Married...Again

by Stephanie Doyle

  Right? All those things were the very least she could do.

  That’s what she was telling herself.

  Finally, after what felt like hours, she was able to drift off into sleep.

  * * *

  SHE WAS WARM. So blissfully warm. In her dream she was on a beach and the sun was blazing down on her, and it felt so good. As if she’d been cold for ages and only now remembered what it felt like to lift her face to the sun.

  “I warned you.”

  In her dream she turned her head to see Max in the lounge chair next to her. Which was strange because they had never taken a beach vacation. The only time they had for vacations was usually spent in the cabin.

  They should have done that. They should have gone to a beach and drunk fancy drinks with umbrellas and lain out in the sun. Why didn’t they do that?”

  “Nor, I mean it.”

  Eleanor blinked her eyes open. She meant it, too, she thought. Beach, drinks, the sun and Max. Except when she opened her eyes they weren’t on the beach together. They were in bed together.

  Her leg was thrown over his thigh. Her body was pressed up against his side. Her arm was lying across his stomach. She lifted her face, and she could see he was staring at her. His dark emerald-green eyes. Always her favorite color.

  “This is your fault.”

  “My fault?” she asked, still in the haze of warmth and sleepiness.

  Then he was bending toward her, and, in a heartbeat, his lips were there. Max Harper knew how to kiss. It might have been the first step of her falling in love with him the first time. When he kissed her, it was like his entire being was focused only on her. As if she was this rare creature, instead of just any other woman he might want to kiss.

  He slid down in the bed so that they were eye to eye. His hands came up to frame her face, tilting her head at will for whatever provided him the best angle. Right, then left, until finally she opened her mouth and he was plunging his tongue inside. Deep slow thrusts of his tongue that reminded her of what it felt like to belong to Max Harper in that way.

  Because that’s what it had felt like. As if all of her life she had been waiting for him so that everything could make sense. It’s why his absences always hurt so profoundly. Because, without him, she was lost in a haze of confusion.

  It’s why she had to leave.

  Leave.

  Left.

  Immediately, Eleanor pulled out of his embrace, her hands pushing hard against his chest. Forcing herself to roll away from him until she was on her feet on her side of the bed.

  Max, too, rolled out of bed. On the other side, as if showing her he was deliberately backing away, the mattress an expanse between them. Except, of course, he had been the one to kiss her in the first place.

  “You shouldn’t have done that,” she accused him. Even as she tried to control both her breathing and the throbbing between her legs.

  Max was not unaffected. She could see his erection tenting the material of his sweatpants. Which obviously didn’t help the throbbing between her legs because all she wanted to do was touch him. Slide her hand inside his pants and touch him in a way she knew would have him throwing his head back and groaning.

  She was nearly trembling with the urge to do just that. Because it was exactly what she would have done before.

  Which was why she couldn’t do it now.

  “I’m not sorry,” he said stubbornly. And why should he be? After all, he had warned her. But she couldn’t be held accountable for something she did in her sleep.

  “I need to...” She didn’t know what she needed other than to leave the immediate vicinity.

  She didn’t want to see his red and swollen lips that were no doubt a match for her own. She didn’t want to see his heavy cock, hard and pulsing for her. She didn’t want to think about how it had felt to have him inside her body and what that might feel like again.

  She couldn’t. If the kiss had shown her anything, it was that she was too vulnerable to him.

  Eleanor made her way around the bed and out of the room. There was only one bathroom, and, for now, she was claiming it. She went through her normal morning routine, then turned on the water in the shower.

  Cold water might have made more sense to calm her down, but she wasn’t a masochist. Instead, she let it heat up until it was almost painful, then she stepped inside and let the water relax her.

  Relax her until the bathroom door popped open.

  “Max!” she said, immediately turning around so that her back was to him. Not that it still didn’t put her ass on full display in the clear glass shower door.

  “Nor, I’m sorry. But I have to piss, and then I need to brush my teeth.”

  “You can wait!” she screeched.

  “Please,” he said even as she heard the seat of the toilet go up. “This is you taking a shower. We’re talking no less than fifteen minutes.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “We lived together for three years. What’s the big deal?”

  She heard the toilet flushing, heard the seat go down, because she’d worked hard to train him in those three years. Then she heard the water running in the sink.

  “The big deal is we’re not married anymore.”

  “Uh, hate to break it to you, babe. But yeah, we are.” This was said around a toothbrush and a mouthful of toothpaste.

  “You’re doing this deliberately,” she said, getting angry. He was trying to make it seem like nothing had changed. Like he could walk back into her life, into her bed, into her bathroom. Re-creating all the intimacies they had shared before. And somehow, all those shared experiences would re-marry them.

  The water in the sink shut off.

  “Maybe I am,” he admitted. “I told you I was going to fight like hell. I never said anything about fighting fair. This used to be our life, Nor. You can’t fault me for wanting it back.”

  “This used to be your life. Mine looked a lot different. Like, for months out of any given year, I didn’t have to share a bathroom. It was mine alone because you weren’t there.”

  “Okay. Okay, I deserved that. I need to...figure this out. I want to do better.”

  “You can start by getting the freak out of my bathroom.”

  “Okay. I’m going.”

  She didn’t turn around, but she heard the definitive sound of the door closing. No longer able to enjoy the torrent of hot water, she set about bathing and washing her hair as quickly as possible.

  Then she wrapped herself up in towels and sat on the edge of the tub thinking how she didn’t want to leave the room. Because he was out there. With his lips and his erection and his easy way of being with her.

  Because he was fighting and he wasn’t doing it fairly. He’d given her notice.

  The only sensible thing was to pack up and leave. But, for whatever reason, Eleanor felt like that course of action smacked of cowardice. As if she couldn’t handle a kiss from Max without being overwhelmed. As if the idea that he would brush his teeth while she was in the shower was too much intimacy for her to bear.

  She ran a business. She employed over a hundred people. She was the person in charge of, not only her life, but also the livelihood of others. She was not about to be cowed by a man. Any man.

  Even Max Harper.

  He wanted to fight dirty? Let him, she thought. Because she was determined to take anything he dished out and still leave with her heart intact.

  Yes, she liked her broken shattered heart, the one she’d pieced back together bit by bit so that, while fragile, it still held. She liked her heart exactly like that, and nothing he did was going to change that.

  Chapter Ten

  IT WAS HARD to know how badly he’d screwed up. She hadn’t left. Whether that was because she knew by taking her SUV that would leave him stranded, or because she wasn’t as pissed
off as she pretended to be he wasn’t sure.

  As an apology, he was making breakfast. Eggs and bacon with English muffins because that was what she’d brought. It used to be their Sunday tradition.

  Shit. Should he have waited until tomorrow to do this? Was that what she’d bought it for? Their last day at the cabin? Either way, he figured there was enough for two for two days, so he was going for it.

  She sat at the kitchen counter staring intently into her phone. Sometimes typing. Either texts or replies to emails, he wasn’t sure. It was the traditional freeze-out maneuver, which usually he could outwait, but he was short for time.

  “Hey,” he began to say, genuinely. “I’m sorry. I mean it. But I really didn’t think it was a big deal. Seriously. It never used to bother you.”

  That, at least, got a reaction. She set her phone down and looked at him. “Actually, it did.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying I never liked when you came into the bathroom while I was taking a shower. I’m slow to wake up, and I like that time in the morning when it’s just me and the hot water. You come in and you always want to talk. Even when you’re peeing, you’re still talking. It’s annoying. I never said anything because we only had the one bathroom in the apartment and in Norway, but there it is. The truth.”

  His jaw nearly dropped. Another thing he hadn’t known about his wife. “You’re serious?”

  “Yes.”

  He was flabbergasted. “How come you never said anything?”

  She shrugged. “It wasn’t that big of a deal. I assumed it was just one of those married things a person had to get used to about the other person.”

  Max used a fork to move around the bacon. “Is there anything else in the three years we were living together that you didn’t like?”

  Eleanor sighed. “Max, this isn’t about making up some list.”

  “Isn’t it? Because this is important, Eleanor. If we’re going to do this going forward, then we should have a clean slate. I want to be a better husband, not the same husband.”

  “Max! There can’t be any—I mean, I’m really struggling to figure out how you think we can have a future together.”

  That shocked him even more. “You weren’t asleep for more than ten minutes before you cuddled up against me. You slept all last night in the very position you’d slept in for three damn years. And when I kissed you, you kissed me like a day hadn’t gone by, let alone almost three years. I’m struggling to understand how you don’t see a future between us!”

  She had no response to that, so he refocused on the task in front of him. A few minutes later, he served her a plate of two eggs over, done well, four slices of bacon and a buttered English muffin with a side of grape jelly.

  She looked at the plate of food like she wanted to cry.

  “Damn it, Nor. I asked you to come with me to give this a shot. But you never had any intention of that, did you? This was about you humoring me. Wasn’t it?”

  Playing with the fork in her hand, she started to break apart her eggs. “I came because I thought I owed it to you. This was going to be hard for you. I knew that.”

  “So that’s it, then,” he said feeling this gaping pit in his stomach. “You don’t have any feelings for me at all anymore.”

  “Of course I have feelings for you, Max,” she snapped. “I’m never not going to have feelings for you. That’s just how it’s going to be. But you can’t come back into my life after being dead for more than two years and think we can just pick up where we left off. Because where we left off was you getting on a boat and me leaving Norway. And don’t pretend like that wasn’t significant. Because the storm didn’t happen on that trip. It happened on the one after that.”

  He leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms over his chest. It wasn’t as if he was hiding it. It just hurt to think about. On so many different levels.

  “I told you I had a plan,” he finally said.

  “So you said,” she said, then started nibbling on her bacon.

  “You don’t believe me. That I was absolutely going to come back for you.”

  Again, she shrugged. “I really don’t know what you were thinking back then, Max.”

  He’d been thinking that his wife shouldn’t have up and left him.

  “Okay, yes, I know it was stupid. I should have...come after you right away. But at first I was so damn angry. I didn’t think you would leave, and when you did...it felt like you gave up on us. I couldn’t handle that. Or I should say, I didn’t handle that well. They had extended the funding for another month. I was mad enough at you that I decided to do it. One more month and I would get over how pissed I was, and then I would come home and we would work it out. Somehow.”

  “That’s my point, Max. Even if you hadn’t taken another tour of research duty, I don’t know that there was any working it out. We wanted different things.”

  “I wanted you,” he said, looking at her, spearing her with his intent. “It didn’t take two weeks more at sea to figure that out. To realize I screwed up. I didn’t need almost dying to understand how important you were to me. That happened long before the storm hit. You can believe that.”

  She pushed the plate of food aside. “I asked you not to go, and you left. I believe that, too.”

  “I’m never going to do that again.”

  Shaking her head, she pulled away from the counter. “I’m going to go change. I brought some hiking boots with me. I want to take that path up and around the mountaintop.”

  She didn’t believe him. Didn’t believe, either, that he could change or he had changed. But it was still early. He hadn’t been lying when he reminded her of how she liked to sleep. And that kiss...if she hadn’t pushed him away, he had no doubt it would have led to him sliding inside her. Just like he had on any number of early mornings.

  It was like they were helpless against it. The constant pull of their two bodies needing to be connected.

  “Can I go with you?”

  Her chin wobbled, and he knew she was fighting an internal battle. He was counting on the Gaffney stubbornness to play into his hands. He’d asked for a few days. She’d promised that. That meant them spending time together, not apart.

  “Sure,” she finally said. “But you should eat first. You need to rebuild your strength.”

  He liked that. Liked that she cared enough to point that out. “How about you finish your eggs and I’ll make some for me, then we can explore the mountain together.”

  Another shrug as she returned to the counter and pulled her plate closer. “Seems like a shame to waste the bacon.”

  He kept his expression neutral, but he couldn’t stop himself from enjoying the fact that his wife loved his bacon.

  She always had.

  * * *

  ELEANOR STOPPED AT the top of the incline before it leveled out and took a deep breath. The pine was so crisp and fresh it nearly overwhelmed her senses. She’d forgotten how much these hikes did for her. The way they cleared out her mind of all the useless things she worried about. Mostly about her and Max. Instead, up here everything was so clear and easy.

  Max was puffing hard, the hike clearly a strain on both his stamina and his right leg, but he wasn’t quitting.

  He would never quit. It simply wasn’t in his nature.

  It’s why, after days on a lifeboat in the middle of a frozen ocean while others died around him, he hadn’t died. She’d never met anyone who had Max’s single-minded determination. She used to think if he’d wanted to, he could have been a Navy SEAL or a Special Ops operator. He had that kind of mental focus.

  He’d just turned all that on his scientific work.

  Max Harper had gone on a mission to save the planet, and what separated him from other scientists like him was he actually believed he was going to do it.

  It
felt like you gave up on us.

  It was stunning how hurt she’d been by those words. And if she were honest with herself, how guilty they made her feel.

  After she’d left him, she used to rationalize daily why she’d done the right thing.

  He’d put their marriage second.

  He loved his work more than he loved her.

  He’d been incredibly selfish.

  All really good reasons to leave a husband. A marriage.

  Except he would always go back to that same defense. He’d told her up-front what the first few years of their marriage would be like. He’d said there would be trips away. He said there would be long stretches for him at sea. He’d told her time and time again before they got married that the first five to six years would be tough for both of them.

  But she hadn’t been able to see it. She couldn’t have known what it would feel like to be so isolated from everything she’d ever known.

  So she’d quit.

  She’d issued an ultimatum, and when he didn’t do what she’d wanted, what she’d demanded...she gave up on them. It had always made her feel particularly weak, when she liked to consider herself a strong woman.

  “Oh, sweet mother of all that is good in this world, please say we can take a break.”

  He’d finally caught up with her on the ridge where the ground leveled out. There were a few large boulders scattered around the path, and he eased himself onto one.

  “We can go back.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. His left one.

  “Right. Sorry. No questioning your manliness. Sure, surviving in some remote village for two years with a broken femur might seem tough, but that’s child’s play to hiking the northern path around the cabin.”

  “Good to see you still remember that about me.”

  Eleanor rolled her eyes. “Funny, isn’t it, that your worst qualities stuck around the longest. I’m serious, Max. We should go back.”