The Cruise He'll Regret Chapter 2

"You're what?!"

My sister's reaction was explosive. Everyone knew how hard Simon and I had fought to be together. Even to me, it felt like a dream that had suddenly turned into a nightmare.

"He's cheating on me," I said, my voice hollow. "I found out last night." The words tasted like ash in my mouth.

"Anna, where are you?"

I touched my stomach, the tears finally coming, soaking my pale, drawn face. "At the hospital. I… I got rid of the baby."

On the other end of the line, I heard her frantic footsteps come to a dead stop, followed by a roar of pure, unadulterated fury.

"That bastard! I'm going to kill him!"

After we hung up, another text from Simon arrived.

"Sweetheart, I miss you so much, my heart aches. It's all old guys here. I need my beautiful, sweet-smelling wife."

I used to call this constant stream of messages "dependency." Now I knew it for what it was: the guilty conscience of a man caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

I couldn't even bear to think about it. Had every business trip for the past three years been a lie?

The hospital room door opened. "Anna…" my sister, Kate, walked in, her eyes red.

"Did you find anything?"

Just before, I had asked her to use her husband's access to look up the passenger information for Simon's cabin.

She nodded, practically vibrating with rage. "It's a woman named Veronica Vance."

My head snapped up. "Veronica Vance?!" My hands started to shake, my breathing ragged.

I couldn't believe it. The woman I had personally promoted to be my executive assistant at my own company.

Kate looked like she was about to have an aneurysm. "That son of a bitch! I'm going to ruin his company! Cheating on you with his own secretary!"

A thought struck me. I opened Veronica's Instagram profile. I had stumbled upon it by chance, a random suggestion from the algorithm. She didn't know I followed her.

The latest post was a picture of the ocean, her hand forming a heart shape around a man's bare back. The caption read: "They were right. Older men really know what they're doing."

My fingers froze. The blood in my veins turned to ice. The room started to spin.

The post before that.

"They say the right person will be a part of your future. And he is." The picture was of an internal promotion assessment at our company. Next to Simon's name, the word 'Approved' was circled.

My numb fingers kept scrolling down, a masochistic compulsion.

"365 days with my old man today! He has a surprise for me, so excited!" The picture was a silhouette of two people kissing, reflected in the window of a Ferris wheel.

Tears I could no longer hold back streamed down my face, blurring the sharp, painful words on the screen.

The Ferris wheel. Of all places. The one place he always said he was too busy to take me back to.

The place where we first fell in love.

Simon, you are so cruel.

I read through her posts again and again, trying to burn these ugly images into my brain, to replace the beautiful memories I held so dear.

"Anna…" Kate's worried voice pulled me back to the present. I hadn't even realized I was crying. "Maybe… maybe you shouldn't go."

I shook my head, my grief hardening into a cold resolve. "No. I'm going. The ones who deserve to live in the shadows are them, not me."

The next day, Kate and I flew to Nassau. We boarded the ship at the port.

The moment I stepped on deck, it was as if my eyes had a built-in tracking device. I spotted him immediately, the tallest, most handsome man in the crowd.

I was hidden behind sunglasses and a mask, a ghost in the boisterous crowd. No one noticed me.

I watched the man who always complained that ice cream was too sweet for him, take a bite of her leftover cone.

I watched the man who always hated public displays of affection, hold her at the bow of the ship and shout "I love you" to the wind.

I watched him pull a ring from his pocket and slide it onto her ring finger.

I looked down at my own bare hands.

And felt the last of my soul drain away.