Chapter 22 Grudge
GRUDGE
My head spins.
I’m lost in all of it.
The way the orgasm feels as it hammers through me.
The comfort and softness of Lucy’s body beneath mine.
This could have been us.
The way I had to close my eyes because I couldn’t look at her tears and come at the same time.
And how I feel like an ass for protecting my heart and going for the thrill of coming inside Lucy again instead of pausing to check she’s okay.
Her hands stroke my back. Her thighs hug me tightly.
This could have been us.
The words repeat in my head. So lost in the moment, I revealed my true feelings to her. That this is who we could have been. Together, on a frigid winter’s day, making love and fucking until we were utterly spent.
There’s a really good chance this is as much a goodbye and closure as it is a happy reunion. It’s been hard enough to forget about Lucy when she was half the country away.
This time, we used protection. And I’m relieved.
Co-parenting with her, seeing my kid only half the time, would bring its own kind of agony. She’ll move on. She’ll find someone else.
Shit. She even had a ring on her finger not too long ago.
Nah, I couldn’t deal with seeing her every week at kiddie handover in some parking lot.
Without saying a word, I get up and head into the bathroom to splash some cold water on my face. As I clean myself up in the sink, my reflection tells me nothing. I just look like me. Messy hair, face in need of a shave, ink that tells stories I’m proud of. But on the inside, I’m ruined.
When I’m done, I run a cloth beneath the warm water and squeeze out the excess before returning to Lucy.
She’s exactly where I left her, only with two or three fresh tears on the side of her face and the back of her wrist resting on the bridge of her cute, upturned nose.
Gently, I remove her wrist and wipe her face, first, smoothing away the tears. Then, I dip the cloth between her legs. I should be furious at her, but I just can’t when it comes to this woman.
Not now, when she’s still tender from what just happened between us.
I might say the things she needs when we have sex, but I’d never reduce her to the sum of the words I choose.
I’ve always thought she was…precious. Someone special worth protecting.
Maybe that’s it. I’ve always been a little mad she never gave me the chance to fully protect her.
Angry that she never found her way to me when she was under pressure.
Guilty, that I put her in that position in the first place by getting arrested, and not fighting harder against something I didn’t do.
I toss the cloth onto the side table and climb into the bed next to her before tucking the covers over us.
“We can’t do that again until we talk, Zach. It’s not fair to either of us,” Lucy says finally, when she’s tucked up tightly in my arms, her head resting over my heart that’s having a real hard time reconciling that she’s back.
Her breath flutters across my chest as I stroke the hair from her face.
Deep down, I know she’s right. “I know. Just give me five more minutes of pretending everything is fine. That we’ve fallen back in love, and this is the life we should have had all along.
I’m scared that what you’re about to tell me won’t make any sense.
That you threw us away for some reason I can’t ever forgive you for. ”
She nuzzles back beneath my chin. “You aren’t the only one who missed us,” she says as an opening gambit.
And I’m immediately sucked in. “What do you mean by that?”
Lucy sits up, tugging the sheet with her to cover her breasts. I try to tug it away from her, but she reaches for my Henley, which landed over the lamp, and pulls it on, instead.
She smiles like she knew what I was trying to do, but there is a sad edge to it.
“He threatened to make your sentence as long as it could be if I didn’t divorce you, and shorten it if I did. Back then, and now, there’s nothing my dad won’t do to win a case. But to understand what happened then, you need to understand what’s happening now. The real reason I’m back.”
“It’s not just because your ex cheated on you and you needed to get out of Dodge?”
She shakes her head. “Dad had a stroke, and as a result, he has aphasia.”
“Aff-what?”
“Aphasia. It’s a language disorder. My father’s mental acuity is working perfectly fine, but he, currently, can barely get a word out. He can write certain things, but he can’t form sentences.”
I sit up and lean back against the solid wood headboard it took help from Atom and Smoke to lift in here. “If we weren’t talking about your father, I’m certain there would be a joke to be made about him already saying enough in life.”
“There’s so much you don’t know. Before coming back, I hadn’t spoken to my father since the day I left the courthouse after your sentencing.”
Lucy was present every day of the trial. It was the joy of every morning, showing up to the courthouse and seeing her sitting next to my mom. The two women in my life who meant the most to me.
And then, at sentencing, just before the judge told me how long I was going away for, I turned to look at Luce, to reassure her that the two of us were going to be okay. But she was already gone.
“You haven’t?”
She shakes her head. “I don’t know where to start telling you all this.”
I can see her chest stutter as she breathes. She’s scared of what she’s about to say, which makes me nervous too.
“I promise I won’t leave this room until you’re finished, Lucy. Can’t promise what I’ll do after that, but I’m going to listen.”
The snow is falling a little heavier outside, and while I found myself wishing earlier that it would just blanket us and insulate us from the rest of the world, I find myself praying that it doesn’t stick, so she can leave when she’s done.
Lucy picks at a bobble of fabric on the sheet. “Mom asked me to see to the running of Dad’s law firm, and the transition of him from the business, for the immediate future. While Dad has aphasia, he also has other limiting difficulties from the heart attack and stroke.”
“You stayed in contact with your mom?”
“Of a fashion. She’s enabled and supported my father all these years.
But when she called, she caught me at a weak moment.
Most of the people who work for Dad could handle his absence, but she wanted family, and someone who would take the time to manage Dad’s reputation.
I’d just found out Henry had cheated on me, and I had no idea where I was going to go.
Coming home felt like the easiest solution.
In hindsight, I should have just sent out an SOS to my friends and crashed on one of their sofas. ”
“No one had a guest room you could stay in?”
She smiles but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “It’s Manhattan real estate, nobody has a closet, let alone a guest room.”
“Sounds awful.”
She lets her head rest against my shoulder, for a second. “It had its moments.”
We both watch the snow fall, and for some unidentified but masochistic reason, I don’t nudge her along. There’s expectation in the air, and it weighs heavy.
“I tried moving home,” she says finally. “But everything about being at my parents’ house is triggering.”
“So, that’s why you moved into the bakery?”
“Yes.”
I take hold of her hand and find it’s clammy and shaking. “Hey, whatever it is, it can’t be worse than what we’ve already gone through.”
“It’s usually easy to organize my thoughts, present a case. But I don’t know how to tell you all this without hurting you more.”
We used to joke about the size of her heart. That’s why I called her Bug, short for Love Bug. She was filled with love. But with controlling parents and no siblings, she had no one to give it to. It’s why a part of me never understood what she did that day, because it was so unlike her.
And while I want to just hug her and say it’s fine, it’s not.
I think about that night. A charity fundraiser for something her father was on the board of. A senator’s son whose privilege led him to believe he could have anything he wanted, including Lucy.
When she arrived at the clubhouse with mascara-tracks of tears down her face, I’d got her settled in the clubhouse and ridden to the party, just in time to see the asshole leaving. Two punches. With a fist so hard and heavy and furious, it had knocked him down in one and out in two.
Just as I’d been about to kick the ever-loving shit out of him on the sidewalk, Wraith had wrapped his arms tight around my chest and dragged me away.
“You’re still only down for assault. Don’t make it attempted murder,” he’d whispered.
So, I’d ridden back to her, spent the night watching over her.
Lucy looks up at me, and I can see the devastation in her face.
“Dad forced my hand to divorce you. But it was grounded in a deception that I only learned about a few days ago. I found a file in his office. Actually, no, I found a secret drawer, with special files and a burner phone I haven’t been able to hack into. ”
My heart speeds up a little. I’m not sure where Lucy is going with this, and I’m already certain I’m not going to like it. “For both our sakes, maybe you should get to the punch line soon.”