Page 25 of Forgiveness

He exhales heavily. “I know. I did it all wrong. It just shows how fucked up I was. I felt like you owed me something, when all along, I should have been crawling on my hands and knees to win you back.”

“Mark, it’s not about wi—” I don’t have the opportunity to finish, because the speaker takes the stage, and the murmur of conversation around us fades into silence.

CHAPTER9

3years ago

Whitney

Water sluicesdown my legs as I scrub my feet. The sun is just starting to break through the fog, sending a haze of soft light through the opaque window.

Footsteps pound along the hallway, and a moment later, the bedroom door opens. I pull the wash rag over my chest just before Mark appears in the bathroom doorway.

“Sorry,” he says, but he doesn’t look sorry at all as he lets his gaze rove over me. “You look beautiful.”

A jolt of electricity shoots into my groin, but I try to keep my expression placid. “What do you need?”

His eyes flash as he walks toward the tub.

Oh God, I don’t like this expression of his. It’s wild and determined. It’s the same one I saw the morning I confessed my affair.

“I was just at a bar with another woman,” he says.

My chest squeezes. Did he come in here to torture me?

My gaze falls to a patch of bubbles at the center of the tub. “I don’t need to hear about it.”

“You do need to hear about it.” He rests his hips against the counter. “I had a hotel booked.”

I flinch, sickness filling my stomach like molten lead. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Because I canceled on her. We were just about to leave. I canceled our…meetup and came straight here.”

I stare at him, dumbfounded. Thoughts float through my head like dust particles under the sunlight. I’m naked in the tub. He’s standing there with that strange expression. Why did he come in here to tell me this?

The answer occurs to me suddenly like a punch in the gut.

He’s proud of himself. He was about to cheat on me, but he decided not to. He’s here for my congratulations.

My payment.

I huff out a humorless laugh. “What a lucky girl I am.”

He stares at me for a long moment, his jaw tightening. “What I just told you doesn’t matter to you, then. You’d be just as content if I went back to that hotel and fucked her. Is that what you’re implying?”

Rage shoots like arrows through my veins. “What I’m implying is that it doesn’t matter if you chose not to fuck her today. Your fidelity should be my right, not my privilege.”

“I’ve never done this before. I’ve never decided to do the right thing.”

I would probably laugh if my heart weren’t breaking. “Yes, and the moment you decided todo the right thingyou came marching in here wanting a reward for it. Is this how little I’m worth to you? Do I owe you now because you chose to do the absolute bare minimum of not fucking someone else when you’re married?”

His nostrils flare. He walks over to the tub and sets both hands on the copper edges.

That fire is raging behind his eyes. He’s back to being that Mark from that sunny December morning when I confessed. “Yes.” The word is delivered through clenched teeth. “This is your privilege after what you did. I’d take it if I were you.”

I hold his gaze. “No. I don’t want it.”

The rage behind his eyes dies in an instant, as if wiped out by a deluge. He stands up and glances around the bathroom as if he’s never seen it before.

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