Louboutins & Lattes

Prologue

I stare at Logan in our kitchen as I consider what he's just said. I'm sweaty, having just finished a workout and running about the house to complete chores I'd only half finished this morning. My yoga pants and crop top stick to my skin, as does the end of my ponytail.

He wants us to get back together.

He wants us to try again.

He still loves me.

I swallow hard, setting the load of laundry I'd been carrying down on the kitchen counter, "How can you say all of this now? And excuse me for being so direct, but why didn't you try this hard to love me before you bent our nanny over our marital bed?"

Normally, I wouldn't be so blunt, but Emily is at school and Weston is down for a nap. In front of them, we show a united co-parenting front, but when our kids aren't around, I feel I can be more real about the situation.

And the situation doesn't get more real than you catching your husband having an affair with your recently hired nanny in a bed you'd just fucked him in the night before, right before your son projectile vomits all over the room.

That was five months ago. Five months ago. Since then, he'd moved into the downstairs bedroom for two months before finally getting a condo a block away from our house while we went to marriage counseling to see if there was any way to salvage what was left of our marriage. In the meantime, the kids had started their own counseling and I'd started searching for jobs for when Weston transitioned to preschool full-time.

Having a rather large group of online influencer friends, I ended up finding an untapped niche I was good at that meant I could work from home as a Gift curator and toy room organizer. I hadn't told Logan yet, but I'd just gotten my first big sponsor and it just so happened to be none other than CozyHomes, a store owned by one of the largest home decor retailers in the country. Maybe he could sense that I wasn't feeling so helpless anymore, that I didn't need a man in my life just because he could financially provide the best for our family. Or maybe it had been the twenty pounds I lost in what my best friends had dubbed, "Operation Revenge Body."

"I fucked up, Elora." He says with arms outstretched. He drops them and walks towards me. "I fucked up and I know it. I will spend the rest of my life paying for it and I know that too."

I wince as I gather my damp hair off my back and pull my ponytail over one shoulder. Technically if we're supposed to make this work, I'm supposed to forgive him - or at least move forward from what happened and not hold it over his head for the rest of our lives. I just still can't get past the images in my head every time I think about that day though. It's hard to get past the visual of your husband banging a twenty-four-year-old in the ass over the edge of what you'd always called your dream bed.

Dream bed, dream car, dream house, dream couple goals relationship.

And it turns out, it was all a lie.

"Baby," he says quietly, taking my head between his hands. "Please."

My brow furrows as I stare back at his beautiful face. His gorgeous emerald eyes search mine, his auburn artisan beard doesn't have a hair out of place. I know if I look down, I'll find a perfectly sculpted physique in personally tailored clothes. Logan isn't lacking in any way when it comes to looks or brains. Over the last nine years, we'd crafted the perfect nuclear family. So I also can't blame the nanny for wanting what we had. What I had.

The doorbell pulls me out of the longing that had me starting to lean into him.

He drops his hands in frustration as I take a step back. I pause and look at him a moment longer before turning to head for the door. He follows, clearly refusing to let this go until I do what he knows I want to do and that's give in to him.

I put my hand on the front door handle and turn back to find him casually leaning against the banister. I want to tell him I'll think about it, but instead, I turn to open the door.

The minute the petite blonde girl I'd fired with explicit instructions to never show her face at my house again comes into view my stomach drops. I push the door open wider so Logan can see who it is.

"Clarissa?" He sounds like he's seen a ghost and I can't blame him because the sight before us spells the death of our marriage and we both know it.

My eyes travel from hers to the hand over her barely swollen belly and to her opposite hand hanging by her side, holding what any mother would know is an ultrasound picture.

And just like that it's over.

Nine years.

The perfect nuclear family.

Gone forever.