After His Affair, I Skipped the Drama and Chased Mediterranean Sun Chapter 01

After His Affair, I Skipped the Drama and Chased Mediterranean Sun Chapter 01

The day I discovered my husband, Gavin Hale, was cheating on me, I climbed onto the roof, deep in the grip of severe emotion disaster.

My sister, Natalie Brooks, stabbed Gavin and dragged him back to me to make him atone for what he had done.

With Natalie watching his every move, Gavin really did change.

He deleted every other woman from his contacts and came home on time every day.

Even if he was only taking out the trash, he checked in with me first.

I thought our shattered marriage had finally been given a new beginning.

Then I got a video call from myself ten years in the future.

The woman on the screen was gaunt and hollow-eyed. I asked cautiously, “It’s been ten years. I still haven’t gotten better?”

She said nothing. She forced a smile that looked more painful than crying, then turned the camera around.

On-screen, Gavin had Natalie pinned against the wall of a storage room. His eyes were raw with barely contained anguish.

“It’s been ten years. We’ve been living under the same roof, and you still won’t let me touch you. How much longer are you going to punish me?”

Natalie closed her eyes as tears slipped down her face.

“What we did to Evelyn was unforgivable. Staying apart is the only way we can make amends.”

I went rigid as a bone-deep chill swept through me.

So the woman I had searched all over Seabridge for was my beloved sister.

Gavin had hidden her in plain sight so perfectly that she had lived right under my nose for ten years, and I had never suspected a thing.

The image jerked back to my future self. She leaned close to the screen with a wild, unhinged grin.

“Did you hear that?”

“As long as you’re still breathing, everyone is suffering.”

“If you die, everyone will finally be free.”

***

I lowered my eyes and slowly picked up the paring knife from the table, calmly holding the blade against my chest.

“Gavin is such a germaphobe. Why did he suddenly start taking out the trash every day? Do you really think Natalie followed him just to keep an eye on him for you?”

“Don’t be stupid, Evelyn. Go check the blind spot outside the house. Those ten minutes he spends taking out the trash every day are the only time they get to be alone together, away from you.”

The front door opened, and Gavin came in.

The color drained from his face when he saw me holding a knife to my chest.

“Evelyn, what are you doing?”

Without even stopping to take off his shoes, he charged toward me in a panic.

The voice on the phone continued.

“Look at his wrists. You know how severe his OCD is. Look at him now.”

Gavin was an extreme germaphobe with severe OCD. His cuffs were always rolled back in exactly three neat folds, leaving his wrists bare.

But now his cuffs were rumpled, and the faintest smear of lipstick stained one edge.

My gaze moved past him and landed on Natalie, whose makeup was slightly smudged.

My hands went limp. The knife dropped with a clatter, its tip narrowly missing my thigh.

Gavin stopped short in terror, his hands hovering in midair.

“Evelyn, put the knife down. Don’t hurt yourself.”

I stared at his rumpled cuffs, my voice shaking uncontrollably.

“Who is she?”

Gavin froze for a moment, then pulled up his location history with practiced ease and held out his phone.

“I only took out the trash. I was right outside for less than ten minutes.”

A look of profound exhaustion crossed his face.

“Evelyn, that was three years ago. How long are you going to keep holding it over me?”

“Taking care of you every day is exhausting enough. Please stop questioning my every move.”

As he spoke, he stepped forward to take the knife from me.

I brandished the knife as I backed away. “Don’t touch me!”

The blade sliced across my palm. Blood gushed from the cut and pattered onto the floor.

“Evelyn!”

Natalie cried out and rushed to stop me, but she moved too quickly, twisted her ankle, and toppled toward the cabinet beside her.

“Natalie!”

Gavin lunged toward her almost instinctively.

But just before his hand touched her, he seemed to realize what he was doing and forced himself to stop, his hand suspended in midair.

Natalie took one look at my blood-covered hand, then backhanded Gavin across the face.

“Gavin, you pushed her too far again! You know she’s sick!”

The blow snapped his head to the side.

He clenched his fists so tightly that it looked as though he was struggling to keep himself from losing control.

When he turned back to me, every trace of hostility and exasperation had vanished.

He had slipped back into the role of the soft-spoken, attentive husband.

“I was out of line. Evelyn, you’re bleeding. Let me bandage your hand.”

Gavin crouched in front of me, but his eyes remained fixed on Natalie’s swollen ankle.

Once he had hastily bandaged my hand, he pressed the first-aid kit into Natalie’s hands without a second thought. His voice came out hoarse.

“Put the cold pack on your ankle.”

The sight of him looking so subdued and tormented was more than I could bear. I fled to the bedroom.

Three years earlier, when I first caught Gavin cheating, I searched every inch of the hotel like a madwoman but could not find so much as a single strand of the other woman’s hair.

In despair, I went up to the roof.

Natalie was the one who stabbed Gavin and dragged him before me to force him to confess.

Gavin had always been proud, but that day he knelt in front of me and cried like a child who had lost his whole world.

“Evelyn, I’m begging you. You can’t die.”

The raw anguish in his plea made me believe that he loved me after all.

But now, one call from the future had shattered every illusion I had left.