He said nothing, which, in Calli’s mind, only further confirmed his latest lie of omission.
“Listen, Ben. It’s over. We are over. You can sleep in the guest room downstairs tonight.” She stood. “Tomorrow, you should pack your things and go to your mother’s.”
“What? No, Cal. I’m not leaving. We’re doing good, trying to work things out. For the boys’ sakes.”
She leaned forward, hands on the table supporting her weight, and looked squarely into his eyes. “Let me make this very clear. Our marriage is over. I can’t handle any more affairs.” Truly, one was too many, but her mother had always said, Marriage is tough, it requires work. You have to keep forgiving each other. Hell, their therapist had said as much. Calli had forgiven Bennett for far too long and for far too many indiscretions. For that matter, how many did she still not know about? Their separation had been coming for years. Calli would just have to deal with her mother’s judgment over the broken marriage. It wouldn’t be the first time she didn’t live up to Isabelle Lindley’s expectations. She sighed away the errant thoughts. “Tomorrow, I will find a divorce attorney and file the appropriate papers.”
In that instant, his pleading eyes turned hard and all business. He dropped a fist onto the table, causing the bowl to clatter and ashes to spill. “This is my house and my family, and I will fight for what is mine. I am not leaving.”
He reached for her, but she backed away. “Very well, then I’ll pack myself and the boys and we’ll go to Lindleyi Manor to stay with my parents. I’d hoped that you’d make this easy and the boys could finish out high school. But I guess I’ll have to enroll them down there.”
Bennett kicked a chair out of his way.
Calli jumped.
He yelled, “I said we are going to work this out. I’m not going anywhere, and you are not taking my boys away either.”
Prepared for this reaction, Calli nodded and evenly asked, “Are you going to take time off work to see to Kent’s special needs at school? Or make sure that he takes his meds every day? Or to make sure he gets to the psychologist for his appointments? You’re gone before he even wakes up and half the time, you’re gone when he goes to bed. Are you going to sacrifice your business travel or time at your precious office in favor of your kids?”
Bennett remained quiet.
“I didn’t think so.” She stood a bit taller. Her voice was firm and final when she continued, “One way or another, I won’t be staying here with you. I am the boys’ caretaker, and if you won’t leave, we must.” After a moment, she softened. “Ben, it’ll be easiest if you go to your mother’s while we figure out our next steps.”
“Cal, we can’t just call it quits, we have twenty-one years invested.” He reached out again.
She’d said her piece and silently picked up the glass and walked around the peninsula to the sink. She was done giving into his reasons and logic. They all made sense for him, but not for her.
“Calli!” Quite mercurial, his volume rose a notch. “This is ridiculous. I made you. I made this home. I’ve funded everything from the remodels to the cars to Kent’s therapy to the insanity of a marriage counselor. Everything you have is because of me. Where would you be if it wasn’t for me?”
She slammed the glass down on the marble counter. “I’d hopefully have a husband who didn’t jump into the sack with every piece of ass he could find.”
“What did you expect when you shriveled up like a prune after Kent?”
Calli’s jaw hung open in silence. She couldn’t believe that he’d find a way to make his cheating her fault or that he’d call her something so repulsive.
“Well?”
“Ya know what? Fuck you, Bennett! That’s where this all started . . . when you showed me who you really and truly are. Kent was a hard baby and I had an eighteen-month-old to take care of too. You didn’t help out at all, and I was exhausted. Any man worth his salt would have supported his wife.”
“You knew when you married me that I had strong sexual needs.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t think a month off would have caused you to hop in bed with the nearest set of tits on legs.”
“It was way more than a month, and you know it!”
“It’s not like you tried much once I was back on my feet. It was always my responsibility to initiate sex, and that just got old. Who wants to feel like their partner thinks making love is a chore?” She’d tried several more times over the years to break the frigid gap between them. He’d gone through the motions, but they never really connected again as they had before Kent. She hadn’t known why at the time, and she had blamed herself. Years had passed before she finally pieced together his patterns, and when she did recognize the signs, she knew exactly when it had all started.
Bennett started to say something else, but Calli took in a deep breath and released a long cleansing exhale. Holding up a hand, she said, “Listen, that’s all in the past. We are where we are because we haven’t really been a couple since Kent was born. We tried. Give us a fucking E for effort, but I just can’t anymore. It’s time to move on. I’ll have the papers delivered to your office. What’s your new secretary’s name? I’ll call her and have her watch for them.”
Bennett’s face turned bright red . . . so much so that it glowed even in the dim light. His eyes shifted down and away as he quietly said, “Zoe.”
Calli stared at his reaction for a minute, a reaction that could only mean one thing. Her jaw fell and her brows rose in astonished disgust. Her hands flew in wild gesticulation as she launched into a full-on tirade. “Un-fucking-believable. You’re fucking her! That’s where you were tonight, why you’re late. You ran right over to your newest little mistress to get your rocks off before you had to come home to the old ball and chain. You are fucking disgusting, do you know that? And you know what else? I have never once cheated on you, though I’ve had good reason to. It’s been years since I’ve had sex, and you were off banging some ho-bag. Do you even care a little about my feelings anymore? Just a stitch?”
“No. I don’t.” Bennett ran a hand over his thinning hair and went to the basement door. With his hand on the knob, poised to go downstairs, he looked back and said, “There. Are you fucking happy? I’ve admitted it.”
Chapter 2
Fourteen months later
Calli
Calli Stockton swung open the front door of Moffitt & Hall Financial Services and stepped onto 9th Avenue to a serenade of taxi horns and air perfumed with eau d’exhaust. She worked amid the high-rises on 9th Avenue in the downtown financial district, nicknamed Cloud 9 after the significant wealth managed there. She’d blocked her calendar and turned on her auto-reply in case any of her investors e-mailed, and she had left work early for her appointment at the county courthouse. Outside, a line of limos, the business person’s taxis, waited for whichever notable executive or investor happened to be inside the building, drivers milling about or reading at the wheel. Fortunately, she didn’t need a taxi; the courthouse was just around the corner.