Page 32 of The Vow Thief
“We take the kids and stay in a hotel for the next two weeks.”
All I could do was blink.“Two weeks in a hotel?”
“Think about it,” Matt said, stepping closer.“Room service. Spa days. Indoor pool. No laundry. No staring at the walls in here, thinking about... her. You just pack a big suitcase. I’ll get the kids packed. We make it fun.”
I stared at him for a long second before I spoke.“Matt, I think it’s time for you to go back to your apartment.”
He blinked, like he hadn’t heard me right.“What?”
I kept my voice steady.“I want to pursue the divorce. I don’t want to keep dragging this out. I no longer want to pretend to have a good marriage. It’s not fair to either of us.”
He stood frozen in place, barely breathing.“Sarah, wait. Please. I need you to hear this. At first, yes, I stayed out of guilt. Out of obligation. I thought keeping the family together was the least I could do after what I destroyed. But somewhere in the middle of all of this, it changed. I changed. I’m not here because I have to be. I’m here because I want to be. I want to raise our kids together. I want to grow old with you.”
I felt it in my chest, the way his voice cracked on that last sentence. And I hated how much it still got to me.
“You should have thought about that,” I said,“before you invited an unhinged, obsessed little girl into our world.”
“I didn’t know who she was. I didn’t think...”
“No. You didn’t,” I snapped.“You wanted someone who made you feel alive again. Someone who wanted you. And that’s what I want too. I want someone who wants me the way you wanted Lily. Someone who has the choice and still chooses me. Someone who sees me.”
His face crumpled, and I kept going, because I had to.
“I don’t want to just be your casual rocking chair friend, Matt. I want passion. I want someone who pursues me. I want real love. Not someone who has to fuck someone else just to realize what he had.”
“I love you,” he whispered.
“I still love you, too. This is killing me, but I deserve better. I deserve the best. You didn’t just push me into second place. You moved to the back of the line when you fucked Lily. I will never settle for someone less than I deserve. Even if it takes me years to get over you. This is for me. Not us. The idea of us was left inside of Lily almost a year ago.”
I turned before he could say anything else, picked up my keys from the counter.
“I’m going to pick up the kids from school. I need you here when they walk through that door. I need you to be the one who tells them that you’re going back to your place.”
Then I walked out the front door.
I didn’t cry until I was in the car. And even then, it was short. I cried for what was lost, for what almost was. But then I pulled myself back together, wiped my eyes, and drove off to get the kids.
Chapter 16 - Don't Speak
Lily's POV
Four weeks in, I stopped speaking.
It started as a choice, then became the only thing that made sense. The walls didn’t answer anyway, and the guards only talked to hear themselves. Silence turned into armor. I realized quickly that it made people nervous. When you stop performing, they start wondering what you’re planning.
Sean Macon, the beautiful guard I’d been undressing in my head for weeks. The one with the voice that could cut glass and the face that made obedience sound like foreplay. He noticed before anyone else that I’d gone quiet. That I’d stopped smiling. That I was done putting on a show.
He had been the one who ignored me from the start, treating me like static in the air. When I greeted him, he never looked up. When I smiled, he kept walking. That silence used to feel cruel, but now I understood it. It was discipline. The kind that made a person dangerous.
He was steady and unreadable, the type of man who didn’t flinch when someone screamed. But lately, he lingered longer when he passed my cell. He didn’t say anything, but I could feel his eyes pause on me, studying the shape of what I had become.
He saw me wasting away.
The food here barely counted as edible, and I stopped pretending it was. Beans that bounced. Carrots that squeaked. Meat that might have been cardboard. I ate what I could force down, but the rest stayed on the tray, untouched. The guards joked about it. Sean didn’t.
He started signing me out for yard time again, quiet at first, just a flick of his hand toward the gate. Then library hours. I sat in that narrow room with the books no one wanted anymore and stared at the same paragraph for hours. Not reading. Just breathing in the faint smell of dust and escape.
I didn’t talk to anyone. Not the guards. Not the inmates. Not him. I let my silence do the work.
