Chapter Three #2
Rose climbed out of the pool, grabbed her clothes and one of the robes from the cabinet at the back of the deck, then disappeared through the door without saying a word.
I stayed where I was, staring at the door she'd gone through while my body calmed down.
No goodbye. No what the fuck did we just do? No agreement about what happened next.
Nothing.
Not one goddamn word.
The next morning, we both pretended it hadn't happened, and until last night, we'd never spoken about it again. We filed the pool right beside the hotel room, in the drawer we both keep locked and neither of us admits is full.
And in case I ever needed the reminder of why that drawer stays shut, the universe handed me one that same night.
Before the chlorine had even dried on my skin, I was bailing my half-naked, strung-out wife out of jail and paying off the paps before any of it could hit the morning cycle.
Rose in my arms on a rooftop, Elyse in a holding cell a few hours later.
The best thing that's happened to me in years and the worst thing I'm chained to, all before sunrise.
If that doesn't sum up my life, I don't know what does.
But the pool left something behind that friendship and self-control clearly weren't going to fix.
Wanting Rose had stopped being this thing I could shove into the back of my head and ignore until it behaved.
So I did the one thing a man in my particular hell can do and still pretend he's being responsible: I found somewhere else to put it.
Stacy.
No expectations, no aftermath, no pretending either of us wants anything more than exactly what we're doing. It's clean and honest in its own grubby little way, which makes it one of the healthiest relationships in my life. Depressing, but true.
And yeah, like I said, she looks like Rose.
The first time her profile came across my screen, my breath actually caught, and some deeply embarrassing animal part of my brain went, close enough.
That's ugly. I know it is.
Definitely not my proudest moment.
Stacy doesn't know she's a substitute because I don't treat her like one. I don't call her Rose. I don't ask her to act like Rose. I don't close my eyes and pretend I'm with somebody else.
But I'm also not going to lie to myself about why I swiped right.
She's been my drug of choice ever since.
I've decided to live with what that says about me.
She was waiting when I got to her place, exactly as planned, and the second she opened the door I knew conversation wasn't happening.
I didn't say hello. Didn't trust myself to slow down long enough for words because the whole drive over I'd been carrying that moment in my office with Rose, her knees around my thighs, those gray eyes going soft right before she turned the whole thing into a joke and walked away.
I needed it out of me.
Or at least I needed to pretend for a few hours that was possible.
So I crossed the room already working my belt, already shoving my pants down, and pinned her bare against the wall and drove in with zero ceremony. She'd primed herself ahead of time, thank God, slick and ready, and I slid home easy.
I rutted into her while she held on for dear life, chasing something that wasn't quite hers to give me, until I felt her clench and ripple around my cock.
I pulled out before I followed her over; she dropped to her knees and took me in her fist and her mouth and worked me until my knees damn near buckled and I had to brace a hand on the wall above her head.
And the whole time — the whole goddamn time — I kept my eyes shut. We both know why. Neither of us is ever going to say it.
"Rough day?" she asked once we'd both caught our breath and I'd lowered myself to the floor beside her, back against the wall, the cool of it a mercy on overheated skin.
"Something like that, yeah." I dragged the back of my hand across my brow and wiped the sweat away.
"Do you need more, or do you need to get home?"
Fucking hell, this woman.
The perfect arrangement right to the end. No demands, no awkward questions about why I'd shown up wound this tight, no expectation that because we'd just fucked each other stupid we suddenly needed to sit around discussing feelings and childhood trauma over bottled water.
I turned my head and looked at her for a second, really looked, and realized I'd never once questioned why this had always been so easy for her.
I knew why I needed it. I'd done enough ugly self-examination to understand exactly what Stacy gave me and exactly whose shadow sat underneath some of it, but she'd always seemed completely fine with the arrangement, so I'd accepted that because it was convenient and because I wanted to.
"Who am I to you in this?" I asked.
Stacy looked over at me, brows pulling together. "What do you mean?"
I shifted onto one elbow and brushed a curl back from her forehead. "We both know where my head goes sometimes. So where does yours go?"
The change in her face was small, but immediate. Her eyes dropped from mine and for the first time in the year I'd known her, Stacy looked like she wished I'd kept my fucking mouth shut.
"You don't have to answer."
She stayed quiet for a while, staring across the room, and when she finally spoke her voice was softer than I'd ever heard it.
"His name was Elijah. He was my fiancé. He died two years ago."
Fuck.
A whole year.
A whole fucking year of assuming I was the only one bringing somebody else into the room without saying their name, and all this time she'd been doing her own version of the exact same thing.
"Fuck. Stace—"
I reached for her without thinking.
Wrong move.
She recoiled so fast she was on her feet before I'd fully moved, snatching up her clothes and refusing to look at me while she dragged them back on.
"Don't fucking do that, Marc."
"Do what?"
"That." She yanked her shirt over her head and started hunting for the rest of her clothes with hands that were already shaking. "Don't look at me like that. Don't suddenly feel sorry for me. That's not what this is. That's not what we are."
"I don't feel sorry for you."
"Bullshit."
I got to my feet and caught her wrist when she nearly tripped over herself trying to step into her pants, only meaning to steady her, but she wrenched free so hard I let go immediately.
"God, you've ruined it now." Her voice cracked. "Fuck."
Then her hands came up over her face and she folded in on herself, sobbing so hard the sound went straight through me.
For one second I stood there like an idiot, because I'd never seen Stacy cry. I'd barely seen her look sad. We'd spent a year being exactly what the other person needed by carefully never asking what was underneath any of it, and now one stupid question had ripped the whole thing open.
I crossed the room and pulled her into me.
This time she didn't fight.
She grabbed the back of my shirt with both hands and cried into my chest while I wrapped my arms around her and held on. I could feel how hard she was shaking, feel every breath break against me, and somewhere in the middle of it I knew this was the end of whatever we'd been.
Not because either of us had done something wrong.
We just knew too much now.
The arrangement worked because we could meet in the middle, take what we needed and leave without asking where the need came from. I'd finally asked, and she'd answered, and there was no putting that back where it had been.
"I'm sorry," she kept saying against my shirt.
"Stop apologizing."
"I didn't mean to make this into—"
"Stacy."
She went quiet except for the crying.
I rested my cheek against the top of her head and let her breathe for a while before I asked, "What would you want him to say?"
Her fingers tightened in my shirt.
"Don't."
"You don't have to."
She shook her head, and I thought that was the end of it. Then, after a long silence, she whispered, "That he didn't leave me."
Fuck.
I closed my eyes.
Suddenly I understood the part of this I'd been missing. Stacy hadn't been trying to pretend I was Elijah any more than I'd been pretending she was Rose. She'd just found something familiar enough to take the edge off missing him for a little while.
I knew exactly how that worked.
So I gave her the one thing I could.
"I'm sorry I left you."
Her whole body went still against mine. I felt the exact moment she understood what I was doing, that the voice was mine but the words weren't meant to be.
"I'll never stop loving you," I said quietly. "None of this was me choosing to leave you. You were loved when I was there, and you're loved now. That didn't stop because I did."
That's when she really broke, but the frantic edge went out of it. She wasn't fighting the crying anymore, wasn't trying to shove herself back together while it was happening. She just let it come, and I held her through it.
Eventually I got us onto the couch, and after a while she started talking about Elijah in pieces.
Nothing organized or dramatic. She told me about the time he almost set their kitchen on fire making pancakes, about a trip they were supposed to take and never got to, about some ridiculous nickname he'd given her that she insisted she hated while smiling every time she said it.
I listened.
That was really all there was left for me to do.
By the time she finally pulled back, her eyes were swollen and her face blotchy, but the panic had gone out of her. She looked exhausted more than anything.
"I'm sorry," she whispered.
"You apologize again and I'm charging you."
A tiny laugh slipped out of her.
She reached up and kissed me once, softly, nothing sexual in it, nothing asking for more. Just thank you.
I understood.
I gathered my things and headed for the door. Stacy didn't ask when she'd see me again, and I didn't insult either of us by pretending there would be a next time.
We both knew what had ended.
And for once, leaving was the decent thing to do.