She nodded, but disbelief lingered across her expression. I shouldn’t have had to tell her I was faithful, but I clearly hadn’t done enough to keep her from thinking it was a possibility. “Remember when Beck first brought Eva home and they had that engagement party?”

“Yeah?” My skin rippled with dread.

“You were on your phone the whole time until some girl you went to school with sat down to talk to you. You ignored me the entire night.”

“I never ignore you.”

She barked out a laugh. “You do. All the time. It’s rude. It’s disrespectful, and you know what? I don’t have to put up with it anymore. I don’t care if your excuse was work or a piece of ass, I’m done.”

“My excuse was never a piece of ass. I don’t just work at some company. It’s my family’s company. I’m the company. In a small city, surrounded by rural towns, I can’t disconnect from it. I don’t have that luxury. I can’t ignore anyone, because they might be a contact I have to deal with in the future.”

“But it’s okay to ignore your wife?”

I snapped my mouth shut. That was what I’d done. I hadn’t wanted to ignore her, but there was the trust between us. My work. As each brother married, I’d waited. Waited for Kate to learn what I had done. I hadn’t cheated on her, but I wasn’t much better than her father.

“Listen to yourself, Aiden. You came here to, what? Ask for me to come back? Only you’re arguing about everything I’m saying. You’re not even trying to understand.” She edged around me. “Do you realize this is our first argument? We’ve been together for over four years and we’re only now arguing. Our relationship wasn’t healthy.”

“We’re talking now. We can work on us.”

“I don’t like how I am with you.” She put her fingers to her lips like she wanted to stuff the words back in.

Silence fell between us as we both processed what she’d said.

The Kate I saw today wasn’t the Kate I was married to. What she didn’t know was that this Kate was the one I wanted. The one I thought I’d married. Yet I’d been too ignorant to notice she’d changed.

“I didn’t realize you were so unhappy,” I finally said. I should’ve. I should’ve gotten to know my wife well enough to know that her smile was a cover.

“I didn’t either,” she replied softly. “I think you are too.”

Unhappy was better than fucking miserable. There wasn’t a mental box big enough to shove that emotion into. “Where are you staying?”

“Here.”