MY HUSBAND SMELLED LIKE CHERRY BLOSSOMS WHEN HE CAME HOME LATE AGAIN
The clock read 3:17 AM when his key finally scraped in the lock downstairs after another supposed ‘business trip’. I was already sitting on the edge of the couch in the dark living room, listening, pretending to sleep, my heart pounding against my ribs like a drum. The floorboards creaked as he walked down the hall towards the bedroom, trying to be quiet but failing miserably like always, each step a weight on my chest. He opened the door, the harsh hallway light casting a long, accusing shadow onto the wall behind me.
He froze dead when he saw me sitting there in the shadows. His face was pale and drawn in the dim light, the usual flushed look from late nights gone, replaced by a gray, sallow pallor that shocked me. He started muttering something low under his breath, weak excuses about traffic, about the meeting running impossibly over schedule, but the sickeningly sweet, cloying **smell of cherry blossoms** that clung to him like a second skin told a different story entirely. It was the same cheap, unmistakable body spray she always wore, the one I smelled on his shirts last month.
“Just tell me,” I whispered, my voice barely audible, raw and shaking with contained fury and sorrow, “Was she worth it? Everything we built, every promise you made? Was she worth throwing all of it away?” The question hung heavy and suffocating in the still air between us. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, just kept fumbling nervously with the collar of his rumpled shirt, his hands clammy and **cold** when I finally reached out in disbelief to touch his arm, feeling that chilling detachment. I pulled my hand back immediately, the shocking coldness feeling like a physical blow right to my gut.
He finally looked up, a strange, empty, almost relieved expression on his face that made my stomach drop further than I thought possible. “It wasn’t tonight,” he said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion, the words hitting me with an unexpected twist. “She was gone from here, from the house, before I even left for the hotel this afternoon.”
Then the tablet on the coffee table buzzed with a new message.
👇 *Full story continued in the comments…*The buzz from the tablet felt like a starting pistol. I picked it up, my hands trembling so badly I almost dropped it. It was a news alert: “Local Woman Found Dead in Apparent Suicide – Cherry Blossom scented body spray identified at scene.” My breath hitched in my throat, a sob building, threatening to choke me. My eyes darted back to my husband, searching for any sign, any flicker of the man I thought I knew. But there was nothing, just that chilling emptiness.
“Gone?” I whispered, my voice cracking. “Dead gone?”
He finally nodded, a single tear tracing a path down his gaunt cheek. “She… she said she couldn’t live without me. After I told her it was over. That I was choosing you, choosing us. I thought she was just being dramatic.”
The air in the room thickened, heavy with the unspoken, with the horrifying realization that had started to dawn. The cherry blossom scent wasn’t just infidelity, it was guilt. He hadn’t just cheated; he’d been the last person she saw alive.
“You knew,” I said, each word a painful accusation. “You knew she was gone before you even came home. That’s why you’re so cold. You’re not just a cheater, you’re a coward. You let me sit here and stew in my anger, thinking you were with her, when all along…”
He sank to his knees, his shoulders shaking. “I didn’t know she was going to… to do this. I swear. I just… I was scared. I didn’t know what to do. I was trying to protect you.”
Protect me? From what? The truth? The ugly, devastating truth that my husband had driven a woman to suicide and was now trying to shield me from the fallout?
I looked down at him, a broken man kneeling at my feet, consumed by guilt and regret. The love I once felt for him had withered, replaced by a cold, hard knot of resentment and a profound sense of loss, not just for the relationship we had but for the man I thought he was.
I turned and walked away, heading towards the door, the smell of cherry blossoms clinging to the air, a constant, sickening reminder of the night everything shattered. “It’s too late,” I said, my voice flat and dead like his. “You can’t protect me from this. You can’t protect either of us. There’s nothing left to protect.” The slam of the door echoed in the silence he had created. He had chosen. He had destroyed. And now, I was choosing myself.