He Loved My Drunk Driver Chapter 1

It was past midnight. I was lying in bed, mindlessly scrolling through my phone, when I accidentally tapped into a late-night advice livestream on TikTok.

The caller—a man with a digitally altered voice—was mid-confession. He was telling the host, and thousands of listeners, that he was having an affair. And not just with anyone. He was sleeping with the drunk driver who had struck and crippled his wife years ago.

At the words car crash and crippled, my left hand instinctively reached across my chest, my fingers brushing against the flat, empty fabric of my right sleeve. The phantom ache of the amputated limb flared up, a dull throb echoing a nightmare I lived every single day.

The man on the screen kept talking, his words a stream of casual cruelty. He confessed that he could only make love to his wife in pitch darkness. He said that whenever his hand brushed against the stump of her arm, he felt a wave of visceral disgust.

He complained that ever since the accident, his wife had become a lifeless, suffocating presence. Nothing like the bright, vibrant girl he was seeing on the side.

A cold prickle of unease washed over me. I reached out to swipe past the video, but his next sentence stopped my heart entirely. It felt like an ice pick driving straight through my ribs.

"I mean, she lost her arm saving my mom's life. But I can't just sacrifice my own happiness forever out of gratitude, can I?"

He sighed, the sound heavy with self-pity. "I admit I still love her. But I just can't stand looking at her anymore. She's half a ghost."

The words hit me like a physical blow. I froze. The pregnancy test I had been clutching in my hand slipped from my fingers, clattering loudly against the hardwood floor.

Because five years ago, I threw myself in front of a speeding car to save my mother-in-law, and lost my right arm in the process.

And the man in this livestream, the man complaining to the internet that my sacrifice had "ruined his life"—was Simon. My husband. The boy I had loved for twenty years.

…

* * *

He was using a voice modifier, but the cadence of his speech, the slight pause he took before defending himself—it was unmistakably Simon.

The live chat was scrolling so fast it was a blur.

[Are you insane? You’re disgusted by the woman who saved your family?]

[Sleeping with the driver who crippled her?! I don't even have words for how evil that is.]

[I hope karma destroys you, you absolute monster.]

A violent chill seized my entire body. I couldn't wrap my mind around it. The man who had always treated me like fragile glass, who swore he would protect me with his life, was currently venting his revulsion for me to fifty thousand strangers.

When he talked about the young girl's bubbly, energetic nature, his voice dripped with an unmistakable, sickening fondness.

My stomach violently heaved. I scrambled out of bed, sprinting to the master bathroom, and threw up until there was nothing left but bitter bile.

The bathroom door swung open. Simon—who was supposed to be at an academic conference two states away—rushed in.

"Catherine? Honey, what's wrong? Are you sick?"

He gathered me into his arms. His hands, large and warm, instinctively reached for the stump of my right arm, massaging the scarred tissue with practiced ease.

"I'm sorry I was away these past few days. No one was here to massage it for you. Has it been aching terribly?"

His eyes were pooling with gentle, agonizing concern.

But all I could hear, looping endlessly in my mind, was his voice from the livestream: Whenever I touch it, I feel disgusted.

Five years ago, his mother and I were struck by a drunk driver. I pushed her out of the way and lost my arm. In the dark, suffocating months that followed, I tried to end my life more times than I could count. I swallowed pills. I took a razor to my remaining wrist. Every single time, Simon pulled me back from the ledge.

He would hold me, his eyes bloodshot from crying, begging me to stay, swearing that if I died, he would follow me. Since then, unless he was traveling for work, he massaged my shoulder every morning and every night to ease the nerve pain.

I had thought those moments were the purest expression of his love. Now I knew that every time he touched me, he was swallowing down bile.

He leaned in to kiss my forehead. I flinched, pulling away.

"What is it, Catherine?" he asked, his hands hovering awkwardly in the air. He rubbed his cheek against the curve of my neck. "Did I do something wrong? Are you upset with me?"

I looked at him, forcing my voice to stay level. "You’re a tenured professor now. A public figure. Doesn't it embarrass you to have a crippled wife?"

"How could you even say that?" he murmured, pulling me tighter. "You gave up everything for my family. And we've been together since we were kids. Don't you know how much I love you?"

Staring into his eyes, a terrifying vertigo washed over me. Which Simon was real? The devoted husband rubbing my shoulder in the dead of night, or the man on the internet who wished I was dead?

The urge to scream, to confront him about the affair, tasted like pennies on my tongue. But for a fleeting, tragic second, I actually wondered if I was the villain. Maybe I really was just a dead weight dragging down a brilliant, shining man.

He ruffled my hair affectionately and pulled a velvet box and a small designer shopping bag from his coat pocket.

"I passed by the boutique at the airport. Thought of you."

It was a bottle of high-end perfume and a delicate silver bracelet. It took me one glance to realize the fragrance was a sickly-sweet floral, the kind of scent a twenty-year-old girl would wear to a college party. It wasn't me at all.

When he stepped into the shower, I went through his coat pockets and found the receipt.

He had spent ten thousand dollars on a custom, limited-edition jewelry set. The bracelet he gave me was listed at the bottom. It was the complimentary freebie given with the purchase.

I stared at the crumpled slip of paper, and a hollow, broken laugh escaped my throat.

When we were in college, I had casually pointed out a necklace in a shop window. Simon worked five part-time jobs, running himself into the ground just to buy it for me, telling me that Catherine deserves the absolute best.

But now, the absolute best was for someone else. For Brianna.

And I, his crippled wife, was only worthy of the scraps she didn't want.

From the bathroom, I heard him humming a soft lullaby over the sound of the running water. It was the song he had written for me years ago. He wasn't singing it for me anymore.

I sat in the dark living room until the sun came up. At dawn, my phone buzzed. The private investigator I had hired on a whim months ago—when Simon's late nights first started—finally sent over the file.

When I saw the name of the driver who hit me, the bottom fell out of my world.

I first heard Brianna's name two years ago. Simon used to come home rubbing his temples, complaining endlessly about his new grad student.

"I've never met anyone so clumsy, Catherine. If she isn't knocking over expensive lab equipment, she's botching the data entry."

He had been on the verge of kicking her out of his research program. I was the one who felt bad for her. I was the one who told him to give her a little grace, to be patient.

I never, in my wildest nightmares, imagined that my husband would fall in love with her.

That he would love the girl who tore off my arm so much, he would cover up her crimes.