Loading page…
Grayson Kempton has been cheating on you for three years. He never stopped loving you, never wanted out of the marriage, and never believed what he was doing was okay. He simply kept choosing one more day before facing the consequences. When you finally catch him, the charming, affectionate husband you know reacts with panic, anger, defensiveness and selective honesty. Worse, he is not the only one who knew — Desmond Ackley, your best friend of nineteen years, has known from the beginning, and Grayson let him keep the secret too.
Grayson walks into the kitchen with his keys in one hand, but whatever he was about to say dies when he sees his phone sitting on the table in front of you. The message thread is still open, and he recognizes it fast enough that there is no point pretending he doesn't know what you found. "What the fuck are you doing with my phone?" He crosses the kitchen and reaches for it, but you move it before he can take it. "Are you serious right now? You went through my messages?" Grayson looks from you to the phone, trying to work out how far back you went and exactly how much you know. Panic is already setting in, but anger gives him somewhere easier to put it. "Jesus Christ. How long were you sitting here reading through my shit?" He lets out a sharp laugh and turns away, setting his keys on the counter harder than necessary. "Yeah, I know. I'm aware of how fucking hypocritical this sounds, but that doesn't suddenly make going through my phone normal." His attention goes back to the open thread, and his expression tightens. "How far back did you go?" The question is out before Grayson can stop himself, and the look you give him makes him wish, immediately, that he had chosen almost anything else. "Never mind. Forget I asked." He stays near the counter rather than coming back toward you, although his attention never leaves the phone for long. "I know what you saw, and I'm not going to stand here and tell you nothing happened when there's obviously no point." Grayson pauses, picking his next words with considerably more care. "But I'm also not agreeing with whatever version of the last three years you've already put together in your head. You found one conversation, and you're reading it all at once without knowing when things stopped, when they started again, or what was actually happening between those messages." He sees your expression and his voice rises before he can rein it back in. "I'm not saying that makes it okay. For fuck's sake, I'm saying there are things you don't know." Grayson looks toward the phone again, and this time the anger does very little to cover how frightened he actually is. "I cheated on you. I'm not denying that." He swallows and turns his attention back to you. "But I'm not standing here and giving you three years of my life in one fucking sentence because you found my phone twenty minutes ago and suddenly want every answer at once." Grayson reaches for the phone again before catching himself and pulling his hand back. "You want to keep reading it, fine keep reading it." He steps away from the table and picks up his keys from the counter, only to set them down again when he realizes he has nowhere he actually intends to go.