Sunshine (On the Fringes Duet #2)

Prologue

Tess

When Gary shuts the door, I stumble back, landing on my backside, bouncing a little on the cushions of the sofa.

I’m still reaching for explanations even though I walked in to see a naked blonde wearing my husband on our living room floor, and then continued to watch as they did a naked scramble to locate her clothes before he whisked her out of the door. The door where my suitcase and bag lay tipped onto one side from their sudden plummet to the floor.

“What is this?”

My shamelessly naked husband holds his hand up, leaves the room and returns a few minutes later wearing a robe and carrying a heavy crystal tumbler filled halfway with dark liquid.

“Here.” He hands me the glass.

“Alcohol isn’t going to fix this, Gary. I need an explanation.” I’m surprisingly calm but I take a swallow anyway—a large one. It burns going down, but I don’t even blink.

He frowns down at me as if I’m simple… idiotic, dim, deficient in brain cells, and says, “I’m leaving you. I’m in love with someone else.”

I swallow, waiting a beat for the pain to hit, but it doesn’t come. “I’m assuming that was the someone else.” I motion toward the door with my glass, my eyes still fixed on him.

“Yes, Tess, she’s the someone else .” He slows his speech for the last two words to accentuate them as if I’m a moron. I look from his floppy, over-the-top, swoopy hair to his thin lips and back to his dark eyes.

“And yes, I’ve been spending time with and fucking her for a year. Her name is Marie.” His eyes narrow as he watches me.For a reaction maybe? I down the entire glass of whiskey mostly to buy time because I feel absolutely nothing. Nothing, except for the liquid burning a fiery path down my throat.

“For fuck’s sake, Tess, are you even listening to me? Do you even care? I didn’t just forget to pick up the dry cleaning… I’m. Leaving. You.”

With that he has the courtesy to look away and it allows me another moment to think before he adds, “We’re madly in love.”

I walk to the little bar and poor myself another drink. I don’t down it this time though. I gulp, breathe in deep, think, mull, and contemplate, and gulp again, and then, repeat the process all over again. I should at least feel angry at his betrayal, right?

Swallowing the last bit of my drink, I frown at him.

“You’re. In. Love? With Marie,” I say, my voice a little weary. I’d been traveling, after all, only looking forward to a hot bath and my Egyptian cotton sheets and doesn’t that say it all. “And you decided the best way to tell me was to act it out for me in some sort of pornographic theatre performance as I arrived home?”

He opens his mouth, but I hold up a finger and continue, “After a month at my grandmother’s bedside? Her deathbed, Gary? Are you for real?”

“God, Tess don’t be so dramatic, and don’t make this harder than it is. Gran was eighty-seven and like you said, you’d been at her bedside for the last month. It’s not like her death was a surprise.”

His voice rises. “Pay the fuck attention to me for once in your goddammed life.” His hands fly up and then fall at his sides. “Yes, I’ve fallen in love. But no, what you walked in on was not intentional.” He crosses his arms, his look nothing short of irritable. “I wasn’t going to tell you until next week when I planned to move out, but we got carried away while I stopped home to change.”

“Which is it, Gary? Do I not care or am I too dramatic? And she was eighty-seven?” I move toward him. “Did you seriously just say that?”

“I’m sorry. Really. I didn’t mean it that way.” Again, he looks away, this time rolling his lips before sighing defeatedly.

I look down at my left hand, the rock and band looking lackluster on my third finger. Once sparkling full of promise, it’s old news now.

Just like me. Old news. And in more ways than one according to my publisher, but that’s a separate issue.

“You bought those rings yourself,” he says, mistaking my staring at them as an accusation, and looks away from me.

“Because you said you couldn’t afford the kind of ring I deserved, Gary. But you still asked… You proposed. And you waited at the end of the aisle,” I say pinching the bridge of my nose, one of my headaches forming behind my eyes. When his brows rise, I add a muffled, “You made vows. And I certainly didn’t drag you.”And I hadn’t. Out of the two of us, he was the one that had wanted to get married. He’d convinced me .

“I did, but that was before I knew you were already married.” He walks to my desk, grabs a bottle of analgesics and tosses them at me.

I mumble my thanks as I unscrew the cap and take two tablets, but I don’t acknowledge his statement. I know what he’s talking about though. He’s been telling me for ages. ‘ You’re married to your laptop, Tess .’ I just didn’t know he was all that serious.‘ Hell, you even take it to bed.’ Not literally. But it does sit on my nightstand because sometimes Gary’s snoring gets to be a little too much, or inspiration hits. Or rather it used to.

“ Most people have to work, Gary.” My job may have had atypical hours the last year or so, but it’s still what pays the bills. And before that, I kept a decent schedule. A nine-to-five of sorts, other than a few tour dates here and there, some conferences and dinner meetings. “Not everyone has the luxury of not working.”

“Oh, here we go.” He shakes his head, a forceful sigh on his lips. “You’re my work, Tess.”

“Please. The few things you do here and there isn’t work. It’s something you do in between tee-offs.” Before I can think further on the fact that I don’t actually remember when Gary stopped working at his accounting firm, he blurts his own accusation.

“I play golf and go to the club because I’m lonely. Being your husband and errand boy isn’t as fun as you may think.”

“You certainly like the money.”

I have nothing else to say? Shouldn’t I remind him of the actual good qualities I have? Being well-off wasn’t supposed to be one of them. But he does enjoy a certain lifestyle my career affords him.

With my free hand, I grab my laptop off the table and hug it to my chest, planning to leave the room, possibly the condo, but his eyes drop to the floor and that halts me.

“You were never in love with me, Tess.” He sighs dramatically, long and drawn out. “Maybe you don’t know it yet, but I do. I realized it a long time ago.” He pauses, sounding sad. “I just couldn’t love enough for the both of us.”

“Who was I in love with then?” I demand, sounding more upset that I actually am.

“Tess, you’re in love with love. You’re in love with the characters in your head. Hell, I think you’re in love with the people you watch every damn second of your waking day.” He crosses his arms. “Even the ones you watch while we’re out to dinner.”

I turn my head, looking out the window which overlooks the park, where, yes, I people-watch all the time, interesting people. Because my life’s a bore. Gary’s a bore.

Gary’s dull, bland, vanilla, choose an adjective, and I’m the same. Our relationship is stale, tedious, monotonous— dead . He’s right. I don’t love him, I never did. But I don’t admit that to him. No, not good old stubborn me. Instead, I make excuses.

“I’m a romance author, Gary. It’s kind of a job requirement. And you’re always on your phone when we’re out to dinner.” I huff and stand, still squeezing my MacBook tightly to my chest as if it’s the only friend I have left in the world. Shit. And maybe it is.

When was the last time I went out with a friend that wasn’t Gary, or my agent, Paige — who to be fair is my best friend from childhood, but when had I done anything non-work related with her? Were we even friends anymore? Panic rises along with an ache, which in turn cements my realization that I don’t love Gary. I’m more concerned about my relationship with Paige being in jeopardy than I am my marriage ending.

Damn. I should be asking who she is, right? I release my Mac with one hand to place a palm against my forehead. I don’t even care who she is though.

“Who is she?” I demand, trying my best to scowl angrily, no, furiously. Yes that’s better… lividly? I imagine one of my characters scorned by her lover and try to act the part. I blink when Gary says my name.

“Tess, you’re doing it again.”

“What?”

“You’re turning this,” he points back and forth between us, “into a dialogue in your head. Into a damn scene. Bet you’re even using that big thesaurus in your head to edit like always.” He sighs, again, and it’s passionless. Just like Gary.

My throat feels tight, so I rub it. I am doing that. Shoot. I always do. Am I the author of this? Am I going to wake up and realize Gary was all just in my imagination? I grunt a laugh. That would be an eighties romance. The heroine was in a coma and dreamed… I smile… Of a tedious, cheating asshole, with an average dick, which inspires her to find the real man of her dreams.

“Tess!” Gary’s sharp voice makes me jump.

“Okay, okay. Fine. But…” I gather a breath and set down my laptop so I can work the rings off my finger. They were replicas of the rings Sir Grayson Edmunston gave to Lady Tobias in Garden of Glory, my first novel to hit number one on the New York Times best sellers list. The book that bought the condo we’re standing in. I had the rings designed exactly as I’d written them in the book.

Oh God, he’s right. I am in love with love—no, just the concept of love. I narrow my eyes at him. Maybe because he never lived up to the hype. No one ever had. Love is fake, something to be written, to be played out on the big screen. In reality love is… monotonous.

“Keep the rings,” he says, looking around.

I give a rough laugh.“Of course I’m keeping them.” My chuckle is rueful as his gaze acutely hones in on mine. No, not acutely… It sharpens, yes, his eyes sharpen on mine.

Oh, for goodness sake! I can’t stop editing my very own breakup. What the hell is wrong with me? I switch the rings to my right hand, sliding them on matter-of-factly.

“I’m taking the condo though.”

No wonder the man thinks I’m in love with love… wait. What? My head snaps up. “You’re what?”

“We’ve been living here for six years, Tess. We don’t have a prenup. I’m entitled to half of everything. And considering how much of my life you’ve wasted; I think I’ll get alimony too. I’ve grown accustomed to this life, after all.” A small cruel smile tightens the corners of Gary’s lips.

“You? Alimony?” I let loose a string of very unimaginative curses. “Get. Out.” And I repeat those words until I’ve run him right out of the condo. “Out, out, out! You lousy, no-good, cheating mooch!”