HIS FORSAKEN WIFE HIS GREATEST REGRET

What Comes Next Is Divorce

Roberta's POV

She was only a few feet away now. I could see the determination in her eyes. My hand tightened on the shelf behind me. Please, God. Not like this.

Just as Millie reached for the pantry door, Jace’s arm snaked around her waist and yanked her back against him. Hard. Possessive.

“Not yet, baby,” he growled, voice dropping into that deep, velvet tone I used to know so well. “Before you redo anything… you’re going to give me something first.”

Millie’s breath hitched, but she played along, teasing. “And what’s that?”

“You know exactly what.” His mouth was already on her neck, kissing, nipping, backing her up against the very door I hid behind. The wood creaked softly with their weight.

Millie let out a breathy laugh that turned into a moan. “You’re so naughty…”

“Nolan’s right there,” she whispered, even as her hands fisted in his shirt.

“I put on that cartoon he likes. He’s completely zoned out.” Jace’s hands roamed lower, sliding under her dress, palming her breasts with open hunger. “Come on, baby. Give it to me.”

The air thickened. Their voices grew huskier, teasing melting into raw need. Jace kissed her roughly, swallowing her moan as he pushed her harder against the pantry door. I could hear every wet sound—fabric rustling, zippers, heavy breathing. His hands were everywhere, squeezing, stroking, and undressing her with impatient greed. Millie arched into him, gasping his name, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

Through the crack, I watched him bury his face in her neck while his hand disappeared between her thighs. Her head fell back against the wood with a soft thud. The moans grew louder, unrestrained. The wet sounds of their kissing, the rustle of clothes hitting the floor, her breathy little cries—it was all too much.

I couldn’t remember the last time Jace had touched me like that. Like he couldn’t get enough. Like he’d die if he didn’t have her right then.

Tears streamed down my face, hot and silent. I bit my knuckle until I tasted blood, trapped, forced to witness every second of it.

Then Jace bent, hooked his arms under her thighs, and lifted her in a bridal style. Millie wrapped her legs around him, laughing breathlessly as she kissed him again.

“I’m going to wreck you in that bed,” he promised, voice rough with lust. “Make you scream my name. Make you come so many times until you have nothing left.”

Millie moaned, nipping at his bottom lip. “That’s right, Daddy. You know how I like it.”

He carried her out of the kitchen, their laughter and heated whispers fading up the stairs.

I stayed in the pantry long after their footsteps disappeared, shaking, tears soaking my shirt. Only when I was sure they were gone did I slip out, the cold night air from the back door hitting my wet face like a slap of reality.

I stood in the shadow of the pantry for a long time.

My face was wet, and I didn't remember when the tears had started. My legs were shaking, and I didn't know how long I had been standing with my weight against the doorframe. My knuckle had a mark on it where I had bitten down.

He never touched me like that.

The thought moved through me slowly. Not as anger, not yet. Just as fact, plain and unadorned, the way facts feel when they have been true for a long time and you have finally run out of reasons not to see them.

He had stopped touching me, and I believed it was me. I had examined myself for years — what I was doing wrong, what I was failing to be, what was missing in me that made me undesirable — and the answer had been so simple and so devastating.

Nothing was missing in me.

He just wanted her instead.

He had always wanted her instead.

And she had sat across from me on her couch with her arms around me while I cried, stroking my hair, telling me I wasn't alone — while she was the reason I was alone, while she was the one his hands were on in whatever hours I wasn't watching.

Twenty-two years I had known her.

Twenty-two years.

I pulled myself upright.

Picked up my bag.

Walked to the back door and pushed it open.

The cold hit my face like a correction.

I stood on the back step and breathed it in. Once. Twice. The shaking in my legs slowed slightly.

I went across the garden to the side gate and through it and around to the street where Brett's car sat half a block down.

He was outside it.

Leaning against the bonnet with his arms folded, his eyes moving down the street toward the house, scanning. The moment he saw me, something in his posture released, and he straightened while his eyes moved from my face to the front of the house and back.

"Jace just pulled in—" he started. "Are you okay?"

"I know. I saw." I reached him. "I'm fine."

Brett, I'm not okay at all. I'm not fine. But I didn't say that.

He looked at my face the way he did — reading it, not commenting on what he found.

"I saw them," I said. Before he could ask. "All three of them. Moving in together." I kept walking to the passenger side."

Brett said nothing.

He opened the passenger door. I got in.

He got on the driver's side. He didn't start the engine immediately. He looked at me for a long moment.

"What happened in there?" he asked.

I shook my head.

I couldn't speak. If I opened my mouth, I would scream. Or cry. Or both.

Brett started the engine and pulled away.

I could feel him glancing at me. The way he did when he was checking without wanting to appear to be checking.

"I got what I needed," I said. "Photos. Journal. Recording. Except Ziva's iPad."

"We'll find another way to get it."

I nodded.

He kept driving.

I held Ziva's jacket in my lap. I ran my thumb along the edge of one strap and felt the scratch of it and thought about the sound she made opening and closing it — that satisfying rip of velcro that she had decided was a good sound and demonstrated regularly.

Mommy, listen.

I hear it, baby.

It's a good sound, right?

It's the best sound.

My throat closed.

Through the windscreen, the city moved. Ordinary morning. People on pavements. A bus pulling out. A woman with a pushchair stopped at a crossing.

I thought about his hands on her.

I thought about the sounds they made in my kitchen.

I thought about the way he had lifted her — with such ease, such want — and I thought about all the years of lying in the dark on my side of a bed wondering what was wrong with me.

I thought about Ziva at the top of the stairs.

Mommy, is Daddy coming home tonight?

I don't know, baby.

If he comes home, will you tell him I waited?

I pressed my fingers hard against Ziva's jacket and breathed.

How did a person do that? How did a person live with a child for seven years — watch her grow, hear her voice every morning, see her face at the top of the stairs — and feel nothing? How did a person let that child be cut open and sent home in a cab and then carry another woman to bed while the child was still in the morgue?

What was the word for that?

I didn't know the word for that.

And now she's gone.

And Jace is upstairs. In our bed. With Millie.

Moaning. Laughing. Living.

I watched my husband carry another woman to our bed. And I hid in a pantry while he did it. Like I was the one who had something to be ashamed of.

How long has this been going on? How many times did he leave our bed and go to hers? How many times did he hit me and then go kiss her?

I thought about all the years. All the nights I waited up. All the times I made excuses for him.

He's tired. He's stressed. He's working late.

No. He was with her. He was always with her.

And I was nothing.

Just a function. Just a mother for his donor child. Just a secret he kept in the dark.

Brett's hand moved across the console.

It didn't grab mine. Didn't reach for it. Just moved there and rested on the leather between us, open. Offering without demanding.

I looked at it.

Then I put my hand in his.

His fingers closed around mine. Strong. Warm. No words attached.

I didn't pull away.

I held on.

The tears came then — not the hot and angry ones from the pantry but something quieter and more exhausted, leaking rather than falling, because I had run out of the energy for the other kind.

He drove.

I held his hand and held Ziva's jacket and looked at the road ahead through blurring eyes and thought about the word next.

Not why anymore.

Not how could they.

Just next.

What comes next.

What I am going to do now.

What I am going to build from the rubble of a marriage that was never real.

And just then, Brett said: "What do you want to do next?"

I looked at the jacket in my hands.

"I want a divorce," I said.

The car was quiet.