Four Letter Word

by J. Daniels

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One: SYDNEY

  Chapter Two: SYDNEY

  Chapter Three: BRIAN

  Chapter Four: SYDNEY

  Chapter Five: BRIAN

  Chapter Six: SYDNEY

  Chapter Seven: BRIAN

  Chapter Eight: SYDNEY

  Chapter Nine: BRIAN

  Chapter Ten: SYDNEY

  Chapter Eleven: BRIAN

  Chapter Twelve: SYDNEY

  Chapter Thirteen: BRIAN

  Chapter Fourteen: SYDNEY

  Chapter Fifteen: BRIAN

  Chapter Sixteen: SYDNEY

  Chapter Seventeen: BRIAN

  Chapter Eighteen: SYDNEY

  Chapter Nineteen: BRIAN

  Chapter Twenty: SYDNEY

  Chapter Twenty-one: BRIAN

  Chapter Twenty-two: SYDNEY

  Epilogue: SYDNEY

  A Preview of HIT THE SPOT

  Newsletters

  Copyright

  To Jeff. UU

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thank you to my family for your unwavering love and support. For understanding when I was shut away writing and for not judging me when I would finally resurface hours later, still in my pajamas. I know how I looked, so again, thank you. Also, Mom, Dad, please skip over the sex scenes as usual. Let’s keep Christmas as comfortable as possible.

  To Beth Cranford, thank you for keeping me sane. For encouraging me and telling me I could do this, and for your help with all of the “little things” that aren’t quite so little. Along with Beth, thank you to Kellie Richardson, Lisa Jayne, and Lana Kart for reading this book in its rough stages and, like always, giving me your honesty, enthusiasm, and voice messages. I was nervous, and you made me less nervous. To Lisa Wilson, Tiffany Ly, Yvette Trujillo, and Kellie, of course, thank you for your amazing teasers and the promoting you did for this baby. You girls are the BEST.

  To my wonderful agent, Kimberly Brower. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. How many times have you talked me off the ledge? I’ve lost count. Peanut butter cup sundaes on me.

  To Megha and the Forever team, thank you for picking up this story and for supporting my vision in it. To the amazing book bloggers who have been on this journey with me from the beginning, I can’t list you all here, but please know how grateful I am for each and every one of you. Special thanks to Give Me Books, Kinky Girls Book Obsessions, Rock Stars of Romance, and The Literary Gossip.

  To the author friends I’ve made along the way, you know who you are. And to my readers, for your love and warm hugs, thank you most of all.

  Chapter One

  SYDNEY

  I had been sitting in the same spot for an hour.

  Well, at least it felt like an hour. I honestly had no idea what time it was. I couldn’t look at the clock to verify how long I’d been immobile. I couldn’t look at anything besides the hand resting in my lap.

  No, not resting. It shook violently, no matter how hard I pressed it flat against my jean-covered thigh.

  My skin all over was clammy and frigid at the same time. Sweat tickled my palms, pooled at the base of my neck and in the hollow dip of my throat. It was quite possible I was running a fever.

  I should feel sick. This was sickening.

  The house felt eerily quiet, desolate, though I knew Marcus was in the other room. I hadn’t heard the evidence of his departure—the front door closing or the low rumble of his truck starting up.

  He hadn’t left. And why would he? Why would he be the one leaving in this scenario?

  You should be leaving, Sydney. Get up. Run. Grab your stuff and get the hell out of here.

  I exhaled a trembling breath. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t stop shaking. I could barely remember how important oxygen intake was in the matter of staying alive. Long seconds stretched out before I would inhale in a panic, allow my lungs to taste the air in the room I shouldn’t still be sitting in, then expel that breath all too quickly.

  I needed to go. I needed to react somehow, because I hadn’t thus far.

  I felt numb. And this…this felt like a dream.

  A paralyzing dream.

  The kind you didn’t wake up from.

  My phone rang from my bag on the floor somewhere, but it sounded miles away. I couldn’t lift my head to the noise. I couldn’t even remember where I had tossed it after I endured the one-sided conversation with Marcus.

  Endured. Not participated in.

  Him, doing all the talking, all the explaining, and none of it sounding the least bit apologetic, his voice cold and distant, detached, final…having made the decision, his decision, while I stood there frozen.

  Frozen.

  Marcus turned on his heel and swiftly left the room. I collapsed into a pile of heavy limbs on the floor, where I’d remained, and where I had every intention of remaining.

  That was my reaction. It was the only reaction I was capable of.

  Until the phone rang…again.

  Something felt off. It was a miracle I felt it, whatever it was, considering my deadened state.

  Like a whispered warning against my ear.

  My spine stiffened in an instant. I turned my head in the direction of my muffled ringtone, scanning with what felt like new eyes.

  Fresh and alert.

  I was up to count six of Taylor Swift singing about being young and reckless. I knew who was calling, and I contemplated ignoring my best friend again, slouching over and righting myself to my previous position, until I realized…

  Shit.

  Shit.

  My already tight chest grew tighter.

  Tori never called me that many times in a row. If I didn’t answer her, I was usually in the middle of a shift at work, and she’d leave her standard “call me when you get a sec” message.

  She never rang me up like this. Urgently.

  Was something wrong?

  I found my bag halfway under the bed and tugged it out by one of the straps. Palming my phone, I answered the call just before the last words of the verse sounded.

  “H-hey, what’s up?” I asked, voice strained and anxious, stumbling brokenly through my greeting.

  My head hit the side of the mattress as I resumed my location on the floor with my knees pulled in close against my chest.

  “Syd.” Tori’s voice cracked with a whimper. “Hon…hey, hey, are you busy right now? Do you have a minute to talk? I need to talk.”

  I blinked rapidly at her distressful tone.

  I suddenly couldn’t remember the last hour, or however long I had been in this room. I couldn’t remember the bomb Marcus dropped in my lap before he dismissed me with a curt nod and went about his business doing God knows what.

  My hands no longer shook. My breathing was even. Focused.

  I had never heard my best friend cry. Never. Not once in the twelve years we’d known each other. And we’d been through some shit, let me tell you.

  But she was crying now.

  I was right. Something was off.

  Worry consumed me. My blood ran warmer as I began to pace along the length of the bed, pressing the phone to my ear as I quickly collected myself.

  “I have as much time as you need, sweetie. What’s going on? Why are you upset?”

  “Wes,” she hiccupped.

  Wes.

  Tori’s boyfriend of six months and serious enough he was obviously worth shedding tears over.

  I hadn’t had a chance to meet the guy yet, due to my busy work schedule and the three-hour drive time between Tori and myself. But I felt like I knew him. Ninety percent of Tori’s and my conversations revolved around what amazingly sweet thing Wes did for her that week.


  He seemed perfect.

  My attention snapped back to the phone at my ear when I heard a crash, the sound of glass breaking, followed immediately by my best friend’s livid but still distraught high-pitched voice.

  “Married. He’s fucking married, Syd! Can you believe that? That son of a bitch has a wife!”

  I stopped pacing and stared openmouthed at the wall.

  Married?

  Oh, God…

  Tori took in a shuddering breath and I started pacing again, needing to either move or hit someone. And I wasn’t jumping at the chance to confront Marcus just yet, so option two was out.

  Tori’s voice shrank to a more vulnerable decibel when she finally continued.

  “God, Sydney, how stupid am I? How did I not see this? His weeknight rule with being too busy to see me Monday through Friday, always sending my calls to voice mail only to return them minutes later, which I’m imagining now was enough time for him to make up some bullshit story to appease his wife so he could sneak out and call me back. Asshole. God…that stupid fucking asshole. How? How did that not set off alarms in my head? Was it that obvious? Was I that blind, Syd?”

  I didn’t know if it was from my frantic pacing, or from Tori’s confession sinking in, but suddenly I needed to steady myself with a hand on the wall.

  The room began to spin.

  I blinked everything into focus before finding my own voice, which I kept quiet.

  “Oh, my God, Tori. My God. How did you find out? What happened?”

  “Saw him with her at the mall, pushing a damn stroller through the food court,” she answered, sounding equal parts disgusted and destroyed. “They looked so fucking perfect together, I didn’t know whether to throw up or scream.”

  She groaned, and I heard more things rattling in the background.

  I pictured Tori testing the weight of different glass objects before she chose one to hurl against the closest wall.

  “I walked right up to the son of a bitch. I saw her ring. I saw his. I was ready to confront him then and there. You know me. But you know what that bastard did?”

  She sniffed loudly through the phone.

  It broke my heart to hear her like this, but I didn’t get to tell her that before she continued.

  “He…he threw his arm around her, smiled at me, and introduced us. He actually introduced his wife to me, Sydney. Told her I was an old friend from high school. Can you believe that? A friend.”

  She chuckled derisively at the word.

  “I’ve done things with him I’ve never done with other men. I’ve talked with him…you know? That kind of talking where you just share yourself with someone for hours and hours and you can’t think of anything else you’d rather be doing. I don’t know if I loved him, but I could’ve. I know I could’ve.”

  “What did you do?”

  She breathed through a tight laugh.

  “I know what I should’ve done. I should’ve called him out on it. Stomped his balls out. His wife deserved to know. I would want to know, but I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t. I stood there like some freak, staring at him with my mouth hanging open. I probably looked psychotic. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. After God knows how long they walked away and I…I just kept standing there until a security guard came up to me and asked if I was okay.” She paused, then whispered, “I wasn’t. I’m not.”

  I moved to the bed and sank onto the mattress, elbows on my knees, and rubbed my palm across my forehead.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing either. I couldn’t believe people could be this malicious as to openly hurt someone this way, even though I was suffering from a pain similar to what Tori was experiencing. But at least she was acknowledging it. Admitting the effect it had on her and even going as far as confessing it to someone.

  I couldn’t do that yet. I wasn’t feeling anything.

  Until now.

  The change was swift. I suddenly felt everything, as if someone had taken a book filled with the range of human emotions and chucked it at my head. I was overwhelmed. Alive with reaction. I wanted to cry. I wanted to scream. I was full of rage and bitterness, pain…God, the pain was undeniable now. It felt like a cancer eating away at my bones.

  Tori let out a strangled yell. Something else shattered through the line.

  I closed my eyes and imagined doing the same thing.

  I knew her adoration for Wes ran deep and threatened to run deeper the more time she had spent with that man.

  She saw him as her future.

  He’d already planned one out with another woman.

  Are all men complete pieces of shit?

  My eyes flashed down at my left hand, lifeless on my leg. One particular finger felt foreign to me. Irritating. Like an itch I couldn’t reach to scratch.

  I couldn’t remain still anymore.

  My skin pricked at the base of my neck as I stood and pulled my suitcases from the walk-in closet, dragging them to the bed.

  I knew my best friend better than anyone. I knew that sometimes she simply needed me to listen instead of offering my assurance or advice. Just knowing someone was there for you spoke louder than a lot of words.

  So that’s what I gave her. Silence.

  She cried softly into my ear as I threw my entire life into two suitcases and one duffle bag. I ransacked the bathroom, not caring how I left it as I packed away my toiletries. I wiped away every memory of myself from that room.

  Every photo. Anything tying me to Marcus. Everything personal.

  I wanted them gone. But more important, I wanted to be gone.

  I stripped the ring from my finger and held it tight in my fist, the blunt edge of the diamond threatening to break skin.

  Tori dragged out an edgy breath, then told me quietly, “I’m sorry, hon. I just needed to get that off my chest. You’re probably busy, right? Are you at work? It’s cool, I’ll let you go.”

  Work. That was another thing I had to deal with. Immediately. Sooner the better.

  “Yeah, I’m kind of in the middle of something,” I replied, which wasn’t entirely a lie. I knew she would assume that meant I was at the hospital, when in reality I was in the middle of letting go of the life I thought I was meant to have.

  The one I wrote vows for.

  I had to get off the phone. The sooner I finished this, the better.

  “All right. I gotta go anyway. There’s glass everywhere. I should probably clean it up before I step on it. Call me tomorrow if you have a chance.”

  The call disconnected.

  I chuckled, which seemed so strange given the reality of the situation.

  My current, completely fucked-up situation.

  Tori never waited on the line to hear anyone’s good-bye. I knew that about her. I’d overheard many conversations she held growing up, but every time we spoke, I still readied myself with a response.

  It was habitual, and the normal thing to do.

  I envied her ability to cut the world off like that. To dominate life.

  It wasn’t too late for me to become a wrecking force. I had absolutely nothing to lose anymore.

  I had nothing at all.

  Securing the duffle strap over my shoulder, I lifted the suitcases and marched down the hallway.

  Noise from the television grew louder as I descended the stairs. Marcus was continuing on with his night as if nothing had been revealed. As if we were still an “us,” and he hadn’t taken all of that away from me.

  I briefly glanced in his direction when I moved past the living room.

  He was sitting in his favorite chair and nursing a beer, his feet crossed at the ankles and propped up on our coffee table. His eyes glued to the game.

  Typical.

  He was a creature of habit, and he had already come to terms with a world we were no longer facing together. He chose it willingly.

  Why should my departure affect him? He’d already let go of me.

  Marcus didn’t speak. I knew he wouldn’t, but what surpris
ed me was my silence. I had so much to say, to scream, in his face or from this distance, it didn’t matter, but more than anything I wanted to get on the road before darkness blanketed the sky. I hated driving at night.

  And most important, I wanted to get to my friend.

  I didn’t need to free up a hand to open the door. Our storm door never latched properly, and with a swift kick at the base, it would swing free and open, creaking at the hinges.

  For the first time since we’d moved into that house, I was grateful for the minor imperfection.

  I didn’t need to free up my hand, but I did need to open it slightly. Two fingers letting go of the weight burning against my flesh.

  The last noise I heard before I stepped outside and welcomed the damp air on my skin was the ping of gold striking the wood beneath my feet.

  * * *

  I rode with the windows down the entire drive to Dogwood Beach. I reveled in the clean scent of grass and earth, the sweet warmth of a May evening. Everyday things, beautiful things that would normally calm my restless mind, but not tonight. I kept the music off and just let myself think, piling on sign after obvious sign I had been too stupid or too disconnected to notice over the past three months.

  It was all so clear now. Every color of our corrosion.

  The naive veil had finally been lifted, and the longer I drove, the more I hated myself for becoming one of those women who allowed deceit to slip past them. Who stayed too detached and okay with little changes that should’ve been red-hot alarms, blaring with an incessant warning.

  Our growing silence with each other, leaving our only conversations to be ones we needed to have, not ones we wanted to have. The indifferent way he began to look at me, or the late nights when he’d claim he was too tired to drag himself to bed and instead chose to camp out on the couch.

  A couch I knew from experience wasn’t the best for sleeping on.

  I regretted every whispered word I uttered into the dark late at night when I wrapped myself around a cold pillow and reached with a seeking hand for a body I knew wasn’t next to me.

  What was I reaching for?

  And why? Why didn’t I see it? Where had I been?

  Tori’s questions from earlier became a mantra.