“Nat, you’re-”

“You’re frigid, honey,” His secretary finishes for him, still sprawled across his desk smiling evilly at me. She pouts as she turns back and gives his tie a little tug. “And Vincey has needs.”

I’m going to be sick. I’m literally going to be sick right here on the carpet.

The room starts to spin around me as I reach out and steady myself on the doorframe, sucking in lungs full of air.

“Nat, you’re just-” Vince fucking shrugs again. “You are a little bit of an ice-queen sometimes.”

I need to get out of here.

“Fuck you, Vince,” I spit out, whirling around to leave. My eyes land on the group picture of us from the company picnic last year, and I suddenly feel my teeth grinding together as I realize the blonde currently on his cock is actually in the picture, smiling with her hand on his damn shoulder.

I pluck it from the shelf and smash it to the ground.

“Natalie, we’ve got the gala in twenty-”

“Fuck the gala, Vince,” I turn and spit venomously at him. “And I’ll be gone when you get home, by the way.”

He laughs. “Oh, what, you’re going to leave, Natalie?”

“Yes Vince, I’m going to leave.” I say it mechanically, reaching down to get my clutch from where it dropped to the ground when I walked in.

“Oh, like you’ve got any capacity to be on your own, sweetheart,” Vince hurls at me. But I’m already walking out of the office.

“I hope you realize you’re making a big mistake!” he hollers after me.

“And I hope you catch something from your little office slut that makes your dick fall off,” I hurl over my shoulder.

“Least I’m letting him use it, bitch!” I barely catch as I slam the door to his office shut and run for the elevators.





2





Natalie




Tires squeal as I peel out of the office parking lot, away from the life that up until this very moment was ours. ‘Ours’ until I leave it shattered like that picture on the floor of Vince’s office.

And despite living it for the last two years, it’s never actually been ‘my’ life, anyways. It’s always been Vince’s life, with me as a permanent guest. One more piece of art or famous guitar bought at a charity auction to decorate the walls and corners of his life.

That feeling has always been a lingering, nagging thought in the back of my mind - one that’s always dug at me in a subtle way like a seed caught in the back of your teeth.

I’m furious as I roar down the LA freeway - at my fiancé of course, but mostly at myself. The betrayal hurts, but I have to wonder how I even got to this place, where I’m engaged to man like Vince Capra in the first place. I’m pissed because I know I should be pissed, but that’s the extent of the emotional response to walking in on him fucking his secretary. I’m mad, and I feel slighted, and cheated.

But I’m not heartbroken.

I know I should be - I know any woman in my situation should feel that wrenching pain in her chest after seeing that. But instead, I just feel like I lost something somehow. I feel like I lost my pride somewhere along the way. It’s like the final nail in the coffin of what my life was growing up into what it is now.

Because the truth is, I know exactly how I got to a place where I’m engaged to marry a man like Vince. I can literally hear my mother’s voice from all those years ago, when it all came crashing down. That voice, masked and dimmed by gin martinis and valium in the stuffy lawyer’s offices in the aftermath of my father’s sentencing.