My Husband's Affair My Anniversary Gift (Lily and David) novel Chapter 2

The master bedroom smelled like him—that intoxicating blend of sandalwood and cold indifference. Lily stood in the doorway, her suitcase wheels catching on the threshold like a final protest.

Five years.

Five years of stolen moments in this gilded cage.

They had fucked against every surface—the mahogany desk, the shower glass, the very spot where her knees now threatened to buckle. But they had never made love. Not once.

Her packing took less than ten minutes.

How pathetic, that a marriage could be undone faster than the time it took David to choose a tie each morning. The suitcase—bought new for their honeymoon, still faintly dusty from disuse—gaped open like a wound.

She filled it only with what she had brought: a few books, the pearl earrings her mother left her, the silk nightgown he had once torn off her without looking at the color.

The study smelled of his Cuban cigars and betrayal.

There, in the top drawer where he kept his whiskey and condoms, lay the divorce papers. Prepared before they got married. A contingency plan for Marina's inevitable return.

Lily signed without trembling. The pen glided smoothly as the knife he had slid between her ribs for half a decade.

She had come to him willingly.

She left with equal resolve.

No tears. No dramatics. Just the quiet unraveling of a dream she should have abandoned the first time he had whispered another woman's name into her hair.

The front door clicked shut behind her.

Rain lashed the pavement as she hailed a cab. The droplets streaked the windows like the tears she refused to shed.

"Where to?" the driver asked.

The question froze her.

Leave. Just leave. That had been her only thought. But now, faced with the reality—she had nowhere to go.

No home. No family.

Her mother had died bringing her into this world. Her father's remarriage had brought only a stepmother whose mistreatment cut deeper than cruelty. Her childhood had been a nightmare.

The only peace she had ever known were those fleeting years with David—years she now realized were just another kind of solitude.

She had severed ties with her own family for him, unwilling to let their dysfunction touch his world.

And what had it earned her?

A divorce paper signed before marriage. A husband who used her merely as a sex toy.

"Where to?" The driver's voice sharpened as horns blared behind them.

Panic tightened her throat. Then, before she could think—

"Noa's apartment. 27 Willow Lane."

The name escaped like a confession. Noa, her best friend since high school. The woman who had gripped her shoulders the day she signed that contract marriage, eyes blazing: "You'll regret this, Lily. He'll destroy you."

And like a fool, she had laughed it off.

Now, with the divorce papers heavy in her bag and the taxi meter counting away her old life, Lily finally believed it.

The clock ticked 12:17 AM when Lily appeared at Noa's doorstep. Rainwater dripped from her hair onto the welcome mat—Noa's joke gift from last Christmas: "Go Away Unless You Have Wine."

Her knuckles hovered, trembling.

The door flew open before she could knock.

Noa stood there in rumpled pajamas, her sleep-mussed braids swinging as she jerked fully awake.

"Jesus Christ, Lily—" Her voice cracked when she saw Lily's shattered expression, the death-grip on her suitcase. "You look like you walked out of a fucking horror movie."

Lily's attempt at a smile twisted into something broken. "I didn't... know where else..." The words dissolved like sugar in whiskey.

Noa didn't ask. She just yanked her inside, kicking the door shut with her bare foot.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify