20. Delphine #2
Vain women want to be admired. That woman had just tried to make a room believe a flat lie, in public, on no notice, with no plan, because it might work. She had lied the way other people breathe. There had not been a decision in it anywhere.
I put my hand over my glass so no one could see it shaking. I did not say a word about it to Heath in the car. I did not think about it again at all.
Six hours. That’s how long I had.
I watched her go, because I always watched her go. And that’s how I saw where she went.
She crossed the entire ballroom without stopping.
She did not go to the bar and she did not go to the powder room to put her face back on, which is what a humiliated woman does.
She went straight to the far corner, to a round table of old guard women picking at their dessert, and she bent down and put her mouth to Montana Fairchild’s ear.
Montana did not look surprised. Montana put her hand over Kendall’s and patted it twice, the way you soothe a horse. And then, without hurrying, she turned her head and looked across a hundred feet of candlelight, directly at me.
She held my eyes. And she smiled.
I’ve thought about that smile more than I’ve thought about almost anything else in my life.
Heath turned to me, his expression softening.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” And I was, surprisingly. “Can we leave?”
“Absolutely.”
We made our excuses and headed for the exit, leaving behind the whispers and the curious stares. The valet stand was in the shadow of the building, away from the lights and the noise, and when we stepped outside the cold air hit my flushed skin.
Heath caught my hand.
I let him.
We stood there for a moment, the sounds of the party muffled behind us, the night stretching out dark and quiet.
“Thank you,” I said softly.
“For what?”
“For pushing her away. For making it clear.”
He turned to face me, his eyes serious. “I should have done it from the very beginning. I should have shut it down the moment she walked into our house. I was a fool, Del. A blind, cowardly fool. But I’ll be damned if I don’t learn from my mistakes.”
My heart was pounding. The anger I had been carrying for months, the hurt and the betrayal and the fear, it was all still there.
And underneath it, a lighter current, one dangerously close to hope, and underneath that, considerably less noble and about four times louder, the flat animal fact that I had watched my husband put his hand on Kendall Saladino’s shoulder and physically remove her from his body in front of the entire Newport Preservation Society, and that it had turned me on so violently I had to look at the tablecloth for a full minute afterward.
He had shoved his sleeves up somewhere around the entree, and I had been looking at his forearms since the salad and I was not proud of a single second of it.
“Maybe,” I whispered.
“Maybe what?”
“Maybe...” I took a breath. “Maybe we could try again. Really try. Give us an actual chance.”
Heath went very still. For a long moment, he just stared at me, giving me nothing.
Then he moved.
He grabbed me, his hands cupping my face, and kissed me so hard I forgot my own name. I felt myself being lifted off my feet, felt his arms wrap around me, felt his mouth moving against mine with a desperation that matched my own.
“Yes,” he breathed against my lips. “Yes, Del, yes.”
He carried me to the car, both of us unable to keep our hands off each other. The valet had already pulled it around, and Heath practically threw him the tip before bundling me into the passenger seat.
He drove fast, his hand on my thigh, his fingers tracing patterns that made it hard to think. I couldn’t stop touching him. His arm, his shoulder, the back of his neck. Nine years of knowing this man, and I still couldn’t get enough.
His hand went white on the wheel and he turned to me with wild eyes.
“I can’t wait.” His voice was in ruins. “Del, I can’t make it home. I can’t. I need you now.”
“Then take me somewhere else.” I already had my hands on his belt. “Get off the highway, get under that bridge, and fuck me in this car like you’ve been thinking about doing since the valet stand. Because I have. I’ve been thinking about nothing else for an hour and I’m done pretending I’m not.”
The car changed lanes.
He was on me in an instant, his mouth claiming mine, his hands pushing my dress up around my waist. The center console was in the way, so he pulled me over it, settling me in his lap, my knees bracketing his hips.
“God, I’ve missed you.” His voice was rough, wrecked. “I’ve missed this so much.”
“Show me.”
He reached between us, freeing himself, and I felt him hard and ready against my thigh. He hooked the lace of my underwear aside with two fingers, and then he was there, right there, the tip of him pressing against my entrance.
“Look at me,” he said.
I met his eyes.
“I love you.” He thrust up, filling me completely, and I cried out at the sudden fullness. “I love you so much it hurts.”
He started to move, his hands gripping my hips hard enough to leave marks I would find in the morning and be delighted about, guiding me up and down in a rhythm that built fast and filthy.
The windows fogged. The car rocked. There was a truck somewhere on the overpass above us and I did not care about it at all.
“Look at me,” I said. “You look at me while you do it. Not the window, not the roof. Me.”
He looked at me. My husband looked at me like a man watching his own house burn down with everything he owned inside it and being glad.
I braced my hands on his shoulders and gave myself over to the sensation.
“Christ, you feel good.” His voice was shredded. “Ride me. Just like that. Do not stop.”
I rolled my hips, and he groaned, his skull thudding back against the headrest. I watched his face, watched the pleasure transform his features, watched this controlled, polished man come undone beneath me.
“Faster,” I gasped. “Please, I need...”
I did not stop. His thumb found me where we were joined and worked me hard and clumsy, both of us past finesse, and I felt the whole thing gather low and vicious and inevitable.
“Come for me.” His voice was a command and a plea. “Let me feel you.”
I came with his name in my teeth, grinding down onto him, and he swore once and gripped my hips still and let go, hot and hard, his forehead dropping to my collarbone while the car ticked around us.
We stayed slumped together over the console, dress rucked to my waist, both of us sweating in a cold car under a highway.
He laughed first, a wrecked little sound into my shoulder.
“There’s a gravel-in-the-door-handle situation I need to think about,” he said, and I laughed so hard I had to climb off him.
“We should go home,” I finally said.
“We should.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “We have a lot of lost time to make up for.”
He drove the rest of the way with my hand in his, both of us grinning stupidly into the darkness. When we pulled up to Fairhaven, he was out of the car before I could blink, pulling me out of my seat, carrying me up the front steps.
“Welcome home,” he breathed against my hair.
I turned my face up to his and kissed him, and everything else fell away.