Sworn to Collide
After devoting eleven years of marriage to Ben, her high school sweetheart, and stepping off the corporate ladder to raise their three children, Denise is ready to seize the reins of the career she always dreamed of. But as soon as she commits to step back into the professional world, Ben drops a bombshell that disrupts everything.
Suddenly, this once rock-solid couple finds themselves in a battle over ambition, identity, and whose turn it is to shine. As personal choices draw them further and further apart, they must confront their widening rift—a threat to the love they thought was unshakeable. Can they rediscover the passion they once shared, or will their divergent paths pull them apart for good?
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As a thank you, I will send you the deleted Prologue from "Sworn to Remember".
Excerpt from "Sworn to Collide"
Ben stood up. “Well, I guess I better get going.”
“What? Where are you going? It’s after ten.”
“I have a reservation at a hotel. I’m leaving early in the morning so I can get to work at a reasonable hour. It’s tough when Christmas is during the week. Are you working tomorrow?”
Stunned at his unexpected plan to leave, I tried to focus on the question. “No. I took off the rest of the week to spend time with the kids. I thought you’d be around too.”
He chuckled without humor. “We never talked about it, other than for Christmas Day. We haven’t stayed in this house together for months. So I certainly didn’t think that was an option.”
I felt as if my heart was being wrung out. The emotions of the day had yo-yoed so often that hope, confusion, and disappointment were tangled together in a heap, exhausted from sparring. “You can stay here. The guest room is yours.” It sounded so pathetic.
“No, thanks. I don’t want to be a guest in our house.”
That last statement was like a punch to my gut. I didn’t want Ben to leave. His wine sat untouched on the coffee table, and our intimate conversation from just a few minutes earlier had been cast aside like a used tissue.
I stood, holding myself around the middle, afraid I might fall apart. My fingers brushed over the ring he had so thoughtfully given me as a gift today. With it, along with our conversations and fleeting looks, had come an optimistic possibility that he missed me—missed our life together—and might consider moving back. But I had read too much into it.
I even contemplated telling him how I felt, perhaps the push he might need to make that decision. But now the words stuck inside of me as if glued down.
My rainbows-and-lollipops dream would never turn into our reality. I was foolish to even think it.
He came over and kissed me on the cheek, his warm hand branding my arm. “Thanks for today. It was special.”
I couldn’t respond over the lump in my throat and the tears burning the backs of my eyes.
He didn’t wait.
He left me standing there as he walked from the room, through the kitchen, and out the back door.
The end of our marriage should never have happened the way it did.
It should never have happened at all.
But his big promotion, coming on the heels of my seizing the reins of my stalled career, pushed the snowball of teetering discontent over the edge, starting the downhill slide of what was once a great marriage.
Words were hurled, positions taken, both reasonable and rational to the one hurling them, and each of our lives took on a new hue—colored by the bold strokes of righteousness, anger, blame, and stubbornness.
And now here I was at ten p.m. on Christmas night, standing before my twinkling tree—with the now cool whisper of his kiss on my cheek and the warm remnant of his hand branding my arm—spoiled by the echo of the back door closing behind him.
