10. Grayson
CHAPTER 10
Grayson
A t first, I was seething with embarrassment and fury.
Clementine had pointed at the couch, then gone into her bedroom and hadn’t come back out.
I had been counting on her coming out so I could explain things better. It was hard to explain things with a boner.
It wasn’t about easy pussy . If I wanted easy pussy I could get it with one fucking text.
It was about doing the right thing.
I shifted uncomfortably on the narrow couch. It was so small that my legs and feet were hanging off the end.
She’d like me to give up and go, wouldn’t she? I thought grimly to myself.
So why wouldn’t I accept it? Leave and go back to my own comfortable condo downtown, where I could sleep in a huge king-sized bed and text any random woman in my phone and most likely have her there within ten minutes.
And she’d be a lot less work than Clementine, who looked at me like I was nothing better than a piece of gum on the bottom of her shoe.
So why didn’t I leave?
Clementine’s words had penetrated the protective bubble of my self-importance. My ironclad belief in my honor and duty.
If there was one thing I thought I lived my life by, it was that I did what was right , pursued justice fairly and honorably, no matter who or what I was pursuing.
But I hadn’t behaved honorably at all.
I had been a real asshole.
And, to make my casual cruelty worse, I had been unbearably fucking arrogant about doing whatever it took to take Harvey Adler down, when he was just a fucking cog in the organization.
Suddenly it was like all my carefully-constructed barriers came down, and the memories flooded through me, almost choking me with their power.
The week before her father got arrested, Clementine asked me if I wanted to start trying for a baby soon.
Her eyes were shining, but she looked nervous, too, twisting her wedding ring around her slim finger.
I wished I could forget what I had said to her, but I couldn’t.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves, Clementine. Let’s wait and see where we are in five years first.”
Her face crumpled, and I saw a tear gathered in the corner of her eye.
“You don’t want a family?” she asked tremulously.
“I think that would be extremely foolish right now,” I grated out and then made some excuse to go into the office.
Fuck, what an asshole I was.
Well, it was five years later now, and I wished I had what I had shot down. Clementine and a family. Maybe we’d even have two or three kids by now.
I turned to my other side on the couch and tried to do the same thing I had for five years: shove all my memories away mentally in a box and never think of them. But it was impossible here, with the lingering scent of Clementine’s shampoo, the memory of her tight little nipples, how she had looked with her skin glistening with sweat.
I couldn’t do anything but remember those two years with her.
The trips, the sex, the brunch in bed, the plays, the fancy dinners, the museums, the daily puzzle, coming home to her every day, having her curled into me every night, fitting perfectly in my arms, listening to her tell me about what she was working on, the smell of her rhubarb crumble.
All that domestic shit I thought I didn’t care about? I was only fooling myself. I had shoved all my memories aside so they wouldn’t hurt, and all that meant was when they finally came rushing back, they hurt like a bitch. My chest ached and my throat felt dry.
I wanted all that again
Every single goddamn thing. Even how she never knew what she wanted to eat every night, except definitely not the first 20 suggestions I had. Even how cold her tiny toes were pressed up against my calves.
Even though there was always a screaming clawing fear inside me about what would happen when her dad got arrested.
And now she rightly hated me.
When, suddenly I knew I’d do anything to get what I had back.
If only she hadn’t caught me!
Maybe I could have salvaged something if she hadn’t been in that hotel room.
And for what? Why had I been fucking around with Vivi? Just because I had been weak as fuck. Because I hadn’t been able to handle my entire life being deep undercover. So I had wanted to somehow blow off steam, fuck the stress and anxiety away.
It didn’t work, and even worse, it was an asshole thing to do.
And something else hadn’t worked, and that was pretending that marriage to Clementine hadn’t meant anything to me.
I was just realizing now that it meant a lot more to me than I had been willing to admit to myself.