The Long Fall

by Daniel Quentin Steele

  When We Were Married #1:

  The Long Fall

  By Daniel Quentin Steele

  Copyright 2012 Daniel Quentin Steele

  Kindle Edition

  Kindle Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  CONTENTS

  Author's Note

  Chapter One: Four Little Words

  Chapter Two: Breaking Up Is Hard to Do

  Chapter Three: 2nd Thoughts And First Steps

  Chapter Four: There’s A Reason Why Love Is A Four Letter Word

  Chapter Five: Lew Strikes Back – Or The Other Side Now

  Chapter Six: No Happy Endings

  Chapter Seven: The Angel of Death

  Chapter Eight: Nice Guy – We All Know How That Story Ends

  Chapter Nine: Bonne Chance

  Chapter Ten: Fools Rush In

  Chapter Eleven: Tho’ Hell Bar The Door

  Chapter Twelve: Riding The Tiger

  Chapter Thirteen: Friends In Low Places

  Chapter Fourteen: If Tomorrow Never Comes

  Chapter Fifteen: Stranger In A Strange Land

  About The Author

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  There is a State Attorney’s Office headquartered in Jacksonville, Florida, as well as a Public Defender’s Office. There is a Jacksonville, and a St. Augustine and Matanzas. There are hardworking, honest and dedicated prosecutors and similar public defenders facing them. There is a Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office known to most as The Cop Shop. Everything, and everyone, else in this long novel is a work of fiction. Any similarities between any characters, on either side of the law, and real people are strictly coincidental and unintended.

  CHAPTER ONE: FOUR LITTLE WORDS

  April, 2005

  Four words destroyed my marriage and my life. And they're not the four words you're probably thinking about.

  Not "we have to talk," or "baby, I've met somebody" or "our sex life sucks" or even "You're not giving me enough." Actually that last is five words, but hey, who's counting.

  It was a lot stranger, and simpler than that. I had come into our bedroom on a Tuesday night after finishing a "law and order" re-run on cable and was getting ready to take a shower. I tend to watch a lot of cop and lawyer shows. Coals to Newcastle, really.

  I should have gotten enough of that stuff in my day job as an Assistant State Attorney in the Duval County State Attorney's Office. To northerners, that's the same as the District Attorney's Office... We are the people who prosecute bad guys and put them away when we can. Anyway, I like those kinds of cop shows. Even after 10 years on the job, I still like what I do.

  Debbie was in bed, lying back on a scrunched up pillow, looking through some travel magazine. She usually brings back a ton of student papers to grade from UNF where she's an associate professor in the College of Business. They generally take a couple to three hours to finish. But she's conscientious and it was 11 p.m. and she was relaxing.

  I enjoyed the view. Even though we had been married nearly 18 years, I still enjoyed looking at her. A tall blonde, hair cut fashionably movie star style with Jennifer Anniston bangs, she looked 10 years younger than her true age of 39. The robe she wore was as sexy as a potato sack, but I could still see the curve of her Double D-cup breasts underneath it. I could also envision her long legs.

  I thought about trying to get a real look between them, but stopped myself. She insisted I take my evening shower and brush my teeth before I even tried and she was usually too tired on weeknights to even consider the idea. I looked down at myself. I was five foot eight, Debbie five-ten, and where she was still fairly svelte from working out at the gym, I'd already developed the classic middle aged paunch of a guy whose only exercise was getting out on the links every few months. And I only did that when office politics absolutely demanded it.

  I walked into the bathroom and stripped off my tee shirt and shorts that I generally wore around the house. We had a full-length mirror and I took inspection. Hair thinning and a real bald spot was beginning to develop where I could barely see it at the rear of my scalp.

  Then I look at my midsection. Jesus, pasty white and flabby. No wonder Debbie preferred on the increasingly infrequent times when we did have sex to keep the lights off. I looked like an old lawyer. I looked like those old guys my friends and I used to laugh at when I'd started lawyering. I was only 41, not 61. I made up my mind at that point. I'd always told myself that I didn't have the time to join a gym and I had gently teased Debbie about being a little vain. To hell with that. If I was a woman, I sure as hell wouldn't be too eager to have sex with me.

  I took my shower and came out freshly scrubbed, but I didn't wear my normal underwear and white tee shirt. I came out with a towel around my middle and found a pajamas set in the drawer on my side of the bed. I thought Debbie glanced over at me and there might have been a little smile flickering on her face, but that might have been my imagination.

  With my pot covered, I slid into bed next to her. I leaned over to kiss her. I tried for the lips but she moved her head slightly so I planted a kiss on the side of her face. She smiled absent mindedly at me.

  "The kids asleep?"

  Bill Jr. was 14 and Kelly was 17, going on 27. Bill I'd left trolling on the computer for skateboarding or as he called it shredder sites, but I was pretty sure he was looking for porn. What the hell, he was 14 and had discovered that girls were delightfully different creatures. I had the computers set up with tracking programs. I trusted the kids, but I'd been prosecuting scum too long to be happy and ignorant about what they were up to.

  Kelly was, I'm pretty sure from the way she'd lowered her voice and moved as far away from me as she could and still stay in the den, talking to one of her boyfriends. I know she had more than one, because she was a luscious junior edition of her mother.

  "No, but they know the rules. I'm sure they'll be in bed in an hour or so. Hey, those were great pictures. Where was that beach, the one with the Tiki hut things near the water?"

  "Oh."

  She glanced over at me as if surprised that I'd noticed what she was reading. She held the magazine out to me. It was "Travel" with the pages turned to "The best beaches you've never heard of." The beach was on an island I'd never heard of and I couldn't even pronounce the name.

  "Man, that is beautiful. What about it, would you like to go there this summer when the school is on break? I know you weren't planning on teaching this summer."

  She looked at me as if surprised.

  "That's – sweet, Bill...but...I had meant to talk to you. I was thinking about teaching this summer. Larry Carter usually teaches the summer session but his wife talked him into taking her to Hawaii and they need someone to fill in."

  "When did this come up? I hadn't heard a word about it."

  She looked into my eyes and then away with an expression I couldn't place.

  "About a month ago. I'd meant to mention it, but I kept forgetting. Sorry. I didn't think we had any firm plans. You're always working on some case or other. And we haven't gone anywhere exotic in a long time."

  "I know, but-"

  She dropped the magazine to her hip, then rolled a little so one big luscious breast bulged out against her robe and said, "I'm sorry Bill, I pretty much already told them I'd take the summer session. But, look, we went to some wonderful places when we were married and next summer
I promise I'll leave time so we can go somewhere nice."

  No one at the office has ever accused me of being slow on the uptake, but it took me a minute after she finished patting me on the hand and then picked the magazine back up before it sunk in.

  I said the words to myself silently and ran them over and over, jumbling them up and trying to figure out how I had misunderstood my loving, blonde and very sexy wife.

  "...when we were married?"

  She looked back at me from the magazine with a slightly puzzled expression on her face as if she'd only heard part of what I said, and asked, "What did you say?"

  I didn't realize it then, but from the expression that slowly grew on her face I realized a storm cloud must have appeared on mine as I slowly, with great emphasis and the beginnings of real anger, said, "You said we went some nice places WHEN WE WERE MARRIED. Is there something going on I don't know about?"

  An expression consisting of equal parts surprise, embarrassment and what appeared to be shock appeared on her face.

  "What are you talking about Bill? You must have misunderstood what I said."

  "No. You said it very clearly and distinctly. WHEN WE WERE MARRIED! I kind of thought we were married. That's why I asked if there was something I wasn't aware of."

  She shook her head and tried to look me in the eyes.

  "I couldn't have said that, Bill. That's crazy. "

  "No, just weird. I know we're married, babe, so where did that come from?"

  "I don't – oh, I must have meant we've been some nice places since we've been married. That's what I meant to say."

  "Oh."

  I rolled it around inside my head and I knew she was lying. 'Since we were married,' and "when we were married" aren't close enough to make that kind of mistake. And she hadn't been thinking when she said it. It had popped out without her thinking about it or apparently even realizing what she was saying.

  In the office we call those Freudian give-aways. Most people call them Freudian slips. When people's mouths outrun the control of their minds, they can say things that wind up sending them to prison or the death chamber at Raiford.

  Any prosecutor or cop knows that no matter how tightly controlled a person may be, the unconscious mind is always perking away down below. And when you're guilty about something, what the unconscious mind is doing is trying to confess something the conscious mind wants to keep hidden.

  What was she thinking about, I thought, glancing at her beautiful face and realizing she was still focused in with a laser-like stare on my eyes. She was trying to read me the way I was reading her. Only I was better at it because I'd done it for a living for a long time.

  And then I realized with an acidic burn in the pit of my stomach, I'd never looked at her in our nearly 18 years of marriage and two years of dating before that this way: the way I'd stare at a suspect, a scum bag, a perp as our brethren cops dubbed them. I didn't like the feeling I had about her.

  I made myself laugh, although it came out as a dry chuckle.

  "You're right, babe. Anybody can garble their words. I even do it once in awhile. I have to admit, you gave me a fright there. I was wondering if we'd ever been legally married. Was there a problem with our marriage license? Or did you secretly divorce me?"

  I tried to make myself laugh again but all that came out was a dry cough.

  She searched my eyes intently as if trying to see if I was telling the truth. But after ten years of working a courtroom, I've got that poker-stare down pat. She wouldn't get any hints from my face.

  She reached over and did something that shocked and scared me a little. She took my hand and brought it to her lips and kissed it. Such a simple thing. But I couldn't remember the last time she had ever done it. Even when we were getting ready for sex it was kissing on the lips and her jerking my dick and my licking her luscious pussy until she was wet and ready.

  But a simple gesture like kissing the back of my hand....it was something lovers did. And I realized we hadn't been lovers in forever.

  If she had looked up then, I know she would have known and the game would have been over and our lives would have gone very differently. Because my eyes flooded with tears as I realized the shit that our marriage had become while I was too blind to see it happening in front of me. If she had looked me in the eye then she would have known something was terribly wrong and I would have told her the truth about what I was thinking and our marriage would have changed forever- one way or other.

  But she didn't and I was able to squelch the emotions and quickly wipe my eyes with my free hand.

  She kept her face tightly against the back of my hand and kissed it again. Without looking at me, she said, "I'm sorry for saying it that way, Bill. You know I love you. You're the only man in my life. I love you more now than when we married. You're the father of my children. This is crazy. It was just a slip of the tongue and it didn't mean anything."

  But I couldn't take my prosecutor hat off. I wondered why she wouldn't look at me when she professed her undying love. And I found myself listening to and weighing her words, her tone. I'd listened to thousands of depositions and thousands of witnesses on witness stands. And I found the professional side of my mind, not the husband, weighing her words.

  And over and over, my mind went back to the same question. It told me that when she said, "When we were married," she was talking in the past tense. That meant in the present tense, in the now, we weren't married. At least in her mind. Or was it that she simply didn't WANT to be married to me anymore. Or was she planning to make herself un-married in the near future? Was a divorce in the offing?

  Which inevitably led to the question: was she simply tired of me and ready to toss me in the garbage and make a new life for herself with another man? Or had she already found my replacement? Was she fucking another guy right now? Was that why our sex life was infrequent, so boring, so bland, so… vanilla. Was that why we had been mom and dad a hundred times more than we'd been lovers, sex partners.

  Of course, a part of me kept telling me this whole train of thought was stupid. She had just mixed up her words. Tomorrow morning things would be back to normal and in a day or two I'd laugh at my own paranoia. I had simply been a prosecutor too many years looking deep into the worst of humanity, and it colored the way I looked at everything, even my wife and my marriage.

  I wanted to believe that, but everything felt...wrong. It was a simple mistake, but why had she reacted the way she had? If it was nothing she'd simply have laughed it off, went back to her reading and teased me about taking it the wrong way. But she hadn't. She had acted worried, disturbed and now she was acting in an unusually loving manner.

  She let my hand go and put the magazine on the drawer by her side of our king-sized waterbed. She reached up and turned off the nightlight on her side and told me, "Turn the light off, honey." As I reached over to my right to turn off the light on my side I saw her stand up out of the corner of my eye and I held off turning off the light.

  By the time I had rolled back to her the robe had dropped and she was stepping out of her panties. Her heavy breasts had fallen with age and gravity, but they were still incredibly swollen and juicy melons even with the nipples pointing down at a 45-degree angle. But I lost focus on my favorite part of her when my eyes drifted down to her pussy.

  I couldn't understand what I was looking at first. I found myself looking for the golden fuzz that surrounded her vagina, but it was gone. It was as smooth as baby's bottom. Just the pink of her outer lips and a hint of the red interior. After a minute I realized she had shaved down there. Gotten rid of all her public hair. Why, and for whom, I wondered. I had never suggested it. I'd heard about it from friends, married and bachelor, and it might have been nice but it was never anything I would have brought up. Not in recent years, anyway.

  She looked at me, read the expression on my face, and said with a timid smile, "Do you like it? A lot of the girls at the school, especially the younger and single ones, told me this is reall
y hot and men love it."

  I just looked at her for a moment, and then I couldn't stop myself from saying, "I bet they do. Have you gotten any compliments?"

  She just stared at me until what I'd said sunk in. Now the tears appeared in her eyes.

  "How can you say that, Bill. God, how can you say something that mean...when I did this for you?"

  The anger that was percolating inside me was coming out and I couldn't stop it.

  "And just when were you going to show me your new look, baby? After you finished your article? Or watched the late news. Or were you going to just strip and jump on me, the way you usually do. Oh, that's right, I forgot. You never do that. If I'm going to get any action, I have to give you notice, shower, shave and brush my teeth and get you in the mood first. When was the last time you just stripped and jumped me?"

  I pretended to think.

  "Oh, yeah. Never. So what's different about tonight. Oh and how long ago did you shave it?"

  She climbed onto the bed on her hands and knees, her breasts dangling down like ripe fruit. She knew that almost always made me hard as a rock. She reached out and closed her hand on my cock. It was already rigid and I couldn't help release a little groan of pleasure.

  "I don't want to fight, Bill. I want you. Inside me. The way it used to be. I'm sorry I've let things slide. I've been so busy with the kids and work and friends that I let the main thing in my life go unattended to. And that's you. I shaved because I wanted to excite you. I wanted you to grab me and throw me down, spread my legs and fuck me the way you used to. We used to love it, remember?"

  And I wanted to believe her. I wanted to remember those nights when we were first married, through the first decade of our marriage, when I couldn't get enough of her. I wanted to believe she had shaved herself for me. I wanted to believe that she had been planning to surprise me with incredibly hot sex out of the blue tonight.

  Unfortunately, I couldn't. I grabbed her hand and pulled it off my rock hard cock. It was probably the hardest thing I'd ever had to do.