“If you tell her, we’re through. No more.”

I stood in stunned silence. The weight of this burden, not even my own, threatened to buckle me. And Matt wanted me to say nothing. To look the poor girl in the eye and say nothing.

“How can you ask that of me?” I demanded. “I’m not the one who did it. I’m not the one who slept around—”

“It wasn’t sleeping around. He did it one time.”

Matt turned his back on me and began pacing the floor, his movements quietly controlled, like those of a caged animal.

“No, he did it with one person. That you know of. He’s been cheating on her for months!”

“It was sex. That’s all.”

“That’s all?! She’s his wife. She has a right to know that her husband is messing around on her.”

“And you think you’re going to be the one to tell her?”

“Well, he’s obviously not going to. Someone has to.”

Matt came up short and turned to me. The man I loved, the man I thought I knew so well, regarded me with feral anger in his eyes. His lip curled in disgust.

“Miss Goody Two-shoes. You’re so young. So fucking immature.”

He knew the words to shut me down inside. He’d said them often enough to know their effect. Being ten years older than me gave him the upper-hand. And he’d strike with abandon, using the same jab over and over again, opening the same wound.

But I was too scarred to feel the cut anymore.

“I’m telling her.”

Matt grabbed my shoulders and forced me into the wall. “I swear to God, if you break them up, I will make you sorry.”

I wasn’t afraid. Maybe I should have been. I’d never seen him so livid. So out of control. I knew there was no point in reasoning with him, so I said nothing.

He held me there for several minutes, perhaps willing me try something. Needing me to. And when I didn’t, he thrust me away angrily and stalked to the bedroom, slamming the door behind him.

Thoughts drifted down around me then, fluttering through the veil of awareness.

‘I’m going to tell her.’

‘But who’s going to tell me?’