CHAPTER TWELVE
Thatcher
I stared into Mads’ eyes across the candle-lit table.
We were at one of the nicest restaurants in Atlanta in a reservation-only room.
I didn’t need anyone seeing us together and reporting back to Carrie, who was growing more and more suspicious.
Not that I thought anyone from Indigo Falls would be here tonight. But you never knew for sure.
“I guess I just don’t understand why you’re still with her,” Mads said, holding eye contact as she took a sip of her wine.
I ran my hand through my hair. I didn’t want to talk about my marriage. I’d rather just enjoy my time with Mads and bury my head in the sand. “She’s my wife.”
She gave me a look. “You’re with me for lunch and dinner almost every day. You never make it home to eat with your wife anymore. When you get home, we spend most of the time texting or talking to each other after she’s gone to sleep. What’s left in your marriage?”
Not much. I knew it, but I wasn’t ready to admit it yet. I’d ruined Carrie and me. And it was all because of the stunning woman sitting across from me.
“Do you still sleep with her?” Madison asked lightly. It was obvious that she cared a lot more about the answer than she was pretending to.
I actually really fucking loved my sex life with Carrie. It was the one area where we never struggled, not even after Mads had come back into my life. “Yes. She’s my wife, Mads. Am I supposed to tell her no every night?”
She narrowed her eyes at me. “I’m just ready for when we can be together. When are you going to divorce her and give us the future we deserve?”
I hesitated. Something held me back from completely ending my marriage.
There was part of me that still loved Carrie.
There was also part of me that remembered it was Madison who’d caused this in the first place.
If she hadn’t ended our engagement all those years ago, we’d be together now.
I never would’ve met Carrie, and I wouldn’t have to break her heart.
I sighed but didn’t say anything.
“You’re still punishing me, aren’t you? I’ve told you I know I made the worst mistake of my life back then. I know it. But are you going to make me pay for it forever?”
“I don’t remember you telling me that, Mads.”
She glared at me. “Are you calling me a liar? Of course it was the worst mistake of my life! I’ve regretted it every day since then.”
I started to ask why she hadn’t ever answered my calls or tried to contact me since then, but she looked as if she was about to cry. I reached across the table and held her hands with mine.
“No. Of course not. I’ll figure something out with Carrie.
She’s not stupid. She knows something’s very off between us.
” I squeezed her hand. “I honestly thought she might divorce me after Mom’s party.
And she might still,” I admitted. “We’re going to talk about our marriage soon. I’ll know more then.”
“You promise? You’ll make plans to divorce her?”
“I’m not promising anything. But if things continue down this path, I don’t see how the marriage can continue.”
Mads smiled and took a leisurely bite of her salmon. “That makes me so happy. Now, let’s enjoy the rest of our dinner.”
She took her foot and ran it up the side of my pants leg. I felt myself growing hard for her just with that simple touch. It wouldn’t be long, I knew, before I trashed my marriage vows all to hell and ended up sleeping with Madison.
I didn’t want to do that to Carrie. Maybe Mads was right to push for a quick divorce. Then I could finally be with her like I’d been dreaming of for months now.
The truth was, though, that if I’d already made the decision to separate from and potentially divorce Carrie, nothing had to hold me back. I hardened to the point of pain. Maybe it was time to take that step.
My phone buzzed a few times during dinner, but I silenced it quickly. I knew it would be Carrie. I didn’t want to be distracted from my night out with Madison. Sure, we got dinner together most nights before I trudged home to Indigo Falls and played house with Carrie. But it was never enough.
When it came to Madison Welles, I didn’t think it would ever be enough.
It seemed I had finally made my decision. I’d have to leave Carrie. I ignored that tiny little part of my brain that kept warning me something wasn’t right and tried to be at peace for the first time in months.
Mads and I strolled through the beautiful fall night. The restaurant had been close enough to the office to walk. When we got to the office, I typically called a car to take her home. Then I would go wrap up any work I had left to do before leaving for Indigo Falls.
But tonight? I was ready to take a leap. Was I happy to be doing it before divorcing Carrie? No. But I felt like I owed it to myself to reaffirm that Madison and I were good together in bed.
“Would you like to come up to the office for a nightcap?” The way I looked at her must have given her an idea of my true intentions.
Madison glanced at me sharply, then smiled. She gave me a quick kiss. “I thought you’d never ask.”
I smirked at her and held the door as we walked in. I waved to the security guards at the door and further down in the lobby. Then we took the elevator up to the penthouse level for the executive suites.
“Come with me.” I held her hand tightly, feeling connected in a way I hadn’t with her in a long time.
I took her inside my office and walked her back to the bedroom, pulling her inside and closing the door after us.
At least I thought I’d closed it. It wasn’t until I was kissing her and we were both naked on the bed that I realized it was open a few inches.
I started to get up and close it but then thought better of it.
Who in the world would be up here this time of night?
I pushed Mads back on the pillows and stared at her beautiful body.
I had to blink a couple of times to banish the images of Carrie’s body from my mind.
It was true that I found myself more sexually attracted to Carrie’s generous curves and athletic body.
Madison’s tall, thin form was beautiful, too. I’d just have to get adjusted to it.
I bent and sucked a nipple into my mouth licking and nipping it the way I did with Carrie.
“Ouch!” Madison jerked away from me. “What the hell, Thatcher?”
I stared at her. “You don’t like to have your nipples sucked?”
She shrugged. “Honestly? That’s just okay for me. Don’t you remember?”
I didn’t. I ran a hand through my hair. “I guess I forgot. Sorry.” I pushed her back down gently and pushed her thighs apart, eager to eat her pussy.
She put both of her hands on my head to push me away from her. “Thatcher! I don’t like when you go down on me. Surely you remember that.”
Now that she mentioned it, I seemed to recall a rather traumatic incident when we were in high school.
I was getting frustrated, and my dick was fast losing interest in her. “What do you like?”
“I just like to have normal sex,” she said. She looked around the room. “Does that lead to a bathroom?”
“Yeah.” I laid back on the pillows and put my hands behind my head.
She was taking the fun right out of this.
Now she didn’t want me to touch her tits or her pussy.
An awful thought occurred to me. Now that I thought about it, Mads had detested giving head when we were together.
Was that still the case? If so, why would she have tried to get me to let her go down on me a while ago?
So far sex with Mads was not what I had made it up to be in my head.
She came back holding a towel. I frowned, propping up on one elbow. “What’s that for?”
“To lay under us, of course. So no one has to lay in the wet spot. And, you know, to catch all the dirty stuff.”
Oh my God. I stared at her. “You know, maybe this wasn’t such a great idea…”
She got such a hurt look on her face that I was instantly contrite. “You don’t want to make love to me? After we’ve been building up to it all this time?”
“Sorry. Of course, I do, baby.” I kissed her shoulder, up her neck, and ended on her mouth, pushing her down and under me. I reached for the bedside drawer, opened it, and pulled out a condom. And stopped.
I lurched up, dropping the condom like it was made of lava.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking up at me. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I’d realized the condoms I’d been reaching for were left there by my father. Here I was in the bedroom he’d used to cheat on his wife over and over again. The bedroom he’d chosen over his family countless times. And I’d been about to use one of his condoms to cheat on my wife.
“I… I can’t do this.”
She looked both angry and confused. “Why the hell not?”
I explained it to her.
“Thatcher, you’re hardly a philanderer like your father,” she said in an almost mocking tone. “Do you realize how many men cheat? It’s no big deal.”
I frowned at her. “No big deal? He had those condoms in there for whatever woman he was fucking instead of being home with us.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “So, don’t use a condom. I didn’t want you to anyway. I wanted to feel all of you.” She lifted her hands over her head and wriggled seductively. “Besides, I’m on birth control.”
My eyes narrowed at her. There was something in her tone that made me think she might be lying. I was probably just being paranoid, but it took me right back to a conversation Dad had with Bryce and me about always wearing a condom no matter what the girl said.
He’d said, “Boys, we’re Caldwells. Any woman we got pregnant would own us for eighteen years.
There are some that will see you as nothing but a big pile of money with a dick.
Be careful out there.” Then he’d handed us each enough condoms to last a decade and asked if we wanted to go to his gentleman’s club to lose our virginity.
We’d both turned him down.
God, my dad was gross. He’d had a point, though, about the women trying to have a baby with us. More than once a woman had tried to convince me to fuck her without a condom. The only woman I’d ever slept with without a condom was Carrie. I sure as hell wasn’t doing it with anyone else.
“Yeah, this isn’t going to happen. I can’t have sex with you unless I’m divorced. I’m not doing that to my wife.”
I pulled on some gray sweatpants I had in one of the bureau drawers and sat on the edge of the bed, my back to her. I was freaking out.
She must’ve been able to tell, because she quit pushing for me to sleep with her.
I held my head in my hands and pictured my mom’s face as night after night for almost their entire marriage she’d waited on my dad to come home. We all had. When I’d been young, I hadn’t understood anything except that Daddy wasn’t home and my mommy was sad. As a teenager, I’d figured it out.
He’d been fucking some woman while my mom took extra anxiety medicine or drank a bottle of wine to get through the evenings.
No one had come to my swim meets or tennis matches.
Dad had cared more about sex than his kids.
Mom had drowned her sorrows in prescription drugs or alcohol instead of letting her four kids’ activities take her mind off things for a while.
I’d gone to college close to home to make damn sure to be at Bryce and Celia’s extracurricular activities.
Even though Mom had actually shown up for Olive’s, I’d gone, too.
Olive had participated in beauty pageants, and Mom had enjoyed those.
But Bryce’s rugby matches? Celia’s debate team or scholars’ bowl tournaments? It was just me.
Now, I just wanted to get away from Madison and go home. I couldn’t be around her right now.
But then I started thinking of all our history together. We were high school sweethearts. We’d stayed together all through college. We’d gotten an apartment together. She’d cried when I asked her to marry me. I had been completely convinced we were meant to be together.
After she’d broken things off with me, I’d pined for her in the back of my mind for years. I was pretty sure there was a part of me that never fully committed to Carrie. I’d always held something back.
After all of that, I owed Madison and myself a real chance to be a couple again, didn’t I?
I was barely paying attention when she started asking me random questions.