finds out, he’ll be so fucking mad. The little progress we’ve made will completely unravel.

“I can keep a secret, Liliana. You know I can.”

I think it over for a second that bleeds into a full-on minute of silence. As patient as always, Marcus waits, slowly kicking his feet in the water.

“It’d be nice to talk to someone about it,” I say, my voice even quieter than before. “It’s…”

Embarrassing. And though I appreciate my friends’ input, they all immediately told me to leave Nate. I think Marcus will have a more balanced perspective.

And I don’t think he’ll judge me or even come close to agreeing with his son’s line of thinking. The two of them are so different, and I saw the way he looked at me while I came down the stairs. “Undesirable” is never a word he’d use to describe me.

“I thought it was because of how much I was working,” I say, not bothering to hide the hurt in my voice. “We both agreed after graduation that we wanted to focus on our careers. Hit the ground running and make names for ourselves, you know? That’s what everyone says your twenties are for.”

Marcus’s eyes stay on me as he tilts his head, a small frown taking over his features. He doesn’t say anything, though. Just waits for me to figure out where I want to take this.

“We both encouraged each other to do things to further our careers. It’s why Nate takes work trips twice a month. And him doing that gave me more time to work on my business. With him gone every other weekend, I got a lot of work done without sacrificing time with him. And it worked—or at least, I thought it was working.

“But then Nate started acting differently. He started working later than we agreed, and he was distant when he was home. We went from always talking and laughing over dinner to basically eating in silence. I couldn’t figure out why, and whenever I asked, he just told me he was tired.”

“Was that the actual reason?” Marcus asks.

“No. I mean, maybe a little. We were okay with prioritizing our careers over each other every once in a while, but I think things got out of hand. And by the time I realized, it was too late. At least… that’s a small part of it.”

“And the big part?” he asks gently.

I lower my gaze. “He’s been cheating on me ever since graduation. I found out about a month ago.”

“He’s been what?”

“It’s his business trips,” I say, my face still tilted down toward the water. “The coworker he usually goes with—they just clicked, I guess. He told me I didn’t have to worry about her, but my initial suspicions were right. I let it go for so long because I didn’t really have any proof other than jealousy.

“Initially when I found out, I thought it was a more recent thing. Like, he’d only been seeing her for a couple months, so I blamed myself for not giving him enough attention. But turns out, this has been going on since he started his job after college.”

“He’s been cheating on you since graduation,” Marcus states, his tone flat.

I nod. “And back then, I thought we were fine. We were going on dates every night. We were happy. We were—”

Having amazing sex all the time.

I shake my head. “I don’t understand why he felt like I wasn’t enough, you know? And when I found out, it was awful. We had such a big fight about it. Well, not about the cheating—about me leaving. I was going to, but… god, I didn’t want to, Marcus. I wanted to try to make things work again. I wanted him to try. And I know—”

“Liliana.”

“—I’ve been working a lot lately, and it’s taken up a lot of my energy. I’m still me, just… not as fun, I guess. And our hobbies have never matched up, but I thought we’d found a happy medium. I thought—”

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