THE HUSBAND SHE THREW AWAY

CHAPTER TWO: WHY WOULD YOU HIT HIM

The damp heat of Miami hit him the second he stepped off the regional shuttle—a sudden two-day gap in his Gulf rotation he’d grabbed like a rare gift.

He hadn't called ahead. He had spent the entire three-hour flight picturing her face when she opened the door, wanting to catch her off guard and see her stress drop into that specific, quiet smile she saved for him. The smile that made four weeks of salt spray, diesel fumes, and unforgiving steel feel like a cheap price to pay for five days of home.

When he reached the apartment building on Brickell, his key felt heavy in his palm. He pushed open the front door into the quiet afternoon light, setting his heavy canvas duffel on the cold marble floor.

"Elowen?" he called softly, his voice low and gravelly from a double shift.

Silence answered him. Then came a sound from the master bedroom—a sharp, rustling gasp and a low murmur his body understood a full second before his mind processed it. Rhythmic, urgent, and entirely wrong. Every protective instinct four years of guarding her had built came roaring online at once. His pulse thundered in his ears, hot and loud.

Caelen moved without thinking. He slammed the brass handle against the drywall, the door swinging wide onto a sight that turned his blood to ice. A man he recognized vaguely—a manicured manager he’d shaken hands with once at a South Beach launch party—was on top of his wife.

He’s hurting her.

Caelen locked his rough hands around Dunstan Cray’s silk collar, yanking him backward off the mattress with violent leverage. Dunstan hit the floor with a dull thud. Before the man could react, Caelen drove a hard, dock-tested fist straight into Dunstan's jaw, then another directly into his ribs, four years of brutal physical labor powering every strike.

He pulled his arm back for a third blow when Elowen’s voice cut through the air—not a cry of terror, but a sharp whip of pure irritation.

"Caelen, stop! What the hell is wrong with you?"

Caelen froze, his fist hovering inches from the man's bloody face, his chest heaving. He turned his head slowly toward the bed. "He's... he's hurting you," Caelen rasped, his voice shaking. "Get behind me, I'm calling—"

"He isn't hurting me," Elowen said. The utter flatness in her voice reached him like cold water. She sat up, pulling a sheet over her chest with a slow, deliberate twist of her wrist, looking at him with profound annoyance. "He's my manager."

Caelen’s grip went slack. Dunstan scrambled backward against the wall, coughing and wiping dark blood from his split lip.

Caelen stood up on trembling knees, looking at his wife properly. He saw her without the soft studio lighting, stripped down to the stark, unflattering reality of the afternoon sun. His brain simply refused to accept what his eyes were confirming.

"What... what is going on here?" he whispered, the words heavy as lead on his tongue.

Elowen exhaled, pinching the bridge of her nose. "You weren't supposed to be back until Thursday, Caelen."

"That's... that is what you have to say to me right now?" His voice cracked, a raw, jagged sound. "That I came home early? That I caught you?"

On the floor, Dunstan straightened his linen shirt, dabbing at his bloody lip. He looked up at Caelen with a quiet, superior amusement that felt worse than a blade between the ribs. Without a word, Dunstan stood, pulled his trousers off the floor, and strolled into the adjoining bathroom, closing the door behind him with a soft, dismissive click. The sound of running water drifted into the bedroom.

Caelen turned back to Elowen, his throat tight. "What is he doing here? In our bed, Elowen?"

"We don't even use that bed anymore," Elowen said flatly, wrapping a silk robe around herself as she stepped onto the hardwood. "He was here for a strategy meeting."

"In our sheets?"

Something in her face shifted then—the smooth performance dropping away, leaving a deep, ugly exhaustion. She looked at his oil-stained hands, his worn jeans, and his weather-beaten face with pitying disdain.

"Do you honestly expect me to just go without, Caelen? Because you're floating on a rig four weeks out of every month?"

The words knocked the air straight out of his lungs. He stared at her, his voice coming out in a ragged whisper. "You told me we couldn't. You said your body was your career, that we had to protect it... every single time I came home and tried to touch my own wife."

Elowen let out a quiet, mirthless laugh. "And you actually believed that for four years?"

"I gave you everything," Caelen said, his hands clenching into tight, trembling fists. "Every single dollar I made out there. Every allowance. I starved myself of a real marriage to protect your dream. And you just give it away to your manager?"

Elowen shrugged, crossing her arms over her robe, her chin tilted up in quiet defiance. "Stop being so dramatic about it, Caelen. It's just business and biology."

Dramatic.

The word settled inside his ribcage, heavy and suffocating. He stood there, waiting for something—a tear, a flash of shame, a single flicker of regret—anything that would prove this was the woman he had sworn to love and protect, rather than a cold stranger who had simply used his sweat to buy her way into a world where he didn't belong.

Nothing came. Her eyes remained cold, clear, and entirely empty, waiting for him to finish making a scene so she could get back to her day.

Caelen turned on his heel. He passed the bathroom door without looking back, walked through the sunlight-drenched living room that had never felt like home, and stepped out into the humid Miami air, the quiet tearing through him deeper than the ocean ever had.