by Anna Paige
I could practically see the look on her face. It would be unforgettable. It was going to kill me not to say anything and ruin the surprise. Only one week, I just had to make it a week... I could do that. I’d just have to keep my mind occupied with other things... carnal things...
Snatching my bag off the bed and grabbing my keys, I bolted out the door.
I needed to see her, and the distance between here and there was feeling insufferably long.
WHEN I ARRIVED in D.C., I knew Talia would still be at the restaurant. Rather than bother her there, I set about gathering some things to make the evening special. I’d never been one for wine and roses but I knew that Talia liked those sorts of things and I’d paid enough attention these last couple of weeks to be able to gather her favorites with relative certainty.
She loved Italian wines, one label in particular that was only available in one or two shops in the city, so I procured a bottle and then made a stop at a florist that thankfully stayed open late.
One last errand and I was ready for the evening. I checked the time on my phone and was excited to realize it was around the time that she would be heading home.
I felt like a damn teenager, preparing for his first date.
Why was I so worked up to see a woman I’d already had the pleasure of fucking in every corner of her apartment and in every position imaginable? It made no sense to be nervous, but I was.
I parked in front of her building, took my packages from the car, and headed through the lobby with an absent nod to Stony, who grunted in response. I still had my key—at Talia’s insistence—so I planned to use it to make my grand entrance. Just my luck she’d be in the fucking shower again and would end up with brain damage after taking another header into the tub.
Okay, so maybe I should enter with no fanfare. Probably safer.
The elevator deposited me on the seventh floor and I was already grinning like a loon. I could actually smell her perfume before I even opened the door, and it made my dick twitch.
I balanced the wine, flowers, and small gift bag in one hand, and entered the quiet apartment with a minimum of noise, only the soft crinkling sound of the gift bag announced my arrival.
I was poised to call out my customary ‘Honey, I’m home’ when Talia’s voice sounded softly from down the hall. She was obviously on the phone, so I walked over to the kitchen to set down the flowers and wine. Her voice was clearer now that I was closer, and I stiffened at her words.
“Of course not. I didn’t tell Spencer anything. It’s none of his business. This is between you and me, always has been and always will be.” There was a pause and the sound of a drawer opening and closing. “No, he’s not here. We can talk freely.”
A feeling of dread started to crawl through my gut, working its way around and around until I felt like I would suffocate.
She laughed softly. “I love the pictures, too. I can’t stop looking at them. They really captured the action.”
Thoughts of her bent over the bar stool while I photographed her flooded my mind. This couldn’t be happening again. Not again, goddammit. I’d started to look for a corkscrew to open the wine and thought better of it, the more I heard of her conversation. Who the fuck was she talking to? Was it Derek? What kind of photos did they take? Or did she let him take some more intimate ones after everyone else was gone?
I plunked the wine bottle down on the counter, not caring that Talia’s conversation came to a sudden halt and called out, “Surprise, sweetheart. I’m back!”
I stepped over to the end of the hallway and crossed my arms over my chest, instantly rewarded with Talia’s gorgeous face peeking out of her bedroom. She looked startled but recovered quickly, giving me a warm smile in greeting and holding up a finger. “Hang on, Spencer, I’m putting away clothes.” She turned her attention back to the phone in her hand and disappeared back into her room as she spoke. “I’ll have to call you back. I have company.”
Did she use my name when she talked to me as a warning to whomever was on the line?
Her voice faded out and it sounded like she stepped into her closet, speaking so low I couldn’t hear the end of the conversation. Was she hiding so she could say her goodbyes without me hearing?
My fists were balled under my arms when she stepped out a minute later, beaming up at me. There was something in her eyes, though, that I didn’t like. Something she was hiding.
She strode straight up to me and raised up on her tiptoes to give me a scorching kiss. I responded with marginal reciprocation, but my mind was a million miles away. She pulled back and cupped my cheek with one hand. “I’m so glad to see you. I wasn’t sure when you’d be able to get back, and I definitely didn’t think it would be this soon.” She seemed pleased, almost.
I couldn’t keep the edge out of my voice as I asked, “Should I have called first? Double checked that you weren’t... busy?” That last word was something akin to a sneer. I was so angry, I was shaking. I snapped my fingers as if remembering a key detail. “Oh, that’s right, you were already on the phone.” I glared.
She furrowed her brow and stepped back out of my personal space. “Why do you seem so pissy? Bad day at the office? You still having trouble getting things in order after what happened?”
“I’m not interested in talking about what happened at work. Let’s talk about what’s happening right here, right now, shall we?”
Her expression said she was confused but there was a hesitation that told me she suspected that I knew something. “Um, okay. What exactly are we supposed to talk about?” She glanced over at the kitchen counter and her eyes softened. “Wine and flowers? Was this a special occasion and I forgot? If so, I’m sorry.” She smiled sweetly and headed around me to the kitchen, before rifling through the drawers and plucking out a corkscrew.
I stood at the end of the counter, by the entrance to the kitchen, and glared. “No, no occasion. I was just excited to see you, was looking forward to spending a few days—maybe even a couple of weeks—in the area because that meant I would be close to you.”
She beamed up at me and bounced on her toes. “Really? That’s so great, Spencer. I was worried I wouldn’t see you for weeks.” There was something forced in her reaction, just a bit off center.
“I bet.” I smirked, watching her open the wine with expert precision. “So, tell me again how it went with Derek and the photographer.”
She shrugged. “Fine. He was professional, the pictures turned out great. They probably left for the next assignment this morning.”
I huffed angrily. “And where was he last night? Here?”
She froze, nearly dropping the wine glasses she’d been pulling from the cupboard. “What?”
“Who were you talking to on the phone just now? Was it him?” I unfolded my arms, needing to move but not knowing what to do so I stood there flexing my jaw and rubbing a hand over my hair.
She took a moment to set the glasses down on the counter and turned to me, her every move slow and deliberate. “Come again?” Her voice was low and even, somewhere between hurt and angry. I knew that tone. Ivey had used the same one when I’d confronted her with her lies.
“Are you going to tell me you weren’t on the phone with another man just now? How could I not assume it was Derek?” It hit me like a blow to the gut. “Fuck, was all this with you and I just your way of making him jealous? Was it all a lie?” I felt like I might be sick.
I’d known for a while that I was in love with her. I’d been planning to tell her tonight. The bile rose in my throat as I watched her, her honey-brown eyes darting around the room as if looking for a way out. She hadn’t said anything to either confirm or deny it. Wouldn’t an innocent person be livid right now instead of looking for all the world like a motherfucking deer in the headlights?
“Answer me!” I roared, not caring when she shrunk back and dropped her gaze as if wounded.
I was the one who was fucking wounded.
I slammed my fist into the counter. “G
oddammit! Did you do this for him? Did you make me fall in love with you just so you could run back to a man who never deserved you? Was I a game for you, Natty?” I sneered his fucking nickname for her and watched as tears sprang to her eyes.
That took me down a notch, much as I tried not to let it.
Her tears were my fucking Kryptonite, and I had to force myself not to go to her when I saw two fat ones roll down her cheeks.
She hugged her arms around herself and shrieked, “Don’t call me that! Don’t you ever call me that! He called me that and I fucking hate it.”
“You let him call you that at the restaurant, Natty. Didn’t bother you then, did it?” I mocked, unable to help myself. What was the problem? Of everything else I’d said, she took objection to the nickname? What the fuck was wrong with her?
“Yes it did! And I didn’t mean Derek, you fucking asshole. I meant Amelia’s father. He’d heard me fussing at Derek on the phone for calling me that and he remembered it. The whole time he was raping me, he was calling me by that nickname and telling me to pretend he was Derek.” Her sobbing was cut off when her hand flew to her mouth and she sprinted down the hall to the bathroom. I could hear her retching even before I moved to follow.
Fuck, what had I done?
Spencer
NO MATTER HOW angry I was, I couldn’t just stand there in the doorway and watch helplessly as the woman I loved emptied the contents of her stomach into the toilet between bouts of sobbing. Doing the only thing I knew to do, I moved to take a seat on the floor beside her and held her hair back with one hand while rubbing her shuddering back with the other.
She didn’t push me away, which I half-expected, so I sat silently by her side, giving what little comfort I could, my mind still reeling.
Her body shook and shuddered so violently I briefly thought she was having a seizure. There was no way the human body would move like that without something drastic causing it. She seemed to be fighting for every breath she drew, forcing her to gasp and sputter between bouts of violent retching that made her body contort like she was being punched in the stomach.
And all I could do was sit there and rub her back.
Jesus fucking Christ.
I’d never seen anything like this, never been so destroyed at witnessing someone’s suffering, as I felt looking at her pain-pinched face. Never felt so helpless, so useless, so responsible in my fucking life.
I did this. No matter what she’d done with Derek, she didn’t deserve this. No one did.
Watching her suffer that way was killing me, gutting me, and there was nothing I could do to make it better.
When she’d stopped heaving for a minute or two, she dropped her head into her hands and cried. After a while she managed to mutter between sniffles, “I was talking to Cameron on the phone. He had a double-header today and couldn’t call in the afternoon like he usually does. He knew I was worried about his cold so he asked his mom if he could stay up late enough to call me after I got home from work. She emailed me some of his baseball pictures tonight while they were waiting for me to get home.” She took a wad of tissue off the roll and dabbed her tear-soaked face. “He wanted me to promise that I wouldn’t show his notes to Amelia to anyone. He remembered you being here the other week when he called and was worried that I’d tell you or let you read them.”
Tears welled in my eyes when I realized the magnitude of what I’d just done.
Jesus, I couldn’t breathe. Her words sucked the air from my lungs and I was suddenly grateful to be on the floor, given the wave of dizziness that washed over me.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Fuck.
I hung my head until my chin practically touched my chest and squeezed my burning eyes tight, not daring to look at her in that moment. There was nothing I could say, no way to take this back. No way to forget the look on her face or the hurt in her eyes.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Every bit of her suffering was my fault. I did that to her.
Talia took a deep, shuddering breath, still hiccupping softly from the force of her sobs. “I haven’t had an episode like this in years. Not since the first time I tried to sleep with someone after the assault,” she chuckled bitterly. “Needless to say, that didn’t end well. And I never tried again. Not until you.”
She quietly waited for that to sink in, for my guilt-addled mind to do the math, knowing I would have no choice but to look at her. And I did.
She nodded bitterly, still dabbing her cheeks with the wad of tissue. “That’s right. You were the first since what happened in college. Because I trusted you, because you made me feel safe enough to try again, to feel again.” She slammed the toilet lid down and pushed herself to her feet, shying away from me to the point that she was nearly pinned against the wall. She looked down at me with fresh tears in her eyes, pursing her mouth sadly. “After I put all that faith in you, all that trust, you turned around and treated me no better than Derek. Maybe worse. Hell, it was a combination of your accusations and that goddamned nickname that triggered my very first flashback in four years. It was like being in my fucking driveway with Derek all over again, then I was suddenly back in that frat house with some half-drunk, trust-fund brat grunting in my ear while I begged him to stop.”
Her eyes were dry and vacant now, no sign of the Talia I knew. She was retreating into herself, retreating from me.
The self-deprecating part of me wanted to just crawl out of there and leave her alone, figuring she’d be better off without me. But the part of me that adored this woman—the same part that had been screaming all along that she’d never cheat on me with anyone, let alone Derek—was daring me to do anything short of groveling at her feet until she forgave me for my stupidity and mistrust.
I was still in love with her, that hadn’t changed, but now I not only had to convince her of that, I had to convince myself that I even deserved her.
Sitting there on the floor feeling lower than shit, it seemed like a Herculean task.
“I can’t think of a single thing I could have said or done in the last few weeks to make you think you couldn’t trust me. Not one thing.” She was talking to me but looking somewhere in the distance, piecing together a puzzle in her mind that she could never solve. The pieces were broken and might never fit together right again.
I drew my knees up in front of me and draped my arms across them, looking at anything but her blank stare. “You didn’t do anything, Talia. It was my own bullshit drama that made me act that way, my weaknesses, and there’s no excuse for how I reacted, no excuse for raised voices and baseless accusations. You’ll never know just how fucking sorry I am.” My voice cracked with the force of the regret welling up in my throat. “Not just for accusing you, but for causing your setback, for bringing up things best left in the past, and for giving you even one reason to compare me to Derek. I’ll never forgive myself, never. I’ve waited for something like what we have, someone like you for so long... and as soon as I found it, I fucked it up.” The last was a croak barely forced out through clenched teeth as I fought not to break down.
After all this time, I’d found someone I truly loved, and I fucking ruined it. Me. No one else.
Talia stepped around me then turned back. “I’m not Ivey, Spencer, any more than you’re Derek.” She reached her hand out, offering it to me. “Get up and let’s finish this somewhere else. This shit is ruining all the fond memories I have with you in here.” She glanced over at the shower with a sad smile.
I took her hand and was pulled to my feet with a strength that surprised me.
She didn’t let go even after I was standing. She just stood there with my hand in hers and searched my face. After a moment, she stepped tentatively into my arms. “If I weren’t head-over-heels in love with you, you’d be out on your ass by now... You know that, right?”
The statement landed there between us like a bomb and it just kept exploding.
It wasn’t over...
She w
anted me to stay...
There was a chance I could fix this...
And she fucking loved me!
Blast after blast of heat surged through me until I wasn’t sure if she was hugging me or holding me up. I’d already been in the pits of despair, grieving for our lost chance... and she snatched me back from the gates of hell with one sentence.
Head over heels in love...
Yes, I was.
OUR SECOND ATTEMPT at conversation went much better. I apologized often and spoke little, the wine flowed and the tears had stopped. The vacant look was gone from her eyes and replaced with cautious optimism by the time we finished the bottle. She swore she’d forgiven me and even claimed to understand a little of why I’d reacted the way I did, but something was still off. Something in the way she looked at me.
Any other day, I’d demand to know what that look was about, but tonight was not the time for me to demand anything. Instead, I waited until we’d headed to bed and lay there in each other’s arms, quietly drifting before saying anything. “Sweetheart?” I asked into the darkness, feeling her curl tighter into my side.
“Hmm?” Her voice was sleepy.
“Is there anything else bothering you? Something that was on your mind even before I stuck my rather large foot into my equally oversized mouth?” Keeping my tone light was the best way I could think of to draw her out.
She ran her hand over my chest for a moment before patting the spot right over my heart and sighing. “Nothing that won’t keep for later.” Her voice took on a pleading tone that immediately grabbed my attention. “Right now, I just want to be held. Okay? I’m kind of worried about nightmares. They usually accompany the panic attacks and I’m hoping that having you here, holding me this way, will fight them off. So tonight let’s let go of everything else except each other.”
