My husband had spent ten years restoring art. Then, for the first time, someone asked him to restore a woman's private parts.
He'd laughed out of sheer disbelief and ripped into his assistant for two solid hours.
I assumed it was a prank. Didn't think twice about it.
But a few days later, while helping him organize his files, I found a stack of private photos—the woman's so-called restoration site.
Filthy. Every single one.
My hands wouldn't stop shaking. I rushed downstairs, ready to confront him.
Instead, I overheard him chatting with a friend.
"She said I was too big. Before, when I'd... she kept insisting on getting it restored."
"I said no, but she threatened to go find a male doctor. You know how it is—divorced or not, I'm not letting another man put his hands on her down there."
I forgot how to breathe.
——
Lambert Harding really was that big.
Big enough that I'd had to get surgery just so my body could handle him.
When I found out a male surgeon would be performing it, I wanted to crawl into a hole and disappear.
Lambert hadn't minded at all back then. He'd just pressed his mouth to my ear, smirking, blowing on my skin on purpose. "Be good, Ellie. Once the surgery's done, it won't hurt anymore. I promise you'll love it so much you can't stand it..."
Now, that same fierce possessiveness directed at another woman landed like a slap across my face.
I turned away slowly, as though every drop of strength had been wrung out of me.
The friend's voice carried through the study door.
"Look, don't get pissed at me for saying it ugly, but you've been divorced for years. A girl like Lydia? You couldn't count the guys she's been through on one hand. Who even knows who wore her out—coming to you for 'restoration' is just an excuse to get back in your—"
Lambert's voice dropped low and sharp. "No."
He paused for two seconds before continuing. "She's obsessive about who touches her. Won't let anyone near her except me. So no—there's no one else."
The urgency with which he defended her left his friend speechless.
I tugged at the corner of my mouth in a bitter almost-smile.
So a woman who got her kicks sleeping with male models was supposedly too precious to let anyone else touch her.
That night, when Lambert went to shower, I picked up his phone for the first time.
Fingerprint unlock. On WeChat, only one conversation was pinned to the top.
One glance and I recognized the profile picture. Lydia Fox.
My fingers trembled as I tapped in.
The messages were naked, filthy, wall-to-wall sex.
Lydia had told him her breasts had gotten bigger, that she could wrap them around all of him now.
She'd asked if he missed the feeling of being buried inside her.
Photo after photo, sent casually, carelessly.
Every single one impossible to look at directly.
I gagged and couldn't stop, nausea ripping through me like my whole body was trying to turn itself inside out.
Lambert came out of the shower. His gaze locked on the lit screen, the open conversation. Shock first, then a flicker of guilt behind his eyes.
A few seconds of silence. He was the one who broke it.
"I never replied to her. Those photos... I never opened them."
Pain hit my chest like a whip cracking across raw skin, so sudden I couldn't breathe.
My eyes drifted back to the glowing screen.
He was right that he'd never replied. Hundreds of messages, and every single one was Lydia's alone, one-sided provocation after provocation.
But every last one of those explicit photos had been saved—all of them—in his locked private album.
I'd noticed that album before. I'd even asked him about it once, curious.
He'd told me it was priceless artwork, pieces that hadn't gone public yet.
So the priceless artwork he'd been hiding was another woman.
I was shaking so hard I could barely stand. In the long silence that followed, I finally forced out the question I'd been too afraid to face. "Do you regret it? Regret leaving her... Do you still love her?"
