Page 13 of One More Chance
My narcissistic nature believed I could still control the narrative, bend the truth to serve me, twist guilt into justification. But all I was really doing was digging deeper, blind to the wreckage I was leaving behind. I kept telling myself I couldn’t stop. That it wasn’t about thesex. No, it was about the attention. It was the illusion of being valued that I drank like poisoned wine.
Angie and I continued to meet for weeks. We met in parking lots, cheap hotels, her home. I either didn't notice or didn't care that it was always her calling the shots, always whispering things that rewired my brain.
“You shouldn’t have to beg to feel wanted.”
Meanwhile, Sloane was forgetting to eat because Liam was sick and Violet’s tooth was loose and there was a puppy on oxygen in the ICU and a dozen other battles Sloane was waging without me.
During all of this, I was lying to her face… but reality always comes calling.
The first crack was Liam’s thirteenth birthday. I’d forgotten to RSVP to a skating party. One job. That’s all I had to do. Sloane didn’t yell. She just looked at me like she was so tired of being disappointed. Like she had stopped expecting anything better.
“Why can I never rely on you?” she asked.
Instead of answering her, I got defensive. Classic Old Me. Rather than sit with the truth of what she was sharing, I twisted it, turned the whole thing into an attack. I lashed out, accused her of not wanting me anymore, of making me feel like a burden in my own damn house. It was easier to turn the mirror on her than look into it myself.
That argument spiraled fast with sharp words flung like knives, both of us bleeding pride and somewhere in the middle of all that venom and fire, we crashed into each other like a storm meeting the sea. An angry, frantic, bruising kind of sex where clothes were ripped, lips bitten, nails dragged across skin like we were trying to mark territory.
It was the hottest and most toxic sex we’d ever had. Rage disguised as passion, our bodies saying what our words couldn’t. We weren’tmaking love that day. We were trying to outrun the distance between us, and prove we could stillfeelsomething even if it was through pain.
When it was over, we didn’t collapse into each other like we used to with our post sex apologies and reconnection. Instead, it was a cold and suffocating silence. We got dressed in separate corners of the room, as if we were nothing more than strangers after a one-night stand, then walked away in opposite directions. We were somehow both angrier and emptier than before.
The truth was, I didn’t like the mirror she held up. I didn’t want to see what I was turning into. I hadn’t fallen into an affair because Sloane failed me. I fell because I failed Sloane. I was the weakest man in the room. I confused validation for love. I confused sacrifice for neglect. I confused comfort for boredom.
My ego couldn’t handle the passive-aggressive comments she made over the next day or two.
“You spend more time at the gym than at home.”
"You are way too distracted, Levi."
My guilt, thinly disguised as feeling unappreciated, had been festering for weeks; ever since the affair with Angie started. That guilt twisted itself into something louder, something I could no longer ignore or excuse. I lied to myself that I was justified; that I deserved more. But the truth was simpler. I was a coward looking for a way out that didn’t make me the villain.
I had already started packing. Bags stashed in the garage like ticking bombs.
A few nights after mine and Sloane's rage fueled fucking, on an evening we were meant to review the kids' schedules for the upcoming school year, I confessed to her. We were supposed to sit down at thekitchen table like we were still teammates, as if we still lived on the same side of the battlefield.
But I couldn’t pretend anymore. I couldn’t meet Sloane's eyes across that kitchen and act like I wasn’t already halfway gone.
She looked too tired, too thin. She was a hollow eyed revenant of the woman I'd married, worn down from years of struggling alone; Old Me was too blind to see that he had done that to her. Fuck, Old Me was too immature to admit that he'd done anythingwrong.
She was rinsing a glass in the sink when I said, “I need to tell you something.”
Sloane didn’t look at me. “Is this about the school forms? I signed them and left them in Liam’s folder.”
“No,” I said. My throat burned, but I forced the words through anyway. “It’s worse than that.”
She stood there, averting her gaze, hands under the faucet, water running over her fingers like she hadn’t heard me.
“I cheated.”
No drama. No explanation. The truth, laid out cold on the kitchen floor.
She slowly looked up at me. Her face was eerily serene, but her eyes locked on mine, and in that moment, I knew I had detonated something we would never return from.
“With who?” she asked. Her voice was calm; far too calm. My mouth was dry and I'd realized then that I was genuinely afraid; she might have murdered me then and there.
I opened my mouth.
“Do not lie,” she said, sharper now. “If you eventhinkabout sugarcoating it, Levi, I swear to God-”
