The Moment We Know (The Moments Duet #2)

Prologue

Five and a half years ago

David held Paige’s face in his hands as he eased in and out of her in measured, slow strokes. Their foreheads were pressed together, their breaths mingling in the dark as they … fucked.

Actually, saying they were fucking would imply there was a certain amount of heat and energy involved and there was neither, if he were being honest with himself. However, he didn’t particularly want to be honest with himself at the moment, because being honest meant facing things he didn’t want to face and making decisions he didn’t want to make.

He would’ve preferred to lie to himself about the intimacy issues he and his wife of six years, nine months, and four days, were having. Unfortunately, it was clear that was no longer something he was able to do, not when she was underneath him, barely moving and barely engaged, like a woman who was waiting for it to be over.

It wasn’t the first time he’d thought that, nor the hundredth. It was now the norm, not the exception, and it didn’t seem to change no matter what he did … and he’d done everything he could think of, to no avail.

It hadn’t always been like this—mechanical and clinical. In the beginning, their sex life had been frenzied and extremely satisfying. They’d been all over each other, engaging in explosive, spontaneous sex that made his eyes roll back in his head as her legs wrapped around him like a vise. However, those days were long gone. Now, the only time her legs wrapped around him was when he dragged them into place and every time he had to do that it destroyed a little piece of himself, bringing him closer and closer to the moment when he’d have to choose between keeping his marriage intact, or saving his soul.

It felt like that moment was upon him.

An odd finality settled over him, infiltrating every cell of his body like a toxin, weighing him down. His thrusts slowed, then came to a stop, and as he pulled out of the warmth of Paige’s body, he realized that his cock was now barely even semi-hard.

“What are you doing?” she asked, sounding confused.

Not disappointed or upset, and not even protesting that he’d basically stopped and dismounted in the middle of sex. Just … confused.

Resisting her efforts to hold him in place, he somewhat clumsily extricated himself from her embrace, ducking out from under the circle of her arms as he pushed her legs from around his hips. He tried to be as gentle as possible but as the last bit of hope left him, his movements became a little rough and abrupt.

“I can’t do this, anymore,” David replied, his voice sounding flat and lifeless as he maneuvered until he was situated on the edge of the bed, putting some distance between them.

“What do you mean? You can’t dowhat anymore?”

He could hear her moving around and turned to look at her over his shoulder, but in the dark he wasn’t able to see shit. With a frustrated hand, he found the lamp on his nightstand (one of an ugly-ass pair they’d gotten as a wedding gift from Paige’s Great-aunt Adele) and turned it on, illuminating the bedroom with a soft glow.

Paige flinched from the light and grabbed at the rumpled bedding, yanking it up to cover her exposed upper body, effectively hiding herself from his gaze in an all too familiar move. When was the last time he’d really seen her naked? He didn’t even know, it had been so long ago.

With a sigh, David leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. “I can’t dothisanymore. This lack of intimacy and …” he trailed off for a moment to gather the courage to say the hard thing out loud. “Disconnected sex.”

Her expression turned apprehensive and a little shuttered. “I’m sorry,” she apologized, clutching the bedding even tighter. “I haven’t been myself since … the miscarriage.”

“I know,” he told her. His tone softened with sadness at the memory of losing their baby fourteen months ago; he hadn’t been himself since then, either. “But our problems started before that.”

When she didn’t respond, he continued. “I’m not sure exactly when it happened, or if it just happened slowly, but our sex life has become completely one-sided. I’m the only one who ever wants it—”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s not?”

“No. I want it, too.”

“When was the last time you just jumped my ass?” he asked, glancing back at her. “You know, because you wanted it?”

Paige blinked at him, like a deer in the headlights.

He turned back around. “Exactly. It’s been so long neither one of us remembers.”

“I just … you always instigate it first—”

“Because if I didn’t, we’d never have sex, that’s why.”

“David …”

“Do you know how long it’s been since the last time we had sex?”

“I haven’t been … keeping track,” she answered, somewhat haltingly.

“Well, I have.”

“You have?”

“Yes. You see, I wanted to know how long it would take for you toinstigateit, or if you even would—and I really wanted you to. Do you know why? Because I wanted to know that you wanted me. But it’s been thirty-seven days, and I guess that’s my breaking point. That’s the longest I can go without wanting, or needing, to have sex with you. But you obviously don’t need, or want, to have sex withme.”

“That’s not true,” she protested.

“Yes, it is.” With a deep sigh of resignation because he knew she was lying, he put his hands in his hair. “And it’s a real bitch.”

There was shuffling behind him, and then a moment later, she was pressed against his back, with the sheet bunched between them. “I love you,” she whispered.

“And I love you,” he returned, not letting the sound of tears creeping into her voice sway him. “But it isn’t enough, and I can’t keep lying and telling myself that it is.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, only having parts of you isn’t enough to sustain me. I needallof you, like I used to have—”

“You do haveall of me.”

“No, I don’t.” His fingers pulled at his hair, making his scalp hurt. “Now I only have scattered fragments, and I just can’t live with them anymore.”

Slowly, Paige moved, until she was sitting at his side. Her heart pounded in an awful beat because he looked wrecked, in a way she’d never seen before. “What are you saying?”

He cleared his throat. “I think we should separate.”

“What? No,” she stuttered in disbelief. “No.You can’t mean that.”

“I’m sorry, but I do. I want you in ways that you no longer want me—”

“I do want you!”

“I think youwantto, but you don’t. Not anymore, anyway. And I need to have that sexual connection with you, in order to be whole. Without it, my heart … starves.”

David watched her eyes fill with tears, then struggle to keep them from falling, and it took everything he had to stand up and start getting dressed. Boxer briefs, jeans, the shirt he’d worn that day, and socks all got pulled on in a room that was now filled with her choked pleas.

“Please don’t do this. I love you. We can fix this.Ican fix this, I promise.” She crawled off the bed, slightly clumsy because of the bedding and got between him and the bedroom door. “You can’t leave—”

He cut off her words by taking her face in his hands and kissing her, tasting the salt of her tears and desperation on her lips. When he pulled back, it was with overwhelming sorrow because he wouldn’t be with her for the rest of his life, and the rest of his life was starting right now. “I have to. I’m sorry.”

As Paige stared after him in stunned dismay, he stepped around her on unsteady legs and headed down the hallway to the front door, stopping only to put on shoes and grab his keys.

Numb, he got into his car, and as he drove away from the house, the weight of the hardest decision he’d ever made almost suffocated him.