Too Late to Love Him Back

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The day my wife refused, for the eighth time, to cut off her male confidant.

Angry, I drove off, my brakes failed, and I crashed.

My lower body went numb. The doctors told me I was looking at permanent paralysis.

It was Olivia Winfield, my wife, who cried her eyes red after the hospital called the family.

Three days and three nights she stayed awake at my side, comforting me, until I found the will to keep living again.

I thought she had finally come back to me.

Then, the very night the doctor said my injuries were improving, I discovered that once I'd fallen asleep, she quietly opened the door of the ward, pulled another man inside, and slipped with him into the bathroom, tangled together.

Watching her face, soft and lovestruck and lost in it, I lay there with my eyes red, and in the end I never interrupted them.

Not even when the two of them reached their peak. I didn't expose them on the spot. I just turned over in silence and closed my eyes.

The next morning when I woke, Olivia was quietly peeling an apple for me, her eyes on the drama everyone was streaming lately, The Useless Husband.

The moment she noticed I was awake, the show had reached the scene where the female lead cheats on her spouse.

Something flickered across her face before she could stop it, and she paused the screen.

"Honey, you slept in a little today. Are you still hurting, still uncomfortable?"

"Don't worry. Even if you really are paralyzed for the rest of your life, I'll stay by you forever. What kind of wife would I be if I didn't?"

I sighed.

"I don't like this show."

With that, she switched off the tablet.

She came over to me with a playful air of mystery and produced a wrapped gift box from behind her back.

"Honey, I'm sorry. You left angry on our anniversary last week, and it's been weighing on me. I've had a present ready for you this whole time and I forgot to give it to you."

She opened the box and held it out in front of me.

"What do you think? It's that blue necktie you love best. Go on, see if it suits you."

I glanced into the box. Sitting there quietly inside were several used condoms.

Catching the change in my expression, Olivia rushed to explain.

"Honey, I thought you liked this tie, so I had someone mail it over from abroad. I never guessed you wouldn't like it. I'll just swap it for something else next time."

And with a look of disappointment, she closed the box back up.

The old me would have seen that hurt on her face and been aching to comfort her.

But now.

I only pushed the apple she offered gently away.

"You don't need to explain, Olivia. If there's nothing else, I think we should just get a divorce."

Olivia seemed not to grasp what I meant, the color draining from her face.

"Kerry Dickerson, I don't want a divorce! And the company, I worked so hard to build it into what it is today. You can't take my success away from me."

Looking at her, all wounded and pitiful, I felt a sharp ache go through my heart.

Olivia didn't love me. Maybe I'd known that from the day she agreed to marry me.

Back then, she'd married me because her father needed a huge sum for heart bypass surgery. My startup had just made it big, so I gave her the money, and she married me. It looked like exactly what it was: a transaction with no feeling behind it.

But I always believed that if I gave her everything, if I loved her sincerely enough, even a stone would soften in my hands.

After the wedding I gave in to her on everything. I even signed the company over to her so no one could call her a stay-at-home wife.

And now, at last, I saw it clearly.

A stone is a stone. No matter how I tried to soften her, her heart stayed cold as iron.

When she saw the despair in my eyes, Olivia panicked.

She had never seen me look like this, with no love left in my gaze.

She used to say that every time I looked at her, my eyes were full of stars.

But this time the stars were gone, and only a gray haze remained.

"Kerry" She reached for my hand, flustered, and I pulled away.

"Don't say anything else. I don't want to hear it. Besides"

I couldn't hold back any longer and knocked over the gift box she'd set on the table.

"Can you stop lying to me? Stop putting on this fake performance in front of me."

"Playing the devoted wife with me while you mess around with another man."

"Ms. Winfield, would you please stop treating me like a fool?"

When she saw the condom fall out of the gift box, Olivia looked like the soul had gone out of her. She froze where she stood, stunned, for a long moment.

"Kerry let me explain."

"Evan Harding just likes weird things. He's always causing trouble, trying to scare people. Those condoms are all"

By the time she got that far, she was so frantic she was almost in tears.

The Evan she kept mentioning was the man she'd always called her best friend, and the same man she'd been tangled up with the night before.

Olivia was starting to babble.

"With Evan, honestly, it's just a boss caring about an employee. Weren't you the one who told me to look after my staff more?"

"If you're angry, I'll call him right now and tell him not to come to work tomorrow. I'll never see him again, all right?"

I watched her coldly, waiting to see if she could really go through with it.

Right in front of me, Olivia dialed Evan's number. It rang for a long time, but the call wouldn't connect.

She tried a few more times. Still nothing.

The tension in her face was plain to see.

"Evan never ignores my calls. Something must have happened to him."

Olivia fumbled to open Evan's social media feed, and the second she saw his latest post, her face went white.

"Evan's been in a car accident! Kerry, we'll finish this conversation later."

And just like that, she left, not caring about anything else.

When she'd opened Evan's feed a moment ago, I'd caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye.

The so-called car accident was just a scrape on the car. He wasn't hurt at all.

What stuck in my throat most was the car he'd been driving. That blue Maserati was the birthday present I'd given Olivia.

She'd once said only two people would ever ride in that car: her, and me.

But in the blink of an eye, she'd forgotten the vow she made.

I sent Olivia a voice message.

"I'll have the divorce papers delivered to you."

I waited quietly for a while. She didn't reply.

Right now every bit of her was fixed on Evan. Maybe none of the rest of it mattered to her anymore.

Lying in the hospital bed, I suddenly felt the tears streaming down my face. A video was playing on my phone.

Olivia had dragged Evan to a hospital for a full-body exam, and my friend who worked there happened to see it and filmed it.

"Kerry, your wife really looks out for her staff, huh. That little snake didn't even want the checkup, and Olivia forced him to get the most expensive full workup they had. Turned out there wasn't a single thing wrong with him."

"But I've got to say, that little snake looks a bit like you. Especially that mole between his eyebrows. I almost thought you'd turned young again."

Hearing my friend's teasing, I felt nothing at all inside. I almost wanted to laugh.

How much do you have to care about someone to do something this ridiculous?

Back when the car accident nearly left both my legs paralyzed, the most Olivia did was ask where it hurt and whether it was serious.

This kind of caring, this kind of frantic worry, had never once been aimed at me.

Whether a person loves you or not, every move they make shows it.

Since she no longer loved me, why keep struggling to hold this marriage together?

Maybe in her heart she had never loved me at all.

I had the lawyer prepare a full financial settlement. Every dollar Olivia had spent on Evan that couldn't be justified would have to come back.

Once all that was done, and with my condition improved enough that the doctor said I could start getting up on my own, I checked myself out of the hospital.

I was still shaky on my feet, but I couldn't stand to stay in that hospital another minute.

Everything at home was exactly as I'd left it, except for one new addition: a set of men's pajamas and underwear.

Olivia knocked on the bedroom door in the middle of the night, drunk.

She wrapped her arms around me quietly and pressed her mouth to mine.

"Baby... baby, I know you're upset today. The doctor told me you just walked out of the hospital. Do you have any idea how worried I was?"

"Sob, sob... thank God you came home. Tonight I'll make it up to you, so don't be sad anymore, okay?"

She tried to hold me. I moved out of her reach.

A person who's dirty is no cleaner than the trash in a garbage can.

Seeing me pull away, Olivia looked wounded.

I didn't say anything. I leaned on my crutch and stumbled back into the bedroom, lay down, and rested.

Not long after, the bathroom filled with the sound of running water.

With that water running and my mood sinking, my pillow was soaked with tears before I even noticed.

Olivia came back into the bedroom wrapped in a towel, giggling stupidly at her phone as she sat down on the bed.

Looking at the red scratch marks high on her inner thigh, I felt a little sick.

She seemed to remember something and hurriedly pulled on a tank top.

"Baby, this is from a little run-in I had with Lily, a girl from work today. Just a small scuffle, it's nothing, don't worry about it..."

"Mm. And the hickey on your neck is..."

Before I could ask any more, she cut in fast. "Oh, that? The whole company went to get health certificates today. It's a mark left by one of those machines they use on the side of your throat, same principle as cupping."

"Honestly, sitting home all day with nothing to do, who knows what you've got churning around in your head. If you have that much time, go do something worthwhile for once. Stop sitting around alone imagining things!"

I fought back the tears, shut my eyes so they wouldn't spill over, and said nothing more.

She was the one who told me to stay home and take care of the household. And now here she was, saying something this cold and heartless. A woman's word really can't be trusted...

She finished, sounding a little guilty, then tapped at her phone a few more times, climbed into bed, wrapped herself around me, and murmured softly:

"Baby~ I said I'd make it up to you properly tonight."

I knew she'd been with someone else lately, and the novelty between us had long since worn off. This was just her covering her own guilt.

No matter how hard she tried, I didn't respond, because the scene from the hospital room that day kept playing in my head.

She got flustered and short-tempered, as if this were a slap to her face.

"Kerry, you're this young, you've got no work stress, so why can't you get it up? First thing tomorrow, go find some old doctor and get yourself checked out!"

I turned my back to her, reached over and switched off the light, and my pillow only grew more soaked...

The first year after we married.

Back then her domineering streak ran deep. She couldn't stand the thought of people gossiping that she was a housewife. She believed a woman should be like a warrior riding into battle.

I doted on her too much back then. For her sake I signed the whole company straight over to her, which set off a huge falling-out with my parents.

She was still green in those days, her management skills and experience nowhere near solid. Day and night I broke this knowledge down and fed it to her piece by piece. I wanted nothing for myself back then. I only wanted her to live a good life with me, to not let me down. That was all.

With those skills and that experience, and with my help, she finally worked her way up and held the chairwoman's seat firmly.

Even now, I never got my parents' blessing, but I felt all of it was right. We were living a happy, full life. Set everything else aside; as long as we loved each other, that was enough...

But now...

Maybe I'd cried myself out, because a heavy drowsiness swept over me.

That was when Olivia wrapped her arms around me from behind.

"Babe, that was my fault just now. I said things too harshly. I'm sorry, okay? Don't be mad at me. Work's just been so stressful for me lately."

I gave a low murmur of acknowledgment and said nothing more.

She pulled me tighter, pressing her face into my neck.

"Babe, can I tell you something?"

"Mm."

I answered softly, doing my best to hide the crack in my voice.

"There's this overseas order that came up, so I have to fly out tomorrow on short notice. Those two movie tickets you got probably won't get used now. Why don't you go by yourself, okay? I'll send you some money. Go out tomorrow night and have fun with your friends."

I asked, not understanding.

"What order's so urgent? Isn't tomorrow the weekend?"

Olivia explained.

"Nothing I can do. That's what the client wants. You take someone's order, you take care of them the way they ask."

"Don't worry, babe. If it's quick, three or four days. If it runs long, maybe about a week and I'll be back. I'm going with my secretary. Don't worry."

By the end, her expression wavered a little. She wouldn't look at me, and her voice dropped a notch or two.

Every year our anniversary fell right up against my birthday. I wanted to remind her that tomorrow was my birthday.

But the words got to the edge of my tongue and I held them back. All I said was,

"Sure. Got it."

Seeing that I understood, Olivia was very pleased. She turned on me like fire, wanting to burn me down to nothing.

In the old days, I would've rolled over and thrown myself at her without a second thought.

But this time, something inside me wouldn't let me do it. That strange smell on her made my stomach turn. I gently pulled free of her.

"It's really late. Let's sleep."

She held me all night long, as if holding me could paper over her guilt.

But I couldn't forget what had happened in that office. Once she was deep asleep, I worked my way out of her arms.

Early the next morning she got up fast, washed, dressed, planted a kiss on my face while I was still half asleep, and hurried out the door.

Today was my twenty-eighth birthday. I got up and cooked myself a bowl of birthday noodles, sitting alone at the table, eating in the quiet.

I ran back through all the little moments the two of us had shared, imagining she might still turn back. If she really could turn back, I'd treat all of this like it never happened.

Thinking that, I called her with that hope in me. I needed to have a real talk with her.

"Hello?"

A man's voice came through from the other end. I knew that voice. It was Evan Harding, Olivia's close male friend.

Olivia had never saved my number. Back then, to please me, she'd said she could recite my number backward, that there was no point saving it, that if she saved it she was afraid she'd forget it over time.

The small flame of my hope shrank lower and lower. For a moment I couldn't speak, and I had no idea what I would even say to this man.

"Hello? Can you hear me? Why aren't you saying anything?"

Evan's voice came again.

After checking a few more times, he must have decided the signal was bad, because with a click he seemed to set the phone down somewhere. But the call stayed connected the whole time.

Olivia's voice came through from the other end.

"Who was it?"

"No idea. Feels like a spam call. Not anyone you know. No name saved..."

"Okay, baby, forget about them. Keep telling me your plan."

"Okay. This time we took a whole week off, so we've got plenty of time. First we can go to the Charleston gardens and the Savannah riverfront district. I hear it's gorgeous there, perfect for couples..."

"After that we can hit Asheville's lakeside park, the botanical gardens, Lake Norman, all these spots. We can even set aside two days to go out to the Carolina coast."

Olivia said, laughing,

"The spots aren't what matter. What matters is you and me..."

Hearing that, I slowly lowered the phone, swallowing back all the things I'd wanted to say to Olivia, and the wet shine at the corners of my eyes slid down again, no matter how I tried to stop it.