When the delivery man handed me the bouquet of roses, my heart swelled. Dozens of long-stemmed red roses, lush and fragrant, wrapped in crisp white paper. It wasn’t my birthday, it wasn’t our anniversary, it wasn’t Valentine’s Day. It was just an ordinary Thursday, which made the gesture even sweeter. For a brief, shining moment, I thought: He still loves me. He still sees me. But then I opened the card, and everything I thought I knew about my marriage collapsed.
The card was simple, elegant, with gold lettering around the edges. Inside, written in his handwriting, were four words: Forever yours, Bunny.
I froze. My breath caught in my throat. Bunny. He had never called me that. Never once in all our years together.
My stomach twisted. Maybe it was a mistake? Maybe the florist had mixed up the cards? But no—the handwriting was his, unmistakable. My husband had signed a card with a nickname meant for someone else.
When he came home that evening, I had the bouquet displayed on the table, the card propped against the vase. He froze the second he saw it. His face went pale, his mouth opening and closing like he was searching for air.
“Beautiful roses,” I said casually, though my voice trembled. “And the card is…interesting.”
He swallowed hard, his hands twitching at his sides. “Claire, listen—”
“Who’s Bunny?” I asked, my voice sharp enough to cut glass.
He stammered, “It—it’s just a joke. A nickname. I must’ve…written it without thinking.”
“Without thinking?” I snapped, my hands shaking as I held up the card. “You don’t just invent a nickname on the spot. You wrote it like it was second nature. Like you’ve written it before.”
His silence was louder than any confession. He couldn’t meet my eyes.
The rage rose inside me, but beneath it was something worse—hurt so deep it felt like drowning. “You sent her flowers,” I whispered. “And somehow, I ended up with them.”
He tried again, desperate now. “It doesn’t mean anything. She’s just someone from work. It’s not serious.”
“Not serious?” My laugh was bitter. “You gave her a name, a secret name, one you’ve never given me. That’s not nothing. That’s intimacy.”
The roses filled the room with their heady scent, but suddenly they smelled rotten, like betrayal dressed up in red petals. I grabbed the vase, water sloshing over my hands, and hurled it into the sink. Glass shattered, roses crumpled, petals floating in dirty water.
He flinched, but I didn’t care. “Do you know what hurts the most?” I whispered. “Not that you cheated. Not that you lied. But that you saved your tenderness for someone else. You gave her something you never gave me.”
That night, I slept in our bed alone. He tried knocking on the door, tried begging me to let him explain. But no explanation could erase the truth. A nickname revealed more than he ever intended. And now I knew: the roses weren’t mine at all.
Final Thought
Sometimes betrayal hides in the smallest details. Not in the act itself, but in the words chosen, the names whispered, the tenderness given away. He thought he was sending love, but what he really sent me was proof. And once I read that card, I understood: love that belongs to two cannot survive the weight of three.
