His Secret Affair Broke Me,But I Rose Higher

On my birthday, I scrolled past a video of my boyfriendsupposedly away on a business tripproposing to my best friend during a street interview.

The crowd around them dug into their love story.

So, man, what do you like about her?

She's pure.

Someone in the crowd couldn't resist stirring the pot.

What, you've been with someone who wasn't?

Logan Dickerson went quiet for a beat.

"She slept with a guy the second she turned eighteen."

The video erupteda mess of cheers and jeers tangled together.

The cheers were for them. The jeers were for me.

Tears slid down my cheeks. I pressed my thumb against Logan's face on the screen.

The front door opened. Logan was home.

"Babe, I got your favorite cake! Come give me a kiss."

"Been working overtime for days. I'm beat. Let me wash up."

He pecked me on the lips, set the cake on the table, and disappeared into the bathroom.

I touched my face. The tears had already dried.

I looked at the cake.

The frosting was a sloppy mess, no design to speak of, covered haphazardly in sliced kiwi.

I read the bakery name on the box and pulled up the map on my phone.

The shop was less than two hundred yards from the boardwalk where he'd proposed to her.

A laugh almost escaped me. Almost.

There was a time he'd driven across the entire city and waited in line for five hours just to buy me an egg tart.

Now all that was left was whatever he could grab without thinking.

Logan came out of the bathroom, his voice tinged with guilt.

"Why are you just sitting here by yourself? I'm sorry I couldn't be here for your birthday."

"You know how it isI'm at a critical point for the promotion. Business trips and overtime are unavoidable. I'm doing all this for our future."

He opened the box, speared a piece of kiwi with a fork, and held it to my lips.

"I went out of my way to get you a cake. Forgive me? Please?"

He leaned down, his gaze focused and tender.

The same look he'd given her in the video.

"I'm allergic to kiwi."

My voice came out flat. Like I was commenting on the weather.

Logan's hand froze mid-air. Embarrassment crawled up his face.

"Haright, I totally forgot. I'll go grab a new one right now!"

He was already at the entryway, but his hands fumbled with his shoes, never quite finishing.

He was waiting for me to stop him.

I never liked wasting his time on myself.

But today, I said nothing.

He lingered for a long while, then drifted back. He sighed and stroked the top of my head.

"Martha Swanson, I know you're upset I wasn't here for your birthday. But can you be a little more understanding? Cut me some slack here."

Understanding.

Understanding that he proposed to someone else on my birthday? Or understanding his half-hearted attempt at making up for it?

My throat locked shut. I couldn't get a single word out.

Logan stood there in the silence for a moment, then turned and walked into the study.

The apartment went completely still.

So still that the draft whistling through the window crack sounded like laughter.

A few minutes later, my phone buzzed. A bank transfer from Logan. Five hundred and twenty dollars.

I couldn't pinpoint when it startedwhen money became his way of saying sorry.

He didn't hold me anymore. Didn't murmur soft reassurances. Didn't go out of his way to make things right.

Logan emerged from the study, something unreadable behind his eyes.

"If you don't want the cake, just leave it."

"Something urgent came up at the office. I have to go."

"I'll pick up a new one when I get back tonight."

"Be good."

"What kind of emergency?"

The question left my mouth before I'd thought about it.

"I'm the general manager now. Can you stop questioning me? Just stay home and quit throwing a tantrum."

Irritation flashed across his face. He shot me a look, and then he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him.

I sat there for a long time.

Then I picked up my phone again, and without quite meaning to, tapped into the street interviewer's account.

The video had already hit the trending page. People were starting to dig into the real identities of the couple on screen.

Sure enough, I found Belinda Walker's secret account in the comments section.

It had been updated forty minutes ago.

Every single time, I'm the one who wins.

The day before, she'd posted a phototwo silhouettes kissing by the ocean.

Finally. Five years beats eleven.

My tears fell in time with my scrolling thumb.

She was in the hospital for surgery, and all I had to do was cough twice. He came running.

So what if your little car accident pulled him away for a night? You're nothing but a dead fish in bed. I'm the only one who makes him lose control.

He's mine now.

Further back.

Had a great night. Stood her up for dinner. Once you win once, you just keep winning.

Made him a homemade lunch box. He said it was delicious.

First day of the semester. Maybe I just met the one.

...

I followed the posts all the way back, five years, to the first time they met.

I watched her go from secretly thrilled by stolen moments of closeness to openly flaunting his devotion.

And I watched him pull away from me, inch by inch, drawing closer to her.

Tears streamed down my face. But underneath them, there was a strange stillness.

I was almost surprised by it.

I thought about it for a moment.

Maybe I'd always known.

I didn't know how much longer I sat there before I finally stood. My body was stiff, my limbs heavy. I carried the cake to the trash and dropped it in.

A memory surfacedeighteen years old, crouched outside a bakery with Logan, waiting for the discount hour.

It was the first time we'd ever had savings.

Two hundred and eighty-four dollars.

We'd earned it wearing mascot costumes all day in hundred-degree heat.

"Martha, I'm buying you your first birthday cake!"

"Things are only going to get better for us. I promise."

I'd wanted to say no.

But the sweat still dripping from his bangs, the weight of that promise in his voiceit made me lose my resolve.

"Okay," I blurted.

Right before the bakery closed, we got the last cake on the shelf.

Kiwi.

I still remembered the panic in Logan's eyes before I blacked out.

And after I was discharged, his pockets completely empty.

But when did he stop remembering?

Was it when he hired Belinda behind my back?

Or was it earlierthe very first time he introduced her to me, calling her his junior from school?

If Logan and I were weeds, clawing through concrete just to survive

Belinda was a flower, bathed in sunlight.

I'd joked about it with him once.

"Belinda's gorgeous. Bubbly. Her dad's a senator, her mom runs a corporation, and they both adore her."

"If it weren't for me, you'd definitely fall for her, wouldn't you?"

Logan was quiet for a long time.

"We've walked too far together for that."

I let that answer soothe me.

I didn't catch the shadow that crossed his face when he looked away.

And so, without my knowing, everything began to shift.

Loganwho used to insist on coming home for dinner every single nightstarted eating all three meals at the campus cafeteria.

On my birthday, he was busy comforting Belinda because she was in a bad mood.

On the anniversary of the day we escaped our old lives, he was on the beach with Belinda, lighting fireworks.

He came home later and later. The excuses piled up, each one thinner than the last.

And I grew quieter.

I'm so tired. I just wanted to go lie down.

But as I passed the study, the screen on Logan's desk was still glowing.

It was open to his chat with Belinda.

I turned around slowly and looked at the apartmentreally looked at it.

The pale hardwood floors. The lush monstera in the corner. The clean, simple furniture.

No leaking roof. No screaming. No filth.

A home that was always bright, always clean.

A home.

But in the end, I walked into the study.

...

"Is she mad at you?"

"Yeah."

"I'm sorry. It's all because of me that you're in so much pain. But I can't walk away. I've loved you for five years. Besides, she has no self-respectshe was barely legal when she"

"Don't be silly. Nobody's asking you to walk away. I'm the one who's sorry. I can't love you out in the open. Martha... she's been with me for eleven years. I only got the general manager position because she resigned and recommended me. If I broke things off..."

"I know. All I need is for you to love me. And besides, you already made me a promise."

Belinda sent a photo. A proposal ring.

I sank into the chair.

That ring. I'd had it custom-designed three years ago.

When I showed Logan the sketches, beaming with excitement, he'd looked away.

Work's been crazy. We don't have enough saved. I want to give you something better.

He hid behind tenderness, deflecting again and again.

The ring I never stopped waiting for.

It was on someone else's hand.

The last message in the thread was from Logan.

"Missing you. This place is suffocating. I'm coming over now."

The home we'd dreamed of building together had become his prison.

The way we'd clung to each other through our teenage years was now proof of my recklessness.

Eleven years. All of it reduced to a joke.

"Ngh"

A sudden stab of pain in my stomach forced me to double over.

My stomach had been ruined for years. To put Logan through college and then grad school, I'd clawed my way from grocery store promotions clerk to general manager of the sales department in a single year. The damage I'd done to my body during those yearsthree years of rest since quitting hadn't been enough to undo it.

From last night until now, three in the afternoon, I hadn't eaten or drunk a thing. A flare-up was inevitable.

Every ingredient in the apartment had gone into last night's birthday dinner. I rode out the worst of the cramping, then dragged myself to the grocery store.

Walking the familiar route, I felt untethered from my own body.

In eleven years, my favorite thing had been grocery shopping with Logan. Bowls, chopsticks, a secondhand bookshelf, a proper couchpiece by piece, we'd filled a hundred-square-foot rental, then a tiny studio, and finally the twelve-hundred-square-foot condo we'd bought outright.

We'd scraped and survived our way into adulthood, and we'd finally built the life we used to whisper about in the dark.

Then it juststopped.

But that was fine.

From now on, I'd take care of myself.

No matter what.

"Martha? What are you doing here? You look awful, honey."

The woman who stocked the produce sectionshe'd known me for yearslooked almost panicked when she saw me.

"Didn't sleep well."

I forced a thin smile and started to move past her, but she stepped into my path.

"You're heading to the meat section? Today's selection isn't great. Come back tomorrow! Tomorrow will be much better."

Her smile was strained, and her fingers locked around my arm like a vise.

I frowned, confusedand then I heard a voice I knew all too well drifting over from the meat counter.

"I'll make you pepper steak tonight. Once you're full..." His voice dropped. "Then it's my turn."

I turned toward the sound.

Logan's eyes were soft, his head tilted down toward Belinda, who swatted his arm with a coy little laugh.

Their happiness looked rehearsed. Perfected over a thousand repetitions.

So the "urgent work matter" was grocery shopping with Belinda.

I opened my mouth to say something, but it was as if a hand had closed around my throat. My lips parted, then pressed shut. No sound came out.

A moment later, someone in the aisle recognized them.

"Hey, isn't that the gorgeous couple from that proposal yesterday?"

"Wow, grocery shopping with his fiancenow that's a good man!"

"This is literally my dream life! Your person right beside you, picking out dinner together. Oh my God, I can'tthey're perfect!"

"Total power couple!"

"Huh. Funny... I could've sworn the woman who used to shop with him wasn't her."

The murmurs of doubt were swallowed by the roar of the crowd in an instant.

Through the shifting bodies, Belinda's gaze found me.

She paused for a beat, then broke into an even more radiant smile.

Slowly, deliberately, she placed a hand on her stomach.

"Actually, there's one more piece of good news I'd like to share with everyone."

"No wayis she pregnant?!"

"Oh my God! They're so blessed!"

In the middle of the cheering crowd, Belinda threw her arms around Logan, her face glowing with happiness. He stood frozen, stiff as a board.

A high-pitched ringing flooded my ears.

A baby.

Belinda was having a baby.

My hand drifted to my own stomach without thinking.

I had a baby once, too.

"Heyit's her! I told you the woman shopping with him earlier wasn't the same one."

The person who'd raised doubts before suddenly jabbed a finger in my direction, announcing it to the entire crowd.

"She's the other woman?!"

A beat of silence. Then someone blurted it out.

"What are you doing here?"

Logan's eyes snapped to me. He stiffened, then immediately stepped sideways to shield Belinda behind him.

As if he were protecting her from danger.

Or protecting her from me.

A memory slammed into me unbiddenLogan on his knees beside my hospital bed, eyes red-rimmed, voice cracking with a promise.

"It's my fault. I didn't protect you or the baby. Give me more time. I'll give you a real home."

Back then, he'd just graduated.

For his ambitions. For our future.

I'd resigned from my position as general manager and recommended him for the role instead. I handled his workload, managed his schedule, took care of every detail of his life.

And the babyour babyhad come quietly during that time. And left just as quietly.

I never even found out if it was a boy or a girl.

But now.

Now he was shielding another woman. Another child.

And looking at me like I was a threat.

A sharp breath escaped my nose. Almost a laugh.

How pathetic.

"So this is your choice?"

My voice came out steady as I looked at Logan.

But beneath my calm, my nails had already dug so deep into my palms that I couldn't tell skin from blood anymore.

A flicker of panic crossed Logan's face. His mouth opened, but before he could get a word out, Belinda dropped to her knees with a theatrical thud.

Tears streamed down her face, picture-perfect in their misery.

"Martha, I know you two were childhood sweethearts. PleaseI'm begging youdon't drive me and my baby away!"

That single sentence detonated the crowd.

"Don't tell me this woman's been stringing the poor guy along, not letting him move on?"

"Childhood sweetheart my assshe's a homewrecker!"

"Girl, get up! Why are you kneeling for someone like her?"

The naked hostility closed in from every direction, pressing against my skin like something physical. My knees threatened to buckle.

Logan's expression hardened into something vicious. He ground his teeth and turned on me.

"Martha! Are you trying to push Belinda to her death? She's pregnant! Just because you had a miscarriage, you can't stand seeing anyone else happy?!"

"Holy shitis she that trashy ex-girlfriend?"

The bystanders acted like they'd just cracked the case wide open, and another wave of outrage erupted.

I stared at Logan in disbelief.

He knew. He knew how many sleepless nights that loss had cost me. How many times I'd broken down, shattered into pieces no one else ever saw.

And he'd just ripped open my deepest wound in front of a crowd of strangersfor her.

I stood there, numb, staring at him.

"You'd smear my name for Belinda's sake"

Smack!

A fistful of wilted lettuce hit me square in the face.

I staggered. The world tilted.

"Shut your mouth! I hate homewreckers more than anything! I'm posting your face everywhere!"

"Yeah, expose her! Shameless tramp!"

Fingers jabbed toward my face, close enough to touch.

Logan took an involuntary step forward.

Something twisted across his featuresconflict, guilt, something almost like instinct. But in the end, he pulled his foot back.

Behind him, Belinda peered out from his shadow, and no matter how hard she tried, she couldn't quite hide the smirk curling at the corners of her lips.

"Stop it! What do you think you're doing, ganging up on this girl? She is NOT the other woman!"

The store clerk shoved her way in front of me, voice raw and shaking as she fought the crowd on my behalf.

Forget it.

She'd already made up her mind to leave. What was the point of saying anything more?

That single step Logan took backward had said everything.

"Ma'am, it's fine. Let it go."

Martha forced a bitter smile and tugged at the clerk's arm, turning to leave.

But the instant she turned, an apple slammed into her stomach.

"Homewrecker! Drop the act! Take a good look at yourselfyou think you're good enough for him?!"

Pain.

It seized her entire body, folding her inward. The taste of iron flooded the back of her throat.

Her legs gave out. She crumpled to the floor.

The crowd flinched and scattered like startled birds.

"Martha!"

She heard Logan's voicesharp, involuntaryand the sound of his footsteps rushing toward her.

Then, a split second later, Belinda cried out.

"Logan, my stomachit hurts so bad! What if something's wrong with the baby?!"

Martha lifted her head with effort.

Logan had stopped. One step away.

His gaze shifted between her and Belinda, something unreadable churning behind his eyes.

In the end, he pulled back the foot he'd been about to set down.

"Belinda's pregnant. I can't take any chances with that. Go home and wait for meI'll take you to the hospital when I get back."

He turned without hesitation, scooped Belinda into his arms, and disappeared behind the shelves.

The last image Martha's eyes held: his retreating back, resolute and final. And over his shoulder, Belinda's smileagain.

The supermarket went quiet. The crowd melted away in silence.

"Sweetheart, let me take you home."

The clerk helped Martha to her feet. Martha shook her head.

"I'm okay. Thank you for protecting me."

Some roads could only be walked alone.

She straightened through the pain, and with every step toward home, her stride grew steadier than the last.

At the door, she paused and looked back one final time at the apartment they'd shared.

It was a good home.

What a shame.