Total pages in book: 123
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 119597 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 598(@200wpm)___ 478(@250wpm)___ 399(@300wpm)
“Don’t fucking lie to me.” She bends forward, jabbing a shaky finger in my direction. “You were unfaithful long before I was kidnapped.”
“No, I fucking was not. Why would you think such an outlandish thing?”
“I saw a video of you with Aubrey. In your office in Sitka. You fucked her on your desk.”
“How…?” This can’t be real. I’m spiraling into a dark abyss, the horror pulling me into its depths. “What video?”
“Denver recorded you. He said there are more videos. More affairs. He had cameras in your office and all over our house for two years. You’ve been cheating on me for years.”
Cameras? For two years?
A cold chill snakes through me. “He put cameras in our fucking house?”
“Yes. But right now, we’re discussing your infidelity.”
“You believe him? About these alleged affairs?”
“I saw the video.”
“One video. There can only be one, because that was the only time. I swear on my life, Frankie.”
Her pain is a seething, quaking entity in the room, one I wish I could banish with a word or a gesture.
Leo and Kody, sitting on either side of her, form a battalion of condemnation. Their eyes blaze with accusation as I scramble for footing in the quicksand of their collective judgment.
Near the door, Melanie is relaxed yet attentive, a silent observer of the unfolding drama as she types on her laptop.
This is my goddamn penance.
“Why?” Frankie’s jaw sets, her eyes glistening. “Why did you fuck her?”
“I was trying to forget you.”
“Did you succeed?”
“No.” I surrender to the weight of my guilt and slump into the chair near the foot of her bed. “It happened six weeks after you vanished. I thought you quit me because of my godawful reaction to the pregnancy. I was so fucking hurt and angry. Angry with you. Furious with myself. I needed to move forward, move on, and I tried. Aubrey was there, an invitation that I accepted. It lasted all of five minutes—”
“Seven.”
“What?”
“You fucked her for seven minutes.” She touches her quivering lips and averts her eyes. “I’m ashamed of how many times I watched that video.”
Goddammit.
Fucking hell.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
My hands clench. My molars grind. My fucking regret punches through the roof.
I wish we didn’t have an audience. I wish I could pull her into my arms and kiss her beautiful, trembling mouth. If she cries, I won’t be able to stop myself from climbing into that bed with her.
“I don’t remember those seven minutes.” No matter how true, the words sound hollow, even to my ears, drowned out by doubt that fills the room. “I only remember the shame that followed. The guilt. The misery. It made me feel wretched, not better. I never did it again. You have to believe me.”
The tension crackles, a live wire in the cramped hospital room.
“How can we believe anything you say?” Leo leans forward, snarling, “You kept your entire family a secret from her.”
Kody’s silence is equally indicting, his stare sparking with unspoken censure.
“I’ve made mistakes, but not this.” My defense falls on deaf ears, tangled in a thicket of disgust. “Denver is a psychopath. He fed you lies to turn you against me. But he couldn’t provide proof of infidelity beyond that video because…It. Does. Not. Exist.”
The space between us widens with each uttered denial, an insurmountable mountain of mistrust.
Frankie’s gaze is the hardest to meet.
“I don’t trust you,” she whispers, her features stark with a sorrow that guts me. “But you’re right. His lies, his manipulations, his lack of evidence…there’s a lot to untangle.”
Like the other two men in this room.
Denver and Kaya must be their biological parents. Their names alone, Leo and Kody, eerily correlate to Port Lions on Kodiak Island, where Denver and Kaya met and grew up.
Leo said his mother was Helena Weiss, but that name doesn’t exist in my memories.
My running theory is…When my parents died, Denver abducted Kaya, hid her on the Turbo Beaver, kept her in the off-grid cabin, and produced two sons with her.
Leo and Kody.
Strangers to me. But not to my wife.
After everything she’s been through, I didn’t want to jump in with this line of questioning.
I should start with Gretchen, Frankie’s abduction, and the cabin’s location.
Where is my fucking brother?
But the room is already pressurized with drama. Now that my affair has been aired out, and my character has been measured, judged, and deemed unworthy, I need to know.
How faithful has Frankie been to me?
I steel myself and ask her the one thing that’s been burning in my throat since the moment Leo punched me. “How long have you been fucking them?”
It’s not a question but an admission of my deepest fear laid bare in the sterilized light of the hospital room.
Leo meets my gaze, unflinching. “She was faithful to you, her heart untouchable, her loyalty inexorable. Until she watched you fuck another woman.”