Chapter 12 #2
“No more or less than is wrong with anybody, I guess. You say it’s deeply fucked up, like that’s not most of us.
Like most of us didn’t experience something that got things all twisted up inside of us when we were kids.
Happens to the best of us.” He looked over at her, and felt that strange sort of discomfort that he had felt earlier.
Like he was peeling something back, and he didn’t especially like that idea, or the sensation.
“Well, I don’t know if I find that comforting or not.”
“It doesn’t need to be comforting. You can just give thanks that you dodged a bullet, and now you have a little bit more time to figure out whatever that issue is.”
“Yeah. I suppose.”
They let the conversation drift off, and only moments later she was directing him to turn onto a dirt driveway that went steeply up the side of the mountain, to a house that overlooked the town below.
These houses weren’t on big parcels of property. They were up there for the view, the yard little more than a sheer drop-off down the side of the mountain.
He couldn’t deny that it was pretty, but being that close to his neighbors would make his ass itch.
It was definitely a doctor sort of neighborhood. Newer, though, because if it had been in existence back in high school, Addison’s dad probably would have had a house up here.
“Nice place,” he said.
“It looks like a prison,” she said.
He turned toward her, and the expression on her face was like a kick in the gut.
Yeah, it would have been a prison. She would have gotten married to that doctor, had that performative relationship. They would have gone through their life in perfect external synchronization, but would it have had any passion in it?
Being near her, his skin burned. And it was like nothing else he’d ever experienced before, and he’d had some pretty damn good sex.
But still, just the brush of her fingertips against his was something hotter and darker than that.
The idea of her being locked away here, without ever touching him? He hated that. But he could sure as hell get down with a fantasy about how he might have been the gardener. Would have been her dirty secret. The riptide underneath the calm, smooth facade of her marriage.
Okay. It was a fucked-up fantasy to have if you were the one in her position, but he felt like it was even worse to cast yourself in the other position.
Of course, he had a lot of experience with that.
Being the person that the girls wanted to have a dirty, secret fling with.
But God knew he ought to have a little bit of self-respect now.
Of course, self-respect wasn’t that hot.
“Come on,” he said.
He needed to quit just sitting here, needed to do something other than sit in a confined space with her. For his sanity, if nothing else.
Also, he really felt ready to fight with Alan if need be.
They started to walk up the front porch steps, and then the door opened.
“Addison?”
The man standing there in the doorway looked like a man possessed. A hunted man, frankly, exactly like he had looked when Walker had lassoed him to keep him from running off.
“I’m here to get my things,” she said.
“Don’t you think we should talk about this?”
“There’s not really anything to talk about.
” Walker wanted to light into him, he really did, but the thing was, this was Addison’s fight.
And unless it got out of control, he really felt like he needed to let her have the fight.
So for the time being, he just stood behind her, as she continued to make her way up the front steps.
“There’s a lot to talk about. I know that I screwed up. I know that I did the wrong thing, but that didn’t mean that I wanted to end the relationship. I never expected you to... you’re sleeping with him?”
He was gesturing toward Walker, who was beginning to feel a little bit roped into it now. He needed to watch himself, or Walker was going to jump in in a way Alan really wouldn’t like.
“Yeah,” Addison said. “I did. Because guess what, you ran away, you didn’t offer any explanation, you didn’t reach out to me when the video of you abandoning me in the middle of the aisle went viral, and what, I’m supposed to assume that you wanted to have an adult dialogue?
I was supposed to hang out like Penelope waiting for Odysseus to come back from the world’s stupidest journey?
You left me before I had gotten to the altar.
I can’t begin to say how much you hurt me.
And how much you don’t have a chance with me now. ”
“Babe, we’ve been together for years. This is our life.”
“Yes, Alan,” Addison said, exploding now in a way that Walker found supremely satisfying.
“It was our life. And I’m not the one that broke it.
You are. And you’re arrogant enough to think that I would come back to you?
You’re arrogant enough to think that you could just snap your fingers, and I would want you because... why?”
“For the same reasons that you chose me in the first place,” he said. “We make sense. I know you’re angry, but think about it. Do you actually think that Walker Grayson is going to help you get elected?”
“He might not be able to help me get elected, but he’s a lot better at making me come.”
Her words slammed square into Walker’s solar plexus. A slow smile slid across his face as he watched Alan’s face turn purple. Goddamn. She had really gone there.
“I knew it,” he said. “I knew that you wanted him. I knew it in high school. Just like your mother.”
Walker took a step forward then, ready to get right into it, but Addison surprised him. She laughed. She didn’t just laugh, she doubled over with it.