Page 5 of The Breaking Point

I don’t back down even though my heart is breaking. “That’s not a denial.”

His gaze softens, pleading now. “It was once, Kate. I was drunk, scared about the wedding. The guys dared me, so I just...”

I cut him off. “You just what?”

He swallows hard, voice barely a whisper. “I slept with her.”

“Sleeping implies a bed.” I don’t know how my voice gets so cold, so sharp it could cut glass.

“Please,” he whispers, desperate.

I don’t answer. Instead, I turn and move toward the sofa, letting myself sink into the cushions, the cold leather pressing against my skin like reality itself. “Tell me. From the start.”

He opens his mouth, eyes narrowing, ready to argue or deflect, but I cut him off before he can.

“If you don’t want me here, if you don’t want me to walk out that door and out of this marriage, you will tell me everything. Every damn detail about the night you fucked a stripper.”

The silence stretches between us, thick and suffocating. His jaw tightens, hands trembling slightly as he runs them through his dark hair. I keep waiting. Not just for the words, but for the truth, the part he’s been hiding from me for ten years.

Swallowing hard, Aiden finally speaks. “It wasn’t supposed to happen. I didn’t know it was going to happen. The guys egged me on. I was drunk, confused. She… she was there, and I just… I lost control.”

I don’t flinch, though every nerve screams. “Whose idea was it to go to the strip club?”

He shakes his head slowly. “No ones, we were at the bar, getting rowdy drunk when the bouncer told us to leave, that we were disrupting the customers. So, we just left, the strip club was right across the street and we just… stumbled in.” I guess he stumbled into her vagina too.

“I was already drunk; we had more drinks at the club. The guy’s got lap dances but I said no.” he looks proud of that, like I'm supposed to thank him.

“This woman… stripper kept running her hands through my shoulders, offering me a free dance. She came onto me. The guyswere ribbing me, said how I’d only ever been with one woman. They kept ordering drinks, the same woman kept bringing them over.” Aiden looks stressed, he never expected he’d have to tell me this. He has to.

“I told them I was ready to leave, but they said not until I got a private dance. They told her to take me to the back room. I swear… okay I swear I thought it was just going to be a dance.” He shakes his head, “The guys kept pushing me, said I wasn’t man enough to follow her, that we weren’t leaving until I did. I was so drunk, so pissed that I got up and I followed her.” He stops like it’s the end of his confession.

“And then.”

He looks at me, pleading but I don’t give an inch. “I got to the back room; she pulled me in and locked the door. She pushed me to the couch and before I knew it, I.. I.”

I finish for him, “You fucked her.”

Aiden gets on his knees in front of me, grabbing my hands, “I regretted it as soon as it happened. I was going to tell you the next day but I couldn’t. I swore it would never happen again and it didn’t. whatever she told you, is a lie.”

“Did you wear a condom?” I ask. He got a vasectomy after we had our second unexpected baby at Twenty.

“What?”

“When you fucked her, did you stop and put on a condom.” I repeat.

“Yes.” He looks down.

“Did you bring it or did she?”

“She did.”

“Did she suck you off?” I ask

He says “Why does it matter?”

I just stare at him until he says, “No.”

I push off the sofa, away from him, “So, you went to a strip club and were goaded by your friends into following a stripper who just had to have you so much so that she kept coming onto you.” I start pacing, “You followed her into a back room and were apparently drunk enough to be manipulated but not so drunk that you couldn’t get it up without help.” I stop pacing, turning to him. “Did I get that right?”

---