Cover

Dedication

To the friends who have stood beside me, you are the light

to my darkness. Keep shining.

Chapter 1

SUNDAY MORNING

It was a strange, unexpected thought as I glanced over at the man I had married, wondering how the ugliest of hearts could be wrapped in the most beautiful skin. The down comforter was tucked up under his chin, hiding his lithe body that required no effort whatsoever to maintain. Sometimes I joked that I despised him for it—eating anything he wanted without gaining an inch on his waistline. If I even looked at dessert, I gained two pounds. Sometimes I wasn’t joking when I said I hated him.

It wasn’t that I hated him, not exactly. Years of togetherness had given me so much, but now he had taken too much. For so long I had just followed him blindly, until he led us both off the ledge. I needed to find my way back, and I couldn’t do that with him anymore.

For years he had been my rock . . . tied to my ankles.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered, and I meant it.

Once upon a time we had loved each other deeply. It showed in the way he carried me over the threshold when we first bought this house. Or when we took our first vacation together to Asheville, North Carolina, where we toured the Biltmore House and oohed and aahed over the thousands of tulips blooming in the gardens. Or the first time we made love, on a bed of rose petals as he sucked the tender spot on my neck and caressed my thigh longingly. Those memories had been so pure and good. But now only painful memories remained. Like chess pieces, the bad had knocked all the good off the board.

All I could remember right now was the way he hurt me. The way he betrayed me. The way he lied.

A moonbeam cast a silvery stripe across the bed. He slept soundly beneath covers that were charcoal like the sky, unaware of me standing over him, and I regretted what I was about to do. I wondered if he had any unspoken regrets. I had a mouthful of them. I had spent the best years of my life loving this human being more than anything else, deeply and passionately with a forbidden desire I couldn’t quench. Only now did I realize it had never been love, but obsession—an obsession with stability, with security. I needed him, but he had never needed me back.

We had been wrong from the beginning, I knew this, but I let him consume me regardless. Nothing could stop me, not even myself. Not even all the red flags.