When my husband grew distant, I confided in my best friend, hoping for reassurance. She told me I was overthinking it.
I wasn’t.
Three years later, fate sat me in the front row for the consequences of their betrayal.
I used to think betrayal was something that happened to other people—strangers on the internet, whispers over wine at girls’ nights, or over-the-top drama on TV. Not something that could crawl into the quiet, ordinary life I had built.
But betrayal doesn’t politely knock.
It slips through the door, smiles at you, and calls itself your best friend.
For five years, Aaron and I lived simply. It wasn’t glamorous, but it was ours—slow Saturday mornings with coffee in bed, pizza nights on the couch, and the kind of inside jokes that made us laugh until our sides ached.
And always, there was Tessa. My best friend since we were sixteen. The one who could read my thoughts from across a room, who knew my coffee order better than I did. She stood beside me at my wedding, mascara running as she cried when I said “I do.”
When I got pregnant, it felt like the next perfect chapter. I pictured me and Aaron raising our baby while Tessa played the honorary aunt—the one who’d spoil them rotten and sneak them candy when I wasn’t looking.
But the story didn’t go that way.
The first change was so small I almost missed it.
Aaron stopped laughing at our jokes. His hugs became brief, his kisses distracted. He stayed later at work. He answered my texts with single words. At night, he’d lie beside me in silence, like I was just… there.
When the ache of it became too heavy, I turned to the one person who had never failed me.
“I think he’s pulling away,” I whispered into the phone, curled in bed, my hand resting on the swell of my pregnant belly. “It’s like… he’s already gone.”
“You’re just hormonal, Liv,” Tessa soothed. “He loves you. You’ve both got a lot going on.”
I clung to her words like a life raft. I needed to believe her.
Then came the day everything broke.
I woke to a strange pressure in my stomach. By evening, I was in a hospital bed, white walls pressing in, fluorescent lights too bright, listening to a doctor speak the words that shattered me:
“No heartbeat.”
No baby.
The grief hollowed me out completely. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move.
Aaron just sat there. No tears. No touch. Not even a hand on mine. He looked like a man waiting for a train he couldn’t be bothered to board.
A month later, over burnt toast at our kitchen table, he finally spoke.
“I’m not happy anymore, Liv.”
That was it.
Five years, vows, dreams—collapsed into a single line he’d probably rehearsed while I slept beside him.
I thought the worst had already happened.
I didn’t know the real betrayal was still waiting for me, three years down the line.