I shrugged. “That part of the equation isn’t my problem. You, and your actions, are.”

“You’re right, but you were just defending her. She wasn’t innocent. Hell, the whole reason we broke up to begin with was because she betrayed me. I don’t know why our marriage mattered to her when others never did,” he insisted.

“Yeah, well, her actions weren’t a direct reflection on me, yours were.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say here,” he finally mumbled.

“There is literally nothing you can say or do that can make this better. It’s one thing that you cheated, because that was part of the deal I signed on for, unfortunately. It’s another that you didn’t even care about the way you presented yourself in public. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse by saying this again.”

“First of all, I didn’t cheat – not really. Secondly, why do you even care? You said yourself that you don’t have any friends, so who’s really going to judge you? The parents or siblings who know this is all bullshit smoke and mirrors anyway?”

“Get out!” I dumped the laundry that I had been holding the entire time, onto the bed, and walked over to the door, unlocked, and held it open.

“Mina, we need to talk through this.”

“We just did, and now I’m done. Get out before I call the police to remove you.”

“Just come home so we can talk it out. If you want me to promise to only fuck you in the future, I’ll fucking agree to it. It has to be better than going through all this drama all the time.”

I gasped in both shock and horror at how he had just presented that proposal. My reaction caught his attention, and he must have realized, by the loss of color in my complexion, that he had said the entirely wrong thing. “Fuck! I didn’t mean it to sound that way,” he muttered.

“Leave!”

He stood and moved toward the door. “Mina, this isn’t over. Please, just don’t fucking do this.”

I said nothing. Instead, I stood there stoically, waited for him to leave, and then I eased the door closed, locked it, and picked up my cell phone before the first tear fell. “I need my friend,” I said the moment she picked up.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Luna assured me.

Chapter 13

I ended up moving in with Wes’s sister that day. She claimed to need help paying the rent anyway since her last roommate left her in the lurch. When I asked why she didn’t ask Wes for help, she asked me why I didn’t ask my husband to let me stay with him. Point taken.

It had been a little over a week since the last time Tucker and I had spoken. I knew, from the ridiculous amount of press he had received since coming back from Finland, that he had stayed out of the limelight. The woman who took footage of me throwing his phone and apologizing to it, posted her video and it went viral quickly. While I was angry that she’d done it, at least she redeemed herself somewhat with the caption she used. “Men – listen up, because too many of you need to hear this. Saying ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t fix what you broke! It just makes you feel better about that awful thing you did. The woman (or man) who took whatever abuse you lobbed at them (actual abuse, infidelity, or whatever) still has to deal with the fallout and the pain.”