Chapter 2 - THE SECRET PAYMENTS TO HIS FIRST LOVE
Two weeks later, I found the first withdrawal.
Three thousand eight hundred dollars.
It had come from the operating account for our rental house.
Steven was brushing his teeth when I asked him about it.
“Did you move money out of the property account?”
He looked at me through the bathroom mirror.
“Yeah.”
“For what?”
“Just shifting some things.”
“What things?”
He rinsed his mouth.
“I'll put it back.”
“When?”
He turned.
“Bianca, it isn't a big deal.”
That answer bothered me more than the missing money.
Because that account belonged to both of us.
We had one rule from the day we bought the property.
Neither person touched the reserve fund without discussing it.
“I didn't say it was a big deal.”
“You're looking at me like I robbed a bank.”
“I asked where our money went.”
“Our money,” he repeated.
I frowned.
“Yes.”
He shook his head.
“I'll replace it.”
Then he walked past me.
I let him.
That night, I stared at the ceiling until nearly two in the morning.
I told myself Steven was careless.
I told myself he hated discussing money.
I told myself not every unanswered question was evidence of betrayal.
What I didn't tell myself was the truth.
I was becoming afraid of the answers.
So I started choosing peace instead.
And every time I did, Steven learned that silence was cheaper than honesty.
Then, on a rainy Tuesday in March, I found Caroline's name attached to a payment.
The transfer was $6,200.
Memo line.
Furnished lease deposit.
Recipient.
Caroline Hayes.
I read it three times.
My hands went cold.
I searched backward.
Restaurant charges.
A furniture store.
Another transfer.
Parking charges at a luxury apartment building near Buffalo Bayou.
Small expenses scattered carefully enough that none looked catastrophic alone.
Together, they told a story.
Steven wasn't simply sleeping with another woman.
He was financing the possibility of leaving me.
Using money from something we had built together.
I heard his SUV enter the garage.
The kitchen suddenly felt too quiet.
I closed the laptop.
Steven walked in, shook rain from his jacket, and smiled.
“Hey.”
I looked at him.
He leaned down to kiss me.
I turned my face.
His mouth touched my cheek.
He paused.
“You okay?”
“Who is Caroline to you now?”
Everything in him stopped.
Not dramatically.
That was almost worse.
I watched calculation replace surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean exactly what I said.”
He put his keys down.
“Why are you asking?”
“I found her name in the rental account.”
His face lost color.
“What did you find?”
I laughed once.
It came out broken.
“That is your first question?”
“Bianca—”
“Are you sleeping with her?”
He looked away.
That was enough.
But I made him say it.
“Steven.”
He rubbed both hands over his face.
“Yes.”
The room seemed to tilt without moving.
“How long?”
“A few weeks.”
“How many?”
“What?”
“How many weeks?”
“Five. Maybe six.”
Maybe.
As if betrayal became too difficult to count after a month.
I stared at the man I had been sleeping beside.
The man whose coffee I made that morning.
The man whose dry cleaning I had picked up two days earlier.
“You came home to me.”
His jaw tightened.
“Bianca—”
“You slept with her and came home to me.”
“I never meant for this to happen.”
“No one accidentally rents an apartment.”
His eyes snapped toward mine.
I turned the laptop around.
The payment glowed between us.
He sat down.
“I was trying to figure out what I wanted.”
“You used our money to figure out what woman you wanted.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Then tell me what it was like.”
He didn’t.
I could see frustration building in his face.
Not only guilt.
May you like
Frustration.
As if my discovery had forced him to make decisions before he was ready.
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