Adultery Priya Didi

[shailu4ever]

.

She had felt sick to her stomach when she’d heard it, the betrayal too close to home, too real. “He was mine,” she thought bitterly. “He was supposed to be mine, and yet… yet he allowed them to touch him like that. To make him forget me.”
 
Her chest tightened as the sting of anger mixed with the sorrow she’d buried for so long. “He should have been stronger than that. He should have known better. He shouldn’t have let it happen. No matter how they looked at him, no matter how they made him feel… he shouldn’t have let them.”
 
But even as she thought it, she knew, knew deep in her chest, that the anger she held wasn’t as pure as it seemed. It wasn’t as simple as she wanted it to be. If it were, then she would have let it consume her entirely. But it didn’t. It never did.
 
She could still remember the way he’d looked at her today, how he’d spoken to her, softly, carefully, as though walking on broken glass.
 
Every time he’d apologized, she could hear the sincerity in his voice, see it in the way his eyes had softened when they met hers. “He’s sorry. He is truly sorry.” The thought slipped into her mind unbidden, and with it came a wave of softness she was not prepared for.
 
“But why? Why does he keep apologizing? Why does he keep trying? What does he want from me? What does he expect from me?” She twisted the pillow in her hands, the silence of the room pressing in on her like a weight. “Maybe he feels guilty. Maybe he feels sorry for himself. But does he even truly understand how much he hurt me? How could he not? How could he not feel the same sting that I do?” Her eyes closed, and for a moment, the tears she had fought off earlier threatened to spill.
 
But she quickly swallowed them back. She had no more room for that kind of weakness. No more room for self-pity.
 
“He loves me,” the thought came, softer now, almost tentative. She flinched at it, unsure. How could she reconcile this truth with the hurt, with the betrayal? “He says he does. But how can love feel like this? How can love hurt so much?”

.