Page 83 of For the Record

“Yes.”

I sucked in a shuddery breath and knew my tears weren’t going to stay in for much longer. I was an angry crier, no matter how badly I didn’t want to be. I wore my heart on my sleeve. Adam used to say he loved that about me. But even that memory felt burned too.

“Why, Adam?” I hated how upset I sounded. How weak. “Why couldn’t you just tell me?”

I wanted to ask how too. When, exactly? I wanted to ask every question that bounced around in my head, but the biggest one was why.

“I was going to.” He moved closer to me, reaching a single hand out, his forearm tattoo peeking out at me, then one with our initials on it with that stupid record. God, I was an idiot. I flinched back, and he winced, dropping his arm. “I had plans to tell you and to give you time, I just—”

“Had to wait over a year?”

“No, I just thought it would—I don’t know, Rachel. I thought it would ruin things. I’ve never exactly been open with how I feel, and it kind of backfired in a way I didn’t expect.”

A loud, booming, sarcastic laugh jumped out of me as I crossed my arms.

He continued. “I needed to help. I didn’t want to make things weird for you.”

“You lied to me for almost our entire friendship and our entire marriage because you thought telling me the truth would be…weird?”

“Not our entire friendship, just the last six months of it. And I didn’t lie. I —”

“Lying by omission is still lying,” I spat.

It was too late for me to stop them. Fat, heavy tears started falling down my cheeks, and even as I aggressively wiped them away, my hands shook in anger.

“These are angry tears.” I pointed at my face to clarify. “Not sad ones.”

“I know, hon—” He cut himself off abruptly, knowing his little honey trick was useless.

“So you are this out-of-state investor that I always heard little comments about?” I used my fingers to make quotation marks.

He dipped his chin. “I was technically out of state when I bought into it.”

“So when I came complaining to you about our out-of-date systems and then they magically got replaced a month later?”

He stayed silent, eyes laser focused on my collarbone.

I gasped as the next thought barreled into my head. “And my raise?” My voice was breaking, shattering into tiny pieces, too tiny to pick up and put together again. “The one I was so, so proud of. That was you?” My hand covered my mouth, my fingers shaking against it.

Adam stuck a hand out in defense, and a line formed between his brows. “No, I just—”

“What? Signed off on it?”

His eyes fell to the floor, and his lips formed a tight line. That was a yes, then.

I sniffled as my tears fell harder, my heart breaking again and again as I looked around the shell of the place I loved so dearly. The place that now just felt like…a facade. A movie set where nothing was ever real. It felt like a twisted version of The Truman Show.

I stuck a hand out to him. “My keys.”

I hated that I even had to ask him for them. It was my freaking car.

He stuck a hand into his sweatpants pocket and froze. “I don’t think you should drive while you’re upset.”

“And I don’t think anything of your opinion right now. Keys.”

He flinched back. A part of me wanted to take it back so badly, but the damage was done. Good. Maybe he’d feel an ounce of what I did.

He handed me my keys, and I walked right out of the door, only feeling slightly guilty that I was leaving him without a ride. He had siblings, family, friends. I’d lost all of that in an instant. Did they know too? Layla? No. There was no way. She would have told me. Someone, one of them, would have told me.

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