The bouquet was beautiful—roses, lilies, and baby’s breath wrapped in silk ribbon. It arrived at my office with a card that read: For the love of my life. My coworkers teased me, swooning over how romantic my husband was. I smiled weakly, pretending to blush, but inside, something felt wrong. The handwriting on the card was rushed, almost careless, not like him. And the delivery slip attached to the wrapping caught my eye: another name had been crossed out.
Her name.
I recognized it instantly. A woman I had suspected for months but never confronted him about. A woman whose perfume sometimes lingered faintly on his shirt. A woman he swore was “just a friend.”
My blood turned to ice.
That night, I set the bouquet on the table between us when he walked in. “They’re lovely,” I said, my voice trembling. “But tell me—were they meant for me, or for her?”
His face went pale, his keys slipping from his hand. “What are you talking about?”
I held up the delivery slip, the name still faintly visible beneath the scribbles. “Don’t lie to me. I saw it.”
For a moment, the room was silent except for the hum of the refrigerator. He rubbed his temples, sighing heavily, like I was the problem. “It was a mistake,” he muttered. “The florist messed it up.”
“No,” I shot back, my throat burning. “The mistake was you.”
He tried to reach for me, his voice breaking. “It’s over with her. I swear. I was trying to fix things with you.”
But the flowers told the truth. They had been touched by her first, her name written before mine, her existence bleeding into the petals now sitting in my home.
I left the bouquet on the porch that night, letting the wind and rain tear it apart. Romance wasn’t roses delivered with someone else’s name attached. Romance was honesty, loyalty, devotion—and he had given those away before he ever gave me flowers.
Final Thought
Love isn’t proven by gestures. It’s proven by intent. My husband thought a bouquet could cover the truth, but the smudged name on the delivery slip told me more than his words ever would. Flowers wilt, lies unravel, but betrayal—betrayal blooms in ways you can never forget.
