Page 80 of Iridescent
My fingers keep moving, dragging the screen upward while something coldworks its way through me. Every photo is dated. Old, but not old enough to feel irrelevant.
The first visible timestamp is from today.
Just hours ago. At his office.
I stare harder, as though I can force the woman at his side into someone else.
It doesn’t work.
The coat. The blonde hair. The posture I know too well now, elegant even in a grainy still.
Isabel.
It should not sting anymore.
It still fucking does.
While I was crying myself empty and choking on humiliation, he was withher.
I rake a hand through my hair and force myself to keep looking.
The angles are distant, almost certainly pulled from security cameras or a long lens, but there is nothing casual about any of them. The late hour. The way his hand settles on her like it belongs there. The way she leans into him in the same car we made love in. He did not come after me because he was with her. And later that same night, he stood in front of me with tears in his eyes, asking for forgiveness as though remorse could undo any of it.
I swipe to the next image, and the air leaves my lungs so abruptly my breath stutters.
In this one, they are coming out of a hospital.
Her hand is pressed to her stomach. His is wrapped around her shoulders.
The blood drains from my face so fast I almost feel it happen.
I bite down on the inside of my lip but keep swiping. I do not know what that makes me except unwilling to look away. I want all of it. Every date. Every angle. Every detail. I want to see, without mercy, the kind of man I have been wasting my tears, my blood, my sweat on.
My fingers turn unsteady around the phone as I scroll upward through the thread.
There are older messages above the photo dump, brief and vicious in theirrestraint.
You really have no idea who you married, do you?
He lied. You swallowed it whole. Embarrassing, really.
I do wonder which will break you more—what he did, or how long you let him do it.
I can’t wait to see what this little gift does to you.
Below that sits another attachment.
A video.
The caption beneath it is just as taunting.
Just in case he didn’t tell you.
My pulse kicks hard enough to make my thumb stall over the screen.
I press play.
The file takes half a second to load. Grainy footage blooms across the screen, black and white, fixed angle, a timestamp in the upper corner.
