Chapter Four
I’d had to spend a chunk of Mia’s first week as an intern-year resident away from home. In addition, it was in one of my least favorite places—Northern California—at an exclusive CEO training program that my board of directors had slated for me. It was an honor, really, to be leading an important enough company to be considered for the program. But that didn’t make me like it any more. And I’d have to return in a few months for a longer weekend retreat.
I was already dreading it, perhaps because this whole program was starting to outline for me how much I’d moved beyond the CEO thing.
Thankfully, I was able to return home on Friday night to my wife just waking up after her third night shift in a row. And we were able to spend a long Independence Day weekend alone, just the two of us rattling around that big house that felt so empty and yet so full at the same time. Chef had packed us a few meals and bought a few things for us to cook. Emilia was going to try a new recipe, which made me regret not having purchased one of those souvenir crucifixes near the Vatican. Just so I could send up special prayers that her cooking wouldn’t kill us both. I stopped just short of saying that out loud. She’d just started talking to me again. No need to heedlessly rock the boat, even when just poking some innocent fun.
“You want to eat outside tonight?” She grabbed a crouton from the salad bowl and popped it into her mouth, crunching it. “I was thinking we could heat up the puttanesca and open one of those bottles of wine we bought in Tuscany.”
Wine, hmm? I threw her some side-eye, wondering if the wine was some ruse to get me to loosen up. Was she always going to try to ply me with wine when she wanted to broach a difficult subject? And then the answer to that came just as quickly inside my own head—did I blame her? Wouldn’t I do the same in her place?
I was being famously stubborn. And my wife knew me all too well. Point taken.
“Mmm,” she said later as she bit into her pasta. “Chef never disappoints. This is amazing. Try it with a little bit of the chianti.”
Ieyed her while I took the smallest sip possible. She watched, frowned, and then went back to her meal. My eyes slid over the table setting. She’d put out a new tablecloth, set the table with a lone candle and turned the outdoor lighting down low. The lapping of the back bay water onto our own little private beach and the reflections of the passing boats and lighting from our neighbors provided the rest of the ambiance. She had some Italian-style concertina music playing low in the background on the Bluetooth speakers. It was romantic, thoughtful. Perfect thing for staying in. Since I’d soon be traveling again for business and she’d be pulling many more of these godawful long shifts, this was a brief respite where we could enjoy each other.
We’d learned a while ago to seize these opportunities when we had them, hence my whisking her away to Italy in the first place.
“So...” she said. “When’s your next trip up north? I forgot to check your calendar.”
I shrugged. “Couple weeks. I’d like to wiggle my way out of it. Maybe send Jordan.”
Her brow twitched up. “Isn’t it part of that elite CEO program you’re in? Would they accept your CFO instead?”
I inhaled and then let it go. Why would this be so hard to bring up with her? I couldn’t imagine.
“I’m, ah, thinking of putting Jordan in the hot seat for this and maybe...” I hesitated, then suddenly felt the need for more wine. I grabbed the glass and downed it in one fell swoop.
Emilia watched me closely. “Jordan is okay with that, I’m sure.”
I nodded, refilling my glass. “Yeah, yeah. I mean, I haven’t formally spoken to him about it yet, but I know him well enough to know he’ll be good with it.”
Her brow twitched up. “And you? What will you be doing instead?”
“Well, for one thing, I won’t have to fly up to fucking Palo Alto every five minutes.”
She grinned. “Everyone knows how much you love it up there.” She plucked up her glass and took a dainty sip. I mirrored her. A slight frown creased the area between her brows. “Is everything okay? You seem...nervous.”
I took a deep breath in and out. “I’m thinking about taking a step back.”
Those beautiful golden-brown eyes widened. “From...?”
“From the company.”
She blinked, clearly confused.“And do what? Retire on a beach in the South Pacific and sip Mai Tais all day?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. I just feel like I’ve come as far as I can in this job. And I know that sounds weird to you, but you’re just barely starting out your dream job. I’ve been in this industry for well over a decade now. And I’ve worked long, long hours for most of it.”
She frowned, setting down her glass and covering my hand with hers. “Are you sure you aren’t just burned out? Maybe you need a leave of absence—or some breathing room—or a new project that excites you.”
I heaved a long sigh. “The idea of creating a completely new game just exhausts me, to be honest.”
She blinked. “Well, I know we have fun teasing you about your age, but I think thirty-one is a wee tad too young for retirement, don’t you?”
I laughed. “I don’t even think I’m capable of retiring. But it’s tempting to be able to kick back and relax now that I have a doctor to support me.”
She snorted. “A lifestyle supported on a resident’s salary is not one I think you might find terribly fun.”
There was another long pause. The wind kicked up, and the water rippled on the shore. Emilia’s hand shifted, lacing our fingers together and she squeezed. I licked my lips, staring down at our linked hands. It felt so weird, this place we were in, so close that I’d never felt closer to her emotionally, andyet we were at such different stages in our lives, our careers. Every time she talked about going off to work, even when she was tired and had spent twenty hours there the day before, she got a dreamy smile on her face. She was clearly in her element. I envied that.
I hadn’t felt that way about my own work for far too long.
Emilia’s brow creased, and she looked like she was working through a puzzle. “You have choices. So many choices. Maybe that’s part of the problem?”
I shrugged. “I’ve always known what I wanted and gone after it with intensity. I’ve always been driven, planning out my next moves surgically and strategically. I’ve always loved the thrill of the hunt and the acquisition. That heady feeling of success. Of winning and being at the top of not only my own game but of the industry at large. It’s a high that no substance could ever replicate. I just…”
“Haven’t felt it in a long time?” she completed the thought for me.
I hesitated a moment before nodding. “Yeah. That obvious, huh?”
She shook her head. “Actually, not at all. I can hear it in your voice, though, when you talk about it. And I wish you’d told me earlier. You know, since we’re partners in this thing together.”
I quirked a smile at her. “This game called Life? You’re the pink peg riding in the passenger seat next to my blue peg?”
Her eyes widened at the reference and only belatedly, I realized that there were other pegs in those little Life cars, too. Pegs for children.
She bit her lip, thinking. “Sometimes I’m in the driver’s seat. That damn game.” She shook her head. “I always thought it was so bogus that you won by having the most money in the end. That’s not the point of life—money. The point is to be happy.”
I mentally wiped my brow that my reference hadn’t reminded her about the little pink and blue baby pegs in the car.
“Maybe if they revamp it, they could add happiness points instead.” I grinned.
She laughed. “The next genius project for the boy prodigy?” she arched her brows at me prettily. God, she was beautiful, and I never tired of appreciating it. I sat back, sipped my wine and soaked her up with my eyes. Tonight, she’d be in my bed, wrapped in my arms. I was a lucky fucking bastard.
And that’s just where she was less than an hour later. We’d had just enough wine to get us enthusiastically in the mood but not so much as to make the process too awkward or clumsy, and with no actual danger of Whisky Dick—very important when you wanted to fuck your wife after four long days of hardly seeing her at all.
“You look so amazing naked. I wish you could be naked all the time.” I leered at her when I had her spread out on the bed under me.
Between lusty kisses, with her arms looped around my neck, she laughed. “That would definitely cheer up some of my patients.”
I dipped my head and captured her mouth again. “On second thought, I like that I’m the only person who gets to see you naked. The rest of the world doesn’t deserve it.”
“But you do?” she smirked.
“Fuck yeah, I do. I won a fucking auction for the right to see you naked.”
She snickered. “You seem very fond of bringing up our sordid beginnings.”
“Oh baby, I love getting sordid with you.” My mouth sank to capture hers and there was no more talking. She was soon writhing, and I relished the feeling of that soft, supple body under mine.
She opened her legs readily and swept up in my own lust, I was ready to dive in—so much so, that I nearly started without a condom.
But I stopped myself just in time as the tiny thought flitted into the burning lust of my consciousness like a butterfly drifting into the center of a violent tornado. Of all the times for that to happen.
Because when I had to interrupt things to get up and go grab one out of the nightstand drawer, she said. “How about you just...skip it this time?”
I turned and gave her an acid look. “That’s not going to happen. Either we’re using a condom or we’re not doing this.”
“But...” she frowned.
“Please, Emilia.” I wanted to fuck my wife, not have an argument with her. I plucked up the condom and turned to her with the question on my face.
She held my gaze, beautiful features clouding. I felt like shit for causing that, but what did she expect?
She rolled onto her side, propping her head up on her hand. “So, are we talking about this right now?”
I was about to snap at her. I was standing here half dressed, all systems go, with a gorgeous, naked woman on my bed. Did I want to stop things now and have this discussion?
Oh no. No, I fucking did not.
Didn’t seem to matter. She was bound and determined to keep pressing the issue. My hopes that this was just a passing fancy, that it was a fluke brought on by her transition from medical student to physician intern were now being dashed.
“Emilia, you’ve been a doctor for ten minutes. You’ve done three shifts as a resident. How the fuck do you even know that such a thing would be feasible?”
“Because others have done it. Others are doing it right now.”
“Right now?” I scowled at her. “Like who? Who’s pregnant right now? And wives don’t count—”
“Louisa Bluth. She’s doing it. She just found out at graduation. She’s almost at the end of her first trimester.”
I sank heavily on the bed beside her.
This explained so many things. I ran a hand through my hair. Fuck. There wentmy leverage.
After long minutes where I just sat and stared at the wall, she reached out a hand toward me, then let it fall without touching me. “Well? Aren’t you going to say anything? You said we were going to talk about this.”
I let go a long sigh and miserably tossed the still-wrapped condom onto the nightstand. “Isn’t that what we’re doing?”
“I seem to be the one doing all the talking.”
I rested my head in my hands, pressing the heels against my closed eyelids, fingers in my hairline. Was that the faint echo of a headache coming on? “Emilia, you’re not going to like what I have to say, so I’m not saying anything.”
“So that means no.” Her voice was flat. I felt the bed jostle. She’d rolled onto her back, blowing out a long breath of obvious frustration. When I lifted my head to look at her, she was staring at the ceiling.
I half turned toward her. “No. The answer is: this entire subject scares the fucking shit out of me. I’m sorry. I can’t control that. If I could, I would.”
She turned her head to meet my gaze. “So, instead, you shut it down? What about research? I have piles of it, by the way. I can send you links to medical studies. I’ve been amassing information for months. But what good is sending it to you if you won’t read it?”
“I’ll read it,” I replied quietly without looking at her.
“And then?”
I opened my hands and gestured in frustration. “Agreeing to read it doesn’t mean I’ll agree to all of it. I’m sorry. This will sound weird coming from me, but this is—and I readily admit to it—a purely emotional reaction. I feel it in the deepest part of my bones.”
“What do you feel?”
“Fear, Emilia. Bone-crushing, paralyzing fear. Every time this subject comes up, it takes me right back to that time, right back to when I almost—” I stopped at a loss for words. I swallowed then added quietly. “It was my fault.”
Her open hand hit the bed beside her. “It was nobody’s fault. It was life, and shit happens.”
“Yeah...shit. And you almost made a decision that would have ended me. I had no control over that—which, rightly so. It’s your body. But at that point of time, I had no control and when I think back to it, I can’t breathe properly. It’s not logical, just...visceral.”
Not another second passed before Emilia’s hand wrapped around mine. Tight. I laced my fingers through hers and our palms fused together. I let out a long breath but still couldn’t look at her.
“Adam,” she said quietly.
“Yes,” I replied in a flat voice.
“Come here.” She tugged me toward her with our interlocked hands.
Slowly I uncurled myself and stretched out alongside her on the bed. She rolled onto her side and brought her free hand up to palm my cheek. I closed my eyes.
“Look at me.”
I opened my eyes and locked my gaze on hers. She had the most earnest, honest expression on her face. One of understanding. I at once felt intense relief but also like an incredible failure. This woman, this woman who I loved more than my next breath...I couldn’t give her the one thing she wanted more than anything. Because I was too much of a coward.
And there were tears in her eyes. Fuck.
“Thank you for telling me all that. I know it was really hard.” Her voice was thick with unshed tears and her eyes glistened. I felt a scratchiness at the back of my own throat as if I might start in, too.Thankfully, I resisted. That would have just been icing on the fucking coward cake.
Instead, I reached out and dried her tears with my thumb.
“I’ll wait, you know. I can wait,” she whispered.
What if you end up waiting forever? Was it fair to do that to her? I reframed the thought because it was important not to hide that possibility from her.
“What if, a year from now I feel the same way? Or a year after that? Or...”
“Well, then we deal with it. We’re still young. We have time for you to grow into the idea. You know how I feel, and I don’t see that changing.”
“There are so many what-ifs here. I’m not just reacting to the past. What if you do get pregnant and then we find out the cancer came back? Would you make the same decision again?”
Her eyes wandered off to stare at something only she could see, as if trying to envision the catastrophic scenario that my own dark mind had instantly gravitated to.
“I don’t know. I’m going to be honest. I don’t regret the decision I made before. It saved my life. But the likelihood of that ever happening again—”
“Don’t say it’s almost nil. It’s only been a little over three years since you showed no evidence of disease. Five years is the benchmark. I know that much.”
Her brow twitched. “Statistically, yes, but for my age—”
“Again, you were an anomaly to have developed that type of cancer at your age. You’re already out of the standard mean statistically, so don’t quote statistics at me.”
Her grip tightened on my hand. “Adam, don’t get worked up. I’m just saying...I’m just being honest and saying that I don’t know. I. Don’t. Know. And if we were to proceed, you’d have to become comfortable with that uncertainty. I don’t think that’s a comfort zone for you.”
“That is a definite discomfort zone.”
Her brows knit. “I think there’s a lot of uncertainty going on with you already, what with this deciding to step back at work without knowing what you want next. I think we should table this discussion until you’ve resolved some of the other uncertainty in your life.”
I couldn’t help but hear the disappointment in her voice even as she said it, but there was nothing but compassion in her eyes. It made me feel like shit. But I wasn’t about to turn down her offer to table the discussion, even though a little voice at the back of my mind called me coward, yellow, wuss, gutless, ad infinitum—and wouldn’t shut the fuck up.
I wrapped my free arm around her body and pulled her flush against me, landing a peck on her lips. “Thank you, my gorgeous, sexy wife. Every day, I wonder what the fuck I did to deserve you.”
She grinned widely, eyes gleaming. “Not enough, clearly.”
I pecked her again and pulled back to look at her once more. “Clearly.”
She hooked an arm around my neck and pulled me in close. “I can think of a few things you could do right now to make up for the deficit.”
“Mmm. I’m sure you can.”
Her hand went to the fly of my jeans, but I gently pushed it away, reaching down to grab one of her soft thighs and pull it away from the other one. Without a word, I slid down her body, kissing a heated path down her bare skin until my head and shoulders were between her legs. The moment she realized my intentions, she sucked in a quick, sharp breath of excitement. It was that—and that alone—that I felt deep down in my bones, a straight shot of arousal that made me hard and ready for her in an instant. But her pleasure came before mine, so I kissed and licked and sucked her there until minutes later, she was arching her back and crying out with an orgasm.
Oh yeah. I loved doing that to her. I fucking craved it.
And in that moment, I wanted to give her everything. Give her the world. Give her whatever she wanted. Nevertheless, when the time came, I slipped on the condom.
She didn’t say a word, and there was no judgement nor disappointment in her eyes.
And for that, I was very grateful.