sofa, fully clothed in a pair of sweatpants, staring blankly up at the ceiling popcorn texture with dark circles carved deep beneath his eyes.
“Did you sleep okay down here?” I asked him one morning, setting a mug of steaming coffee on the cedar coffee table.
He blinked hard, as if dragging his consciousness up from the bottom of a murky lake, before offering me that soft, weary smile I had grown to love. “Not really. My back’s just locked up again, honey. Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”
I trusted him. That was my cardinal sin. I trusted him because I needed to trust him. After the absolute destruction of my first marriage, the thought that my second choice could also be built on a foundation of deception was simply too terrifying to contemplate. My psyche rejected the possibility before it could even form as a
