Page 14 of One More Chance
“Her name’s Angie. From the gym.”
Sloane’s lips parted, a dry sound escaping her throat. Not quite a gasp, more like a breath cut short. She laughed. Just once. One broken, humorless sound that made me want to crawl out of my own skin.
“From thegym,” she echoed. “Jesus. Of course it was.”
“I didn’t mean for it to happe-,” I began, but she held up her hand like a teacher reprimanding a toddler.
“Don’t. Don’t youdaregive me that cliché garbage. Do you think I’m stupid? You didn’t ‘mean’ to lie to me for who knows how long? You didn’t ‘mean’ to betray me every time you came home and kissed me goodnight with her sweat still on your skin?”
Her voice cracked. The tears were there, welling fast, but she wasn’t letting them fall.
I shook my head and stepped forward, heat rising in my chest. “I was lonely, okay? You were never around. Always working, always busy with the kids, the house, everything.” I let out a bitter laugh. “It’s not all on me. You were taking care of anything and everything else exceptus. At leastsomeonemade me feel wanted.”
“Wanted?” she said, voice rising. “I gave youeverything, Levi. I carried your goddamn ego on my back for years. I was up at 5 a.m. packing lunches while you slept in. I was cleaning vomit, paying bills, calling teachers, handling vet emergencies and you were what? Out screwing some gym rat?!”
I looked down, my hands clenched at my sides, heat pulsing in my temples. I was angry… at her, at myself, at life.
“You disgust me.”
Those words hit harder than any slap ever could and just like that, something in me shut down. I told myself I couldn’t stay. That it was easier to walk away, to start over with Angie, instead of face what I’ddone. The truth? I was a coward and I hated her for making me feel like one.
“I’m moving out. I’m going to live with her,” I said, steady and unapologetic. At that moment, the words didn’t taste bitter. It felt like a release.
Somewhere along the long and twisted path that led me here, I had stopped seeing her as my wife and started seeing her as thereasonI felt so small. To me, this felt like the next step. A natural result of weeks of what Old Me thought was being overlooked, unappreciated, and shut out.
Sloane didn’t say anything at first. She stared at me like she didn’t recognize who I was. The silence in the kitchen pressed down on me harder than any shouting ever could.
Then, she asked in broken, trembling whisper, “When?”
I gripped the edge of the counter, not because I was falling apart but because I needed to stay calm and in control. “Tonight.”
I'd said it as a simple fact. As if it was the only logical conclusion. Why drag it out? Old Me thought he'd already given enough of himself; certainly more than anyone ever gave him.
A sharp sob broke out of her. “And the kids?”
I shook my head. My eyes stayed fixed on a crack in the tile because I had been too much of a coward to look at her. “We’ll figure it out.”
Leaving that night was the stupidest mistake I have ever made. But the worst part, the part I hate myself for the most, is that I didn’t betray just my wife - I betrayed the mother of my children and the woman who gave up everything to build a life with me.
There were a thousand things Old Me could have done differently, could have done better. But Old Me picked the worst possible decisionat every point and kept going… now I'm crawling through the wreckage and trying to rebuild something I'd set on fire.
If Sloane even lets me try, I know that every moment of healing, every tender glance from her, every night we spend rebuilding what I shattered, is a debt I know I’ll never fully repay but… I am going to keep trying even if it takes the rest of this fucked up life.
Chapter 7
"I'd like to turn this in," I said. The cancellation letter shook as I handed it to Brandon, the manager of the gym I had used for an escape. I forced myself to smile. He looked down at it, then up at me too quickly.
Fuck, he knew.
There was a silence between us that grew heavy with everything unsaid. Brandon had seen the late nights, the lingering looks, and the way Angie used to drape herself over the front desk when she knew I was coming in. The man wasn’t stupid.
He scratched the scruff of his beard as he read the letter, then folded it with deliberate care. “So… that’s it, huh?” he asked, the question loaded with implication.
“Yeah. That’s it.”
This was the first real move. The first cut.This was part of the cleanse. Part of shedding the version of myself that had made these reckless and dumb decisions. This was just another step toward erasingthe Old Me and tying off loose ends. One less place Angie might expect to find me. One less routine tethering the New Me to the Old Me.
“Shame to lose you, Levi. You and Angie were in here like clockwork,” Brandon said, flipping the cancellation form over in his battered hands. The man looked better suited for fighting than running a place filled with mirrors and protein shakes. His words held a quiet condemnation wrapped in casual indifference.
