Prologue
Mid-morning sunlight filters through floor-to-ceiling windows, painting him with a kingly glow. A king with a custom Eames chair for a throne, ruling from his corner office in the sky with its sweeping bay views. Far below, the city sprawls, his uncontested dominion.
My husband.
He holds all the imaginable trappings of C-suite success.
Including the perfect wife.
A necessary accessory to his reign.
An ornament, not an equal.
I couldn’t tell you when the first ripples of discontent began. I wouldn’t know the exact moment our life together started to fray. But it’s never just a single moment, is it? Never just one thing.
The end comes
gradually.
Imperceptibly.
A gradual,
imperceptible
drifting.
And we find ourselves here.
Far from where we started,
somewhere I thought we’d never be.
I enter unnoticed, the carpet swallowing the staccato of my heels. He doesn’t hear me when I call his name.
I try again, louder this time.
At last, I’m granted a brief look and the slightest lift of his dark brows.
“This is a surprise. You should’ve called,” he says before work reclaims his attention.
“I need to tell you something. It can’t wait.”
“It’ll have to. I have a board meeting in—” He checks his watch and swears under his breath.
He returns to the document in front of him. His pen moves steadily, striking through text and scribbling in the margins.
I should be numb to it by now, but every act of indifference reopens the wound. It never heals, never scars over. I’m kept raw and bleeding. A petty, perverse part of me wants to draw blood, too.
“I slept with Lucas,” I announce, loud so he hears me the first time.
His pen moves along.
Strikes and scribbles.
A flip of the page .
Scribbles and strikes. I question if the words ever left my mouth at all. I’ve imagined confessing so many times, maybe I’m only imagining this, too. But the pen stills. He raises his eyes to meet mine. For the first time in longer than I can remember, he is not looking past me.
I wait with a lingering, malignant hope for him to do something.
“Is it over?” His voice is a menacing rumble.
My silence is damning.
He rises from behind his massive desk and stalks toward me, like a predator closing in on prey. My heart stops, then restarts with a wild beat.
But he changes direction, turning away in distaste.
Hope deflates.
Why won’t he get angry? Why won’t he fight me? Fight for me?
Where is the apex alpha male everyone believes him to be?
“Fuckin’ A, I’m not dealing with this right now. Just get it out of your system,” he says. “You obviously have the talent and the stomach for sneaking around. I trust we can avoid a scandal.”
Then he’s back behind his desk, flicking through another sheaf of documents.
He doesn’t look at me again. I’ve been dismissed.
In that moment, I, too, dismiss my husband of seven years—in my heart, my head, and everywhere else that matters.
I turn around and walk out of his office.
Out of his life.
Into my truth.
@truncheonpress 3 DAYS until the worldwide release of STRONGER, Ava Allender’s raw and powerfully vulnerable memoir. Her truth, in her own words.
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