Creep - Jennifer Hillier [10]
Bill Chancellor was a prominent heart surgeon, two decades her senior. The age difference had never bothered her, and she knew it had everything to do with her father.
They had met at a university benefit. Bill was handsome and charismatic, and it hadn’t taken long for Sheila to fall in love with him. He made it easy, courting her with a single-mindedness that swept her off her feet. After only a few months of dating, they were married. Shortly after the wedding, he was appointed chief of surgery at Seattle Pacific, one of the best teaching hospitals in the Northwest. The early months of their marriage were blissful, a happy whirlwind of late mornings in bed, fund-raising dinners, and weekends spent at Bill’s family’s lake house.
But after their first anniversary, things began to sour. Bill worked all the time and was spending less and less time at home. Early-morning rounds of golf replaced their lazy weekends, and poker nights with the guys kept him out late. When he was home, he was distant, impatient, and often distracted.
Much the way her strict Chinese father used to be. And just as with her father, Sheila had to work diligently to get Bill’s attention. She cooked romantic dinners, planned weekend getaways, couple’s nights out, day trips to quirky places she read about in travel magazines. Despite her best efforts, he continued to withdraw. And the less interest he showed in her, the harder she tried.
She knew the marriage was in trouble. She was working on her Ph.D. in social psychology by this time, and it wasn’t hard to identify the basic problems. Still, she didn’t have the courage to leave him. Not even when she began to suspect Bill was cheating on her.
Instead, she threw herself into her work. Made full professor. Her work gave her so much joy and fulfillment, she could almost convince herself it was enough.
Almost.
Her marriage came to an end one weekend in April, nearly a decade after her wedding day. She came home two days early from a psychology conference because her pesky cold had turned into bronchitis.
Bill’s Jaguar was in the driveway when she pulled up to the house in her taxi, exhausted and dizzy from the long flight and too much cold medication. At 3:00 p.m. on a Wednesday, this was unheard of. She’d never known him to blow off a weekday afternoon. Beside the Jag sat a cute little Toyota hybrid, a car she’d never seen before. It was then she knew.
She paid the driver and stood at her front door, light-headed and sweaty, wondering if she was ready for this. Leaving her suitcase on the front steps in case she had to spend the night at a hotel, she let herself into her house. She tiptoed up the staircase, taking care to avoid the steps she knew would creak.
The door to their bedroom was closed. She paused, ear cocked. Somewhere behind the door, Bill groaned in ecstasy. It was a sound she hadn’t personally heard in over four years, and it stabbed her.
Finally, she was going to come face-to-face with her husband and his mistress, a woman who’d been stealing his heart away, piece by piece, for God only knew how long.
She opened the door in a trance. If she thought she was prepared, she was wrong.
That Bill was doing it doggy-style with his favorite surgical scrub nurse was not surprising.
That the scrub nurse was a forty-two-year-old man named Norm floored her.
In all the years they’d been married—despite all of Sheila’s work in social behavior and perception—it had never once occurred to her that her domineering, bullying, brilliant heart-surgeon husband was gay.
A full minute passed before either man noticed she was there. Then all hell broke loose.
Yelping in surprise, the two men jumped off the bed, penises still hard but wilting fast. They knocked into each other in their search