Crosstown Crush

by Cara McKenna

  “No.”

  Goddamn, this guy was tough to read.

  “Okay. Let’s just talk, then.” He nodded to the couch and was a little surprised when Mike sat. Bern took a seat opposite him on the edge of his recliner.

  “Sam told me what happened.”

  Bern nodded. “She made it sound like she would. That was never in question, whether she thought you should know —”

  “I don’t need you to defend my wife’s character, okay? I know her better than you ever will.”

  Bern sat back, annoyed and chastised at once. How old was this guy? Forty, tops. Yet Bern felt like some scolded teenager, busted for denting Dad’s car. “Understood.”

  “You have feelings for my wife?” Mike demanded.

  Bern took a slow breath, unsure what the best move was here. He’d never been a great liar, though. In time, he nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I like her. A lot. If circumstances were different, I’d want to date her.”

  “You think you had a chance with her? At getting her to leave me for you?”

  Bern shook his head. He’d not expected that would happen… though in truth he had entertained idle, wishful, selfish thoughts that somehow, it might.

  “I was in this for exactly what you guys said you were after,” Bern said. “Sex. Fun. In Sam’s and my defense, I don’t think most decent people could do what we have been, for as long as we have been, and not feel something.”

  He’d half expected for Mike to cut him off there, tell him to fuck himself for trying to defend Sam again, but the man just nodded, real slow and stoic.

  Bern went on cautiously. “You guys went into this with a lot more at stake than I did, right out of the gate. Everything you feel – and I’m not pretending like I know what you feel, obviously. But all of that, plus however Sam felt about it. Nervous, I think. Hopeful. Plus the trust everybody had to extend to even go for it, myself included. The attraction.” He laughed softly. “I mean, this wasn’t one of us selling the other a used stereo. This wasn’t some blind date, either. This was a fucking experiment, one that could’ve gone crazy wrong. But I don’t think it has.” He paused, inviting Mike to interrupt. When he didn’t, Bern went on. “I think we did a pretty fucking awesome job, all three of us. If the worst thing that happened is that me and Sam wound up with feelings for each other… I mean, shouldn’t we? I know you don’t want her sleeping with somebody who sees her as nothing more than a body.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “No. But I know that much.” Bern leaned forward, a thread of anger running through his nerves now. “You tell me that isn’t true.”

  Mike said nothing.

  Bern slapped his hands to his knees, wanting this done. “So what’d you come here for, Mike? What do you need to hear from me?”

  “Do you love my wife?”

  Bern laughed again, shaking his head. Goddamn if he even knew the answer to that question. “Honestly? I don’t know. I feel something for her. If I felt this way for a woman I was regular old dating, I might be thinking that this could be something real. But it’s not that fucking simple, is it? I’m a man. I have fuck-all clue what I feel, okay? But I want and like and respect your wife, and if all that adds up to something you can’t trust, and you want to round that up to love, I can’t stop you.”

  Mike’s stone-cold eye contact finally broke, his gaze dropping to the carpet.

  “This is fucked, man,” Bern said. “This is exactly what gets you off, but the moment it goes off your little script, the second she’s into it as more than just a favor to you —”

  Mike’s head snapped up. “You watch yourself, talking like you know the first thing about it.”

  “The first thing? You have any clue all the e-mails she and I wrote, setting this up just right? For you? I know all the logistics she worried about. I know how badly she wanted this to work. For you. I promised you guys I’d be fucking monogamous to you, to keep this going. Because it was a good goddamn thing, a thing you wanted. And I did, too, and Sam wanted to make you happy. Now maybe she wants it for her own reasons – emotional ones, as much as sexual. She wants it, outside of your parameters, and suddenly it’s a goddamn crisis?”

  “This was never about inviting you to get designs on my wife.”

  Bern cocked his head. “That’s exactly what it was about. That’s what cuckolding fucking is.”

  “We didn’t invite you into our marriage to date her. To get emotionally involved with her.”

  “You didn’t, huh?”

  “No.”

  Bern stared him down. “Then exactly which of us is the prostitute to you? Me or your wife?”

  He didn’t even get a chance to stand before Mike was on him, fist around his collar and pressing into his throat. Bern went still, gripping the chair arms. He’d asked for this. He’d be the calmer man now, and wait to see where it ended.

  “You ever call my wife a whore again and I will fucking break you.”

  “I never did.” The words hurt to speak with Mike’s knuckles jammed against his Adam’s apple. “Which of us is denying her right to feel something for the man she’s sleeping with? Which of us is reducing her to —”

  “You were playing fucking parts,” Mike spat. “And nowhere in that script did it say you were supposed to get a goddamn crush on my wife.”

  “We’re human beings. We were bound to feel something.” A livid, petty bit of Bern wanted to make this ugly. Remind Mike exactly which of them had sucked the other’s cock in the name of his precious kink. But Bern felt too righteous – and too right – to fuck it up with that low a blow. “It was never part of the plan,” he said. “But we’re not robots. We can’t just turn our feelings off.”

  Mike’s knuckles stayed at Bern’s neck, though the pressure had waned. They were reaching an impasse, but Bern felt he’d won somehow.

  “Hit me, if that’s what you came here for, Mike. Otherwise get the fuck out of my house.”

  Mike released Bern’s collar and stood up straight, fists at his sides.

  Bern stayed sitting, and with feigned calm he said, “You know I’m right.” He hoped his voice belied the pounding of his heart. “And you know what this is, Mike, your coming here today? This is you losing track of what this has all been about, and taking shit too far. Same as last night was about me and Sam losing track and fucking up, taking shit too far. All three of us have crossed a line now. So you and me, let’s quit with this shit and call it even. How about that?”

  “Fuck you.”

  Bern stood, forcing Mike back a step, underlining which of them was bigger. “We made this bed precisely how you wanted it, Mike, now we’re all fucking lying in it. This is exactly what you asked for. Don’t treat me like a home wrecker when all I’ve ever done is grant your fucking wishes.”

  “You’d take her if you could.”

  Maybe that’s true. But can you really blame me? “And isn’t that exactly what gets you hard?”

  Bern didn’t see the punch coming. It registered as a flash of light and heat in his jaw – more concept than pain. The floor shifted under his feet, and he blinked to find his own hands splayed on the recliner, holding his reeling body upright. As the room righted itself, the pain arrived. Bern tasted blood and felt the tattered edge of his bitten tongue. He flexed his jaw as he stood up straight, and it throbbed but didn’t scream.

  “Go,” he ordered Mike, and nodded to the exit.

  Mike turned, strode to the door, and yanked it open. “Stay out of our lives,” he said, and marched to his car without looking back. He pulled away with an angry rev and a squeal of tires, disappearing around the corner.

  Bern shut the door and thumped it with his fist. “Fucking psycho.”

  Molly’s nails skittered at the kitchen door.

  “It’s okay, girl.” He let her into the den, crouching to rub her ears. “It’s okay. He’s gone.”

  Her tail wagged, if limply, and he stroked her neck
.

  “Everything’s cool… Don’t worry about that mean man. Sex makes us humans fucking rabid. Or love does. Or something.”

  She didn’t seem to understand it any better than Bern did.

  “Lemme put some ice on my mouth and we’ll watch the Pirates game. How about that?”

  Molly seemed to concur, following cheerfully when Bern walked to the freezer. He found an ice pack in the door and wrapped it in a handkerchief, holding it to his throbbing jaw as he sat back down and switched on the TV.

  He pulled his phone out, checking the screen one last time and finding it blank. No surprise. He ought to just delete Sam’s number now – no way in hell he’d be hearing from her again. He tossed the device aside and shut his eyes, welcoming the cold solace of the ice pack to numb the pain.

  Breakups always stung, whether they came out of the blue, or hurt to deliver, or crept in like a slow rot. But Bern had never had one quite like this. This one tasted like blood, and the black-and-blue souvenir he had coming would last a week, easy.

  But fuck the injury. Bern knew this particular breakup would keep on hurting long after the bruise faded.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  S

  am was jogging for the front door the moment she heard Mike’s key in the lock. The hour since he’d left for Bern’s had been the longest of her life.

  “And?” she asked, watching him push off his shoes.

  He didn’t answer. And that made her wonder what on earth Bern’s answer may have been, regarding what there was between him and Sam.

  “Mike?”

  He passed her, heading down the hall. She followed him into the kitchen, confused when he opened the freezer. More confused still when he pulled out a bag of corn and walked to the couch.

  “Mike, say something.”

  He took a seat, and Sam wedged herself between his knees to face him, sitting on the coffee table. “Talk to me. Please. What happened?” She watched him drape the bag over his right hand. “Oh God.”

  “I fucked up. A little.”

  “You hit him?”

  “Just once.”

  “And I suppose he was asking for it?”

  “In that exact moment, yes.”

  “But in general?”

  He considered it, frowning. “Hard to say. Probably not.”

  “Oh, Mike… I knew I should have gone.”

  “It had to be me. Anyway, it’s done now.”

  The bag’s frost was melting, dripping onto Mike’s jeans.

  “Hang on.” Sam got up to grab a dish towel and wrapped the corn in it for him. “Where did you hit him?”

  “Jaw.”

  “Tell me you didn’t break it.”

  “Guy never seemed to shut up, so I’d say no.”

  She shook her head. “He didn’t say anything nasty, did he?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “He didn’t call me a slut, or threaten to tell everyone what we’ve been doing?”

  “No.”

  “Then he didn’t deserve that. You’d never punch me in the face, and I’m more responsible for what happened last night than he was.”

  Mike sighed, eyes shutting for a moment. “Until your wife develops feelings for another man, I won’t ask you to understand.”

  “I guess this answers all those questions I had, about how far into reality your kink could actually cross before the threat stopped being sexy and just started being threatening.”

  “My kink is about sex. Sex isn’t sacred to me, apparently. But feelings are.”

  “He can touch my body but not my heart. Is that it?”

  Mike nodded once.

  Sam heaved a sad breath. “Wish I could separate the two as tidily as you can.”

  He met her eyes at that. “He basically told me the same.”

  “And is it really so hard to understand?”

  He looked to the floor, thinking about it for a minute or more before glancing up. “For me? Maybe it is. I can’t imagine looking at another woman and feeling anything more than the smallest flicker of curiosity.”

  She touched his knee. “You’re different, though, Mike. You’re so hardwired for loyalty – it’s right at the heart of your sexuality.”

  He frowned, like he’d never thought about it like that.

  “You’re almost pathologically a one-woman man,” she went on. “I’ve always found that attractive about you. But most people aren’t like that, I don’t think. Loving one person doesn’t stop us from finding others attractive, or even having crushes – harmless ones, usually. Ones we have no interest in acting on. But me and Bern… We acted first, and then the feelings followed. We fucked up, believe me, but we never meant to. He’s never asked me if I’d leave you to be with him. Not even close.”

  A pause. “You swear that’s true?”

  “Absolutely. Never once has he made me feel like he wanted that – to replace you. Why? Did he say something to you?”

  “He did.”

  Her heart stopped. “What, exactly?”

  “That if things were different, he’d want to date you.”

  She frowned. “And was that all of it? That he’d date me if you weren’t in the picture somehow?”

  “You don’t find that inappropriate?”

  She shook her head. “No. Not at all. My feelings would be a little hurt if he didn’t think that, frankly. Maybe I never spelled it out, before we started all this, but I want for the man we mess around with to like and respect me. I mean, don’t you?”

  Mike set the corn aside and scrubbed at his face. Through his fingers he said, “I don’t even fucking know anymore.”

  She rubbed his thigh for a moment, then stood and grabbed her purse from the easy chair.

  He looked up. “Where are you off to?”

  She shrugged. “I dunno. I need to be doing stuff. I’ll pick up some groceries or something. I’m not going to see him,” she added, meeting his eyes over her shoulder.

  “I didn’t think you were.”

  “I’ll be back. Hour or less.” She couldn’t quite make out what she was feeling, and staying so close to Mike’s jumble of emotions wasn’t helping. They both needed space, and a little time to process.

  “Okay,” he said softly. “Drive safe.”

  Sam shut the door quietly behind her and headed for her car. She didn’t start it, just sat there holding the wheel and feeling her wedding band rubbing against its seam. She’d gone three years barely aware of that ring, it had become such a part of her body. As invisible as her knuckle or fingernail. Then last year, it had become something so much more loaded when she began removing it for their games. And a couple of months before, when she’d first seen Bern Davies’s gaze catch on it. And last night, when she’d felt it click against his empty wineglass after she told him to leave. She almost wanted a new one now. This one had seen too much. Seen the rise and now the fall of their sex life 2.0 – a glorious, thrilling ascent; a stumble, a fall, a punch.

  Could be way worse. This could have wrecked her and Mike, and it didn’t feel as though it would. Her regrets wouldn’t fade quickly, but she wouldn’t have the blood of their ruined marriage on her hands.

  Still, this wasn’t how it was supposed to end – their experiment with Mike’s sexuality. They’d turned that contentious, thorny kink of his from something that upset him into something that took sex to a completely new reality. They’d let the beast free, and it hadn’t ripped them to shreds. Instead Sam had poisoned the poor creature, and she didn’t know if that thing that had fueled Mike’s body like nothing else would ever recover.

  He wanted me to cheat on him. In a way. With her body, in their games – in their imaginations. Then with her body, for real.

  She’d always known the experiment would end, just not the way it had. In all her planning, she’d never thought to worry about this. Call yourself an actuary, do you? Hell of a job she’d done gaming the dangers, spending all her time getting spun up about privacy and discretion, abo
ut blood tests and leaked sex tapes.

  Then again, her red flags always waved from amid the fields of cold, hard figures. She’d been out of her depth, up to her neck in a system whose dynamics she’d known nothing about, and with her marriage at stake. No numbers to go by, only gut feelings. Intuition. Good intentions.

  And when have intentions ever guaranteed a given outcome?

  Human error was always on her radar… yet falling in love had never entered the equation. If that’s what this had been.