Page 37 of My Wife

“Easy. Chase told me.”

“Did he know?—”

“That I was alive?” Clay provides.

Again with the obvious: “Well, you’re not dead.”

He’s notdead.

“Of course not.” He bangs his plastic mask against his thigh. “There’s a reason I keep this on, babe?—”

“I’m not your babe,” I snap. “Not anymore. You died.” I saw the crime scene photos. I begged and sobbed until Detective O’Halloran felt sorry for me and let me see them. The blood… “Youdied, Clay.”

“Then call me fucking Lazarus because I’m back.” He moves closer to me, reaching out, fisting the air when I stumble away from him. “I’m back for you, Cyn. For revenge. And nothing is going to keep me from you again.”

No. What?No.

Revenge? For what? For Chase trying to force me to suck his dick when I was seventeen? For Vee… fucking Vee… planting theidea in his drunken head that I might actually cheat on Tommy withhim? For Summer using SA to break Tommy and me up?

If all that is true, then why the fuck doesClaycare? He left me. I can’t even bring myself to ask why because then I’ll have to face what I think I always knew: death could steal my husband from me, but if he didn’t die, then that meant I wasn’t important enough.

That I was never important?—

“And you’ve been holding onto that for how long?’ Did he just find out? Is that why he came back? He moved on, lived his life, but a tiny bit of leftover affection turned him into this?

Into a masked killer on a secluded island, days before Halloween?

“Does it matter?”

He has no idea how mucheverythingmatters to me.

The old Clay would have. But this new one?

“For how fucking long?” I ask again.

His expression is one of daring. Of defiance. “For as long as it took to make sure I could get the perfect revenge for you.”

“So you killed all my old high school friends? What next?” I demand. “Me?”

His lips curve. “How’s Tommy, Cyn?”

All of my defiance dies a death even quicker than the others when he asks me that.

He moves a few steps closer. “I knew you’d end up with him, ya know. You’ve always loved him. Didn’t you, baby?”

I lovedClay.

“You left me.” My words are softer than I intended them to be, full of pain even if I’d rather conceal it.

He hardens his jaw. “I had to.”

No. He didn’t.

He steps closer. I stumble back again. “Clay… what happened to you?”

“Very simple. I wanted my wife. I couldn’t have her. Not yet. I had to fuckingwait. But I know you, Cyn. You’d throw it in my face that I had to leave at all.”

“You didn’t have to?—”

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