My Husband's Affair My Anniversary Gift (Lily and David) novel Chapter 200

David stood up, his jaw tight, his voice rising for the first time. “Don’t twist things, Lily! You were the one who walked out!”

“Because you left me no choice!” she shouted back. “You made it impossible to breathe in that house! You think I didn’t see the way you looked at her? The way you smiled? You never once looked at me like that in five years.”

“Because it was never real!” he yelled, slamming the broken piece into the trash. “You knew from the beginning it was a contract, not love! Don’t act like I betrayed you when there was never anything between us to begin with!”

Lily’s eyes filled with tears, but she refused to let them fall. “You think I don’t know that? You think I didn’t remind myself every day? But still, I stayed! I did everything you asked, worked for you, lived with you, tried to be what you wanted and all I got was your silence, your coldness, and that woman walking into my place like she owned it!”

David took a step closer, his chest rising and falling fast. “You’re acting like some victim, Lily, but you knew the deal. You got what you wanted a roof, a name, and protection.”

Lily’s voice broke. “And you got what you wanted a woman to fill the empty space until she came back!”

For a moment, silence filled the room. David’s expression flickered, something almost like guilt passing through it, but he pushed it away.

“Maybe you’re right,” he said bitterly. “Maybe that’s all we ever were. A damn arrangement.”

“Then why are you here now?” she asked, her voice trembling. “Why won’t you just leave me alone if it’s over?”

David looked at her, really looked. The anger in his eyes burned into something else, something rough and restless. “Because I can’t,” he said quietly, almost like he hated the words.

Lily blinked, confused and angry at the same time. “You can’t what, David? Can’t let me live in peace? Can’t stand the idea that I walked away before you could throw me out?”

David let out a slow sigh. He stared at her for a long second, the lines around his mouth tight with something like regret. “If you hadn’t spilled coffee on Marina that day...” he began.

Lily cut him off with a bitter, hollow laugh. “If I hadn’t spilled coffee? Are you serious? I explained, I tried to explain but you never listened.” Her words came faster now, the old hurt peeling back jagged and raw. “I explained myself. You didn’t wait. You didn’t care.”

He remembered dimly, angrily at first the flare of that day. He remembered being furious, shouting, the instant of heat when he’d seen Marina drenched and screaming. He remembered leaving. He remembered thinking she had crossed a line. But the memory had always been half-sharp, half-shadow, and now Lily’s voice forced the rest of it into light.

“You humiliated me in public at the bar that night,” Lily went on, voice shaking now. “Do you even remember? You stood there and made me small. And the worst, you slapped me at Mum's birthday.”

She stopped then, her face changing with the memory as if the scene were playing before her eyes. “You slapped me in front of everyone because of her. Because she said something, and you believed her over me. She was pregnant… and you let that ruin me. You blamed me for your loss. You blamed me for her miscarriage, for everything.”