Chapter 1 - THE ACCUSATION
My palm struck Eli’s cheek before he could finish saying my name.
The sound cracked through my living room.
His head snapped sideways. He stumbled against the couch, knocking a cushion onto the floor, but he did not raise his hands against me.
“You tried to seduce my husband,” I shouted. “You filthy queer bastard!”
The moment the words left my mouth, something inside me knew I had crossed a line I could never erase.
But anger kept me from admitting it.
For three days, Grant had been showing me messages he claimed Eli had sent him. He showed me a photograph taken inside the parking garage beneath our apartment building.
In it, Eli had one hand twisted into the front of Grant’s shirt.
Grant’s face was turned away from the camera. Eli’s expression was hidden by the angle.
According to my husband, the photograph captured the moment Eli begged him to keep their secret relationship from me.
Grant had spent months preparing me to believe it.
He told me Eli was jealous of our marriage. He said my brother resented him because Grant had become the most important man in my life. Whenever Eli warned me that Grant was controlling, Grant would smile sadly and say my brother could not accept that I had grown up.
I believed my husband.
Eli stood before me now with rainwater dripping from his dark hoodie. A red mark spread across his cheek.
“I wasn’t seducing him,” he said.
“Then why were you touching him?”
“I was trying to stop him.”
“Stop him from what?”
Eli looked past me.
May you like
His eyes settled on my car keys lying on the coffee table.
“From making sure you never came home tomorrow.”
