The Unwanted Wife's Return (Ex-Husband Wants Me Back) novel Chapter 316

The Other Woman in My House 

MARY’S POV: 

Something shifted in his expression. Not guilt, I don’t think Alistair was capable of guilt, not really. But something softer. Something almost like the man I had married, buried somewhere beneath the layers of selfishness and entitlement. 

He stepped closer and reached out and took my hands in his. His palms were warm, familiar. I had held these hands at our wedding. I had held them in hospital rooms when Elowen was born. I had held them through the deaths of people we loved and the birth of dreams we never got around to chasing. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice was softer now and nore gentler. The voice he used when he wanted something from me. “I’m sorry about yelling at Elowen. I shouldn’t have done that. I was… I don’t know. I was frustrated. The flight was long, and the reporters were everywhere, and I wasn’t thinking clearly.” 

He squeezed my fingers. 

“I was drunk, Mary. In that video. I’d had too much to drink, and I wasn’t thinking straight, and I said some things I shouldn’t have said. You know how I get when I drink too much. You know I don’t mean half of what comes out of my mouth.” 

I did know. I knew that he became someone else entirely after three glasses of wine, someone louder and looser and less careful with the truth. I had spent years cleaning up after that version of him, smoothing over the things he said to my family, to our friends, to strangers at parties. 

“But you have to trust me, okay?” He tilted his head, trying to catch my eyes, trying to pull me back into the orbit I had occupied for seven years. “Nothing is going on with Vesper. She’s just an old friend. I promise. Can you trust me?” 

His thumb traced small circles on the back of my hand. 

I thought about the way he had looked at her in that video. The way his body had angled toward hers, protective and possessive. The way he had said we’re the ones truly in love like it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

I thought about all of it. 

And then I thought about Elowen, alone in her room, waiting for me to come keep the only promise that still mattered. 

“I’ll think about it,” I said. 

He nodded, apparently satisfied. “I’m going to sleep in the guest room tonight. I have to wake up early tomorrow there’s a meeting I can’t miss, and I don’t want to disturb you when my alarm goes off.” He paused, then added, almost as an afterthought, “We’ll talk more in the morning. Okay?” 

She fell asleep around midnight. Or maybe she just stopped fighting it. Either way, her body went soft and heavy against mine, and I carefully extracted myself from her arms and tucked the blankets around her shoulders. 

I should have gone to bed. I was exhausted-bone-tired in a way that had nothing to do with sleep and everything to do with the slow, grinding erosion of being married to a man who saw my pain as an inconvenience. But something kept me upright. Something kept me moving toward the kitchen, then toward the hallway, then toward the guest room door. 

I don’t know what I expected to find. A locked door, maybe. Alistair snoring in the dark. Nothing worth getting out of bed for. 

But the guest room door was open. 

Just a crack. Just enough for a sliver of light to escape into the darkened hallway. 

The room was dim, just a single lamp on the nightstand, casting long shadows across the floor and in that bed, tangled in the white sheets I had washed and folded and put away myself, lay Vesper Holloway. 

She was beautiful. Of course she was. Dark hair spread across the pillow like ink spilled on water, lips slightly parted in sleep, one bare shoulder exposed above the sheet. She looked peaceful. Serene. Like she had every right to be there, in my house, in my guest room, in the bed where my husband had promised to sleep alone.