by Misti Murphy
He didn’t even wince as I accused him. Didn’t bat an eye. Couldn’t he deny it? Tell me I’m wrong and I’ll believe you. I gulped. “It’s true then.”
All this time I thought he was different – thought he was the one I was going to spend the rest of my life with. But he’d turned out to be just like my father, and I couldn’t deny it any longer.
I grabbed my purse from the back of a stool and bolted from the house. Swiping at the tears that dashed down my cheeks, I jumped in the car and drove out of Reverence. There was a pub where no one would come looking for me. A place I’d promised never to go to.
The car park was filled with the usual vehicles as I slipped my car into a spot between two trucks and raced inside. A lanky young guy was behind the bar, and I tossed my purse on the counter and ordered double after double.
The night had become a blur, all my training when it came to drinking nothing against the ever growing black hole inside me.
“Hey, baby, you’re looking awfully lonely tonight.” His thick voice against my ear caused a shiver to run up my spine, and I turned to glare at him.
“Go away, Rabid.” I twisted away from the creep and pulled out my phone. Mike hated the guy, wouldn’t be able to stand the idea of him even talking to me, let alone hitting on me. Surely he’d come for me if I told him where I was. I’d promised him never to come here without him. He wouldn’t think to come here if he was looking for me. It was the last place he’d expect to find me. I’d only ever stepped foot in Wolf’s with him by my side, never letting me out of his sight, never taking his gaze off me. Still, we’d had fun here, made memories and caused havoc. Without him it was just another bar, with dirtier, creepier patrons and the oil over water gut feeling that nothing could make things better. That the pain would never be less than what it was right now. Mike gave no response to my message. He didn’t want me anymore.
A meaty hand landed on my shoulder, gripped it as he dragged his mouth against my ear once more. “So Knight cast you away, did he? Found a better piece of ass?”
I stifled a sob and tossed down the rest of my scotch, eyeing the bartender all the while. “Just go away.”
“I know how to make you feel better.”
I fiddled with my phone. Maybe if Mike knew the guy he hated more than anything was hitting on me he’d remember he loved me. Maybe he’d fight for me. I typed out a message, but my thumbs were fat and the screen blurred into two in front of me. I put it away and concentrated on my refill.
“He’s not going to come, you know. You’re just another pussy.”
I hiccupped, and dropped my head to the bar, unable to hold back the sobs that ripped through me. Had I been just another pussy to Mike? Had I been blind all along?
My father had told my mother he loved her, he’d pretended he’d loved my sister and me, too, but he’d walked away as if none of us had meant a damn thing, and now I didn’t even merit a word from Mike when I asked him if he was cheating on me? “I’m not just another pussy.”
Rabid crowed, an abrasive, neighing snigger. “You’re fucking with me, right? You’re the kind of girl who lives for dick. No one wants you for anything more than a good time.”
“Screw you,” I snapped. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you’re the type who likes it rough.” He ran his paw down my arm. “And that I can give you something to take your mind of that fucker.”
I fumbled for my phone again. Pulled it out and tried to study the screen. Why did it have to swim in front of my eyes?
Nothing. He was done with me? That’s what his silence meant. Well fuck him. Fuck him for taking my heart, making it into something it was never meant to be and then smashing it to pieces. “Fine. Whatever. You want to fuck me, then let’s fuck.”
He had me off the stool, leading me toward the women’s bathroom before I had time to blink. And when he slammed me up against the wall, my head crashed against the panelling and I almost blacked out. He tore at my skirt, the seam ripping in his haste to get it up. There was nothing in the way he touched me that made my body respond. Maybe I never would again. Mike had destroyed me, and left me nothing. Somehow I had the sensibility to insist on a condom and he smashed a fist into the vending machine to get one before he lifted me up and slammed into me. He knocked me into the wall, repeatedly, while he grunted like a pig, and all I could think of was Mike.
Then as if he was conjured up by mind, he was there, right in front of me. A tic jumping below his eye as he stared at us fucking. His whole body tensed, his hands fisted, there was murder in his eyes.
My cheeks burned, as the crack inside me opened up wide, tears falling again. I couldn’t even look at him. A slight shake of my head, I begged him to forgive me with my eyes before I turned my cheek to the wall, unable to look at him, unable to see the pain on his face.
Rabid dropped me as soon as he was done and sauntered out of the bathroom, leaving me there, shaking and sobbing, while I straightened out my clothes. I didn’t know why Mike had come to find me, but it didn’t matter anymore because he’d never forgive me.
What the hell had I done?
Chapter Seven
Mike
I should have been working through the numbers for the business before the meeting with the accountant instead of staring at my damn computer, but her responses to my emails had captured my attention completely. I hadn’t been able to help the smirk that crossed my face when I told her what I planned to do to her.
For days I’d wanted to corner her, press her to the wall and remind her with my mouth, my hands, and my cock, why she wouldn’t turn me down, instead of sending fucking emails. I was on edge, struggling to hold myself in check, when I wanted to toss her over my shoulder and take her home where she belonged. And damn it, she did belong there with me.
Now she was two doors away and my imagination had me caught in a sensory memory. I could smell her getting wet for me, almost taste her on my tongue. If I hadn’t wanted more than her body against mine, I would have waltzed in there, swung her over my shoulder, and carried her into my office, right in front of Chelsea. Actually, it wasn’t a bad idea.
I glanced up at the door, then back to the email. The lack of response when I’d asked her to talk puzzled me. Wasn’t that what she wanted? A final answer to the question she’d been asking for years. Maybe she wouldn’t respond, but when she saw the email it would beat around in her brain until she had no choice but to do what I’d asked. And then what? I slammed the lid of my laptop closed with a growl.
Bounding out of my seat, I strode to the window and leaned against it, staring out at nothing. What was she going to think? How would she take the truth after all these years? Would she even listen? If only I hadn’t been such a coward. If only I hadn’t thought she’d be better off not knowing.
“She’ll come,” I muttered to myself. “Of course she will.”
A knock on the door, and Orion’s voice broke through my reverie. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. I was sure as shit ready to put that particular mistake to bed. “Yeah, sorry. Let me grab the books.”
Striding to the desk, I hunted through the stacks for the Lance Starr ledgers.
“Are you going to let Mellie in here to organize your mess?” Orion leaned against the door, arms crossed over his chest.
I shrugged. “I figure she’ll sneak in here at some point and put everything where I can’t find it.”
“Probably when you do something to annoy her.” He chuckled. “I’m surprised you haven’t yet.”
If only you knew the half of it. “It’s probably inevitable.” I shoved bits of paper around, trying to unearth what I was looking for.
“It’s nice to see her back here.” He pushed off the door when I found the files, and I followed him out through the main office.
“Hey, Mellie.” Orion grinned and crossed the room, pulling her into his side for a one-armed hug. “Couldn’t stay away from the place?”
/> “Of course I could, but apparently you guys can’t live without me. It’s in shambles.”
“Yeah. Blame him. His mind is somewhere else half the time.”
My life had been in shambles since she left it.
“See what I mean? I didn’t even get a rise out of him.” Orion gave me a goofball grin. “You know I only come to the office when I have to.”
“What?” I wasn’t sure what I’d managed to miss.
She gazed at me, a funny little expression on her face that made my chest tight. “You guys have a meeting, right?”
“Accountants.” I lifted the hand holding the ledger enough to pull her attention to it. “I won’t be back in. I’m going to take an early day.”
“Probably a good time to tackle his office.” Orion nudged her with his elbow.
Catching her gaze, I brought her attention back to the thing that held mine. “Can you take care of that email for me?”
“Okay,” she exaggerated the word, her voice softening almost to a whisper in answer to my unspoken question. Yeah, she’d come.
Orion glanced between us before dropping his arm from her shoulder. “How about we do dinner this weekend? It’s been awhile since we’ve all gotten together.”
“Sure.” Mellie perked at the suggestion, her focus back on Orion, whatever she’d been thinking forgotten. “Now get out of here, the two of you, and let me get some work done.”
***
Concentrating had never been this hard. Numbers and math had always been my thing. But the only numbers I saw was one plus one equalled two.
Funny how far we’d come with the business. When we first started out I’d been cash poor, having dumped all my money into properties I knew would be the beginning of a better life, and then we’d decided to start Lance Starr. Orion had wanted to be his own boss as much as I had. He’d gone so far as to provide the capital. I’d paid in my half before the end of the first six months, flipping the house I’d built and building another. It had taken me four years before that to scrape enough together to make the savvy investments I’d needed, but less than a year to make my first million. Anything on top of that was gravy.
I’d promised myself I’d never raise a family who had to wonder where their next meal was coming from, or watch someone die because I couldn’t afford the medical bills.
Mellie had never cared about the money. She’d only wanted me, and that had been a new experience in itself, one I had never wanted to end.
“What’s going on with you?” Orion asked when we left the accountant’s office.
“Nothing.” I shoved my hands in my pockets as I stepped through the sliding glass doors onto the pavement.
“That’s funny. You usually bore me to sleep in those meetings. Today you may as well have not been in the room.” He frowned, glancing at me as though he expected I’d give him an answer.
“You managed all right.” I glanced at my watch. “I’ve got to go. Dinner Saturday, right?”
“Yeah. I’ll see you then.” Orion took off in the direction he’d parked, and I headed to my own truck. He was right. Normally our business numbers were a pie I would have my finger in, but I couldn’t shake the idea of other things I wanted to do with my digits later tonight, after I finally told her everything.
She’d come. There was no way she wouldn’t. We’d tried to have this conversation before, and I’d always backed out. Not because I didn’t want to tell her, but because there was a certain amount of uncomfortableness that came with the idea. I reached down to readjust my balls. Well, one ball, really, the other a hard shell of silicone. That was a good part of the reason I hadn’t been able to voice why I refused to acknowledge the affair she claimed I had. At some point it was inevitable she’d call me one-nut. She wouldn’t mean to say it with any biting undertone, but I’d struggled with the loss more than she could possibly understand. The idea of hearing her acknowledge it made me cringe. But I wouldn’t back down. Since the night I reclaimed what was mine, I’d come alive. I’d found that sharp, driven instinct, and I damn well wasn’t the type to give up just because I wasn’t a complete specimen of manhood. Fuck letting my balls–or lack thereof–get in the way of what I wanted in life.
Not anymore.
So she’d come, and I’d tell her. I should probably cook her dinner. That pasta she used to like. The dish with olives, feta, and tomatoes. She used to love when I made that for her.
Changing direction, I went to the market to gather what I needed. It was a simple dish, something I’d whipped up in the first few weeks we were together, when we’d spent all our time wrapped around each other, only stopping to take care of the necessities of life. I hadn’t been able to get enough of her, craved her like air. That hadn’t changed much. Even afterward… quitting something didn’t make the cravings go away.
Basket in hand I raced through the supermarket, grabbing what I needed. I’d make her that chocolate mousse she liked, too. Serve it with fresh whipped cream and a few strawberries. A bottle of wine, pinot grigio was a good choice to go with the pasta.
I’d tell her everything over dinner. There’d be shock, anger, and then, relief, acceptance? By the time dessert was ready, all the shit reasons that kept us apart would be out of the way, and I could smear the chocolate mousse and whipped cream over her body, lick it off with my tongue, until I got between her legs. Then I’d take my time getting reacquainted with every sweet inch of her, making her cum so hard in my mouth, she’d never forget her pussy was mine. After, it wouldn’t take much to pack up her possessions and put them back where they belonged. There would be no point taking things slowly, when we hadn’t managed to the first time.
***
I pulled up to the house and carried the bags inside, dumping them on the counter so I could run upstairs and change. The loss of a ball, the cancer wasn’t the only reason I hadn’t told her. There’d been times I’d considered blurting it all out in the middle of our many heated discussions about the past. I’d been a fucking pussy about it. And then when I’d gone into remission, and gotten the news I was in the clear, I’d still struggled. Could I be the man I once was? Part of me was missing and it had hit me in my testosterone-fuelled ego.
But not anymore. If I’d needed proof of my manhood, my virility, I sure as hell hadn’t been short changed when it came to Mellie. I thumped back downstairs. Maybe she didn’t notice the change. It wasn’t terribly big. Just a small, round shell full of saline that was only slightly harder than my real nut. The only time she’d been close to it was when I was slamming into her, her moans for more clarifying that I was still everything she needed to fulfil her.
Unpacking the grocery bags, I grabbed what I needed from the cupboards and chucked the produce and wine into the fridge for later. Dessert first, then pasta. I had a couple of hours to put this meal together. Whistling, I broke up the chocolate to put it in the double boiler to melt. My old man had taught me this recipe before he’d passed away. It was strange that I couldn’t remember much of my parents, but the smells that came from our kitchen when I was a child had stuck with me. I’d been a scrap of a kid, always sick and unable to run around much with other kids my age. So instead of playing tag, or whatever kids played back then, I’d learned to cook.
There was something about making a meal from scratch. The choices one needed to make to get the taste exactly right, and the work that went into presentation. The mathematics and percentages involved had intrigued me, but it was more than that. After we’d finish in the kitchen, when we went to the tiny, chipped veneer table, and I got to put the food out in front of my mother, my chest would expand with pride at being able to look after her for a change. Then one day she’d up and left, and my father had started spending a lot of time locked away in his room. I’d ended up looking after him until the end. The need to look after others was ingrained in me more than anything else I remembered about my parents. If I’d been healthier when I was a kid, if I’d been able to do more for them, then maybe I
wouldn’t have ended up in the foster system.
Dessert done, I checked the time. Another hour, maybe two. Plenty of time to make pasta from scratch. I tossed flour and eggs onto the counter, combined them, and got to kneading the dough, while I repeated what I would tell her in a loop in my head. I’d tell her what had really happened, and why it might have looked like I’d been having an affair, though the truth had been far different, and she’d ask why I hadn’t told her. Pretty simple stuff. I’d been a fucking coward. I’d been worried about how she would handle it.
She’d get angry, or silent, or both, and then ask me why I’d kept it to myself all this time, ask why I hadn’t told her the night she’d accused me of cheating on her. On top of that was what happened at Wolf’s that night. I squeezed the dough between my fingers, working it harder than I should. Yanking a length of cling film from the roll, I wrapped the dough and wiped down the counter. I should have dealt with things differently. There was no pride in how I’d handled myself that night. Nothing I wanted to remember, and yet I couldn’t think back and not see it all in vivid detail, and with a shit-ton of regret. Would she be thinking about it, too, now I’d offered to come clean and strip away the lies she told herself?
Three years, one month ago…
The past six months hadn’t been easy. Hiding the cancer from Mellie had been harder than I thought possible. There’d been times I’d almost blurted it out. Once I’d gotten close to unloading everything that ran through my mind over and over, but she’d teared up before I could get to the point of that conversation. I’d seen her a whirlwind of anger, sometimes at me, but more often not. I’d watched her launch across a bar room to slap down someone if they wronged her friends. I’d suffered the stormy silences and cutting glances that would level less of a man than I, when she was upset. But teary? That day was the first time I saw her cry, and I hadn’t been able to bear hurting her more than I already was.
