Page 22 of One More Chance
"All done," I said as I handed over her phone.
"With?"
"I set it up so you can track my phone's location with this app. See?" I showed her how it worked and explained that it was only one-way; she could track me, but I couldn't track her. Not unless she decided to turned it on.
She didn't look very impressed. "Okay, Levi… but what stops you from just turning it off?"
I smiled, because I expected this exact reaction from my ever cynical wife. "I won't be able to. The GPS settings will be locked by a password that you will set and keep to yourself."
I watched it all sink in, saw her process the implications of the evening. It was, I imagined, disorienting for her to reconcile this man in front of her with the secretive Old Me she was accustomed to.
After a moment she nodded and said, "Well, this makes me want to kill you a little less."
"Only a little?" I asked.
"Only a little."
Afterward, Sloane was cordial in all her texts. Polite. Like I was a colleague arranging a lunch meeting, not the man who once shared her bed and ruined her capacity to trust. She let me know the time and place with clinical precision, and I never pushed. I didn’t have the right to.
But those brief moments of banter between us fueled me as I tried to be present in their lives.
I signed a short-term monthly lease on a small two-bedroom house in the same neighborhood so I could be close. I told myself it was only for a month or two, just enough time to get my head on straight and give Sloane the space she needed. But the moment I stepped throughthe door to that rental, I knew I had made a mistake. It wasn’t home. Hell, it wasn’t even shelter in the emotional sense. It was a shell. Beige walls and thin carpet that smelled faintly of someone else's regrets, pets, and cigarettes.
You don’t realize how loud life is until it’s gone, until the silence slams into you. Violet’s constant stories. Liam’s stomping down the hall with his headphones blaring. Sloane’s voice in the kitchen calling out that dinner was ready. All of it... evaporated.
I was in exile.
This is my penance for betrayal.
Angie hadn’t reached out since I first came back; that night I'd fled, panicked and nauseous, from her house. From her. I'd blocked her on everything: phone, email, socials. However, even though she was gone, the stench of what I'd done still clung to me like the cigarette smoke on those rental walls.
I couldn’t even pass the gym without feeling sick. That building had become a testament to the worst mistakes Old Me had made. It was where he'd fed his ego, let it grow until it devoured his common sense. Now it stood there every morning like a reminder:This is what you chose over them.
Then every night I came back to that empty house and it whispered the same truth: I lost my family the moment I stopped appreciating them. Getting them back, earning the right to be with them again? That was all that mattered.
Chapter 10
The next morning, I visited my local health clinic. I needed a full STD panel and a referral to a urologist for a vasectomy. Old Me hadn't contracted anything from Angie in my previous life, so I knew I was clean. But Sloane had no way of knowing that, and I needed her to see me taking intelligent and reasonable steps forward.
The clinic smelled of antiseptic and something faintly floral, like lavender trying to smother the stench of bleach. I sat on the paper-lined exam table, its crinkle loud in the sterile silence, until a quiet knock broke through.
The door opened and a doctor whose badge read Laura Taylor, M.D stepped in. She looked like she belonged on a park bench with a sketchbook rather than working at a clinic in a white coat: red curls pulled back into a ponytail, freckles scattered across her pale face, and eyes the color of a forest in spring. Her appearance was disarming.
"Good morning," she said, offering a gentle smile as she sat on the rolling stool across from me. She opened my chart. "Looking over your intake... a referral to a urologist shouldn’t be a problem." She flippeda page. "And I see you’re here for an STD panel. Married but… separated?"
I cleared my throat, already feeling the heat rise to my face. "Uh… yes. There was a new partner, and I want to make sure everything's clean before I do anything else stupid."
She nodded, professionalism intact. "Absolutely. We’ll get that going for you today. It shouldn't take long. Is there anything else you’d like to talk about while you’re here?"
I hesitated, then pushed the words out before I lost the nerve. "Do you have any recommendations for couples therapists in the area?"
Dr. Taylor tilted her head. "We do, yes. Depends what you’re looking for."
I glanced at the floor. “Infidelity,” I mumbled the word like it was gravel in my mouth. “I cheated. It’s for my wife. I’m worried about her.”
The room shifted into a strange stillness. When I looked up, Dr. Taylor was staring at me as if she were measuring something invisible in the air between us. Her brow furrowed. “Usually,” she said, “it’s the betrayed partner who asks about therapy resources.”
"It seemed like the right thing to do," I said.
