You read the texts, what can it hurt?

The next few days were rough. John had managed to process her deception and infidelity before, and had tried to ignore those feelings when starting it back up with her.

But this was like a knife in the stomach, a long jagged one from some horror movie.

He felt like a sucker, genuinely stupid, an unwilling cuckold to the biggest frat-bro douchebag he had ever met. He wasn’t sleeping or eating well, and he had started to drink and night to try to get the images out of his head.

Images he knew would likely long remain.

The texts started not long after he walked away from her, she tried to call, but he would not answer for her. Truthfully he wasn’t answering for anyone, he was on PTO at work, he didn’t want to see or talk to anyone, anywhere.

The texts came and continued, here and there for days:

“John I am sorry, I can explain.”

“When I quit doing things with him, Steve got angry. He didn’t fire me, but he dropped me from all the good shifts, I lost all my regular customers, making pretty poor money.”

“I couldn’t deal with how he treated me at work, trying to get me to do things for him at work. He started with little things I let customers do, grab my tits and my ass, but he ended up with his cock out trying to get me to suck it, but I said no.”

“Work became impossible, so I quit. I found a job at a different club, and had a tryout where the manager made me give him a blowjob for the job. That was the last video you saw. I didn’t know he was recording until the end, and I was high, trying to not think about what I was doing.”

“He promised I only had to do it once, but he knows Steve and sent the video to him.”

“When we started going out again he heard about it, and he then started to **** me with them.”

”He must have gotten to my phone at the new club one day when he showed up. He gloated about the dive I was working at, and must have put them on my phone in the back.”

“Later he text me, and demanded I do things with him, or he would send them to you. He said he would make sure you would never consider touching me again if you saw them, and he was right.”

“I thought of deleting them, but I was thinking about going to the police with the **** texts, and a couple of voice messages where he demands that I fuck him or lose you forever.”

“I am going to press charges now, I have an appointment tomorrow to meet a detective about it. But it means never working as a dancer again, you get blackballed if you report a manager. They all know each other somehow.”

“It will mean quitting school, but it is worth it, maybe moving and working somewhere else if I want to keep trying for the degree. I don’t think there is any standing for a lawsuit, as they can make the legitimate case that my earnings were at least partially from illegal prostitution.”

“The night that you saw us was when I agreed to his demands. Things were going so well, and I didn’t want to lose you again.”

“One of the girls gave me something to take the edge off, that turned out to be MDMA, or ecstasy. I just wanted an easier time doing what I was being made to do, and I ended up drinking some wine and losing control. What I was doing with him made sense at the time, but it wasn’t what I wanted to do.”

“You don’t have to believe me, and I know you can’t forget what I have done, or forgive me, but I wanted you to know what it was that you saw, and why you saw it.”

“I love you, and I never wanted to lose you, and it took this to realize that a degree and a career aren’t worth how I used my body.”

“I will keep calling and texting, forever yours, Jennifer.”

He read through the texts and felt empathy for her. John watched the news over the next week, and sure enough, there was an article on the web from a local news outlet that had a picture of Steve being walked out of the club in handcuffs.

There seemed to be a scandal over it, and it impacted all the local gentleman’s clubs. As the next week progressed, more clubs started to get raided, and more current and former dancers came forward with allegations.

Jen had told him the truth. She was out, and out of school, but the two of them were married and he didn’t know how his wife was eating or where she was sleeping.

One text clears that up, as she let him know she was staying with a friend, and for a job working at a local hooters.

John had the divorce papers on his nightstand, but he had not yet signed them. He was still deeply convicted.

John was a victim here. Of adultery, of betrayal, and of some serious health risk. But so was his wife.

Deep down he knew she didn’t mean harm, even if she caused harm, Jenn was exceedingly kind. She had trouble saying no to people, wanting to live a life where everyone was happy. She also looked for the good in everyone, trying to believe that people were inherently good.

This might have lead to what happened with Steve, being groomed to be what she was, and to think it normal. But she still kept doing things when you were engaged and when you were married. She had to own that.

What could he do? What should he do?

She couldn’t dance here anymore, and if he shut her out of his life she would probably end up loving and dancing again, and she would end up as a sexual toy, a party favor, for some future version of Steve.

But if he took her back however, how could he ever trust her again? She was a serial cheater, she didn’t just cheat on him, she did it often and had done it with a lot of different partners.

How could John trust that it would never happen again? This choice weighed heavily on his mind.

John texted Jennifer back a couple of times to let her know that he was ok, and he was glad she was ok. But he told her that he were not ready to talk just yet.

John had to choose, only he could, and both choices he had were wrong in one way or another.