I met my husband in high school. A week before Christmas, he crashed his car and was paralyzed. My parents told me to leave him. I chose him instead — and they cut me off.
I moved in with his family. Worked. Went to community college. Helped him relearn life from a wheelchair. We went to prom. Got married in his parents’ backyard. Had a son. My parents never called.
For 15 years, I believed we’d survived the worst.
Then I came home early one afternoon and heard my mother’s voice in the kitchen — the first time in 15 years.
She was holding papers. My husband was pale.
The accident report listed an address that wasn’t his grandparents’ house.
It was Jenna’s.
My best friend.
The emails were printed.
“Drive safe. Love you.”
“Got to get back before she suspects.”
He hadn’t been driving to his grandparents that night.
He’d been leaving his mistress.
He admitted it. Said he was young and selfish. Said he panicked and lied because he knew if I thought he was innocent, I’d stay. And I did.
I gave up my parents, my college fund, my future plans — all based on a lie.
“I was scared,” he said. “Every year it got harder to tell you.”
But the hardest part wasn’t the cheating.
It was that he let me choose him without the truth.
So I packed a suitcase — this time not as a scared 17-year-old, but as a woman who knew her worth. I took our son and left.
My parents apologized. We’re rebuilding slowly.
The divorce was messy, but necessary.
I don’t regret loving him.
I regret that he didn’t trust me enough to let me love him honestly.