Thursday, December 31, 2009
I'D WAITED FOR SO long for something like that to happen. When you're sleeping with a wife who doesn't share your last name, you always think of how it will all play out. It was usually more dramatic in my head.
In my head, we’d duke it out and I kick his f*cking ass. Blake would run to me and I’d kiss her like at the end of an action movie.
It wasn't like that at all by comparison. If it hadn't been at my brother's wedding, I would have levelled him. At least that was what I told myself. My adrenaline still surged through my blood.
I paced on the other side of the street, the driver asking me where I needed to go. I told him, “Back in time.”
He said more than asked, “That bad?” A quick understanding and camaraderie linked us. I discerned that he'd been there before with only one nod of his head.
“I don't know if I should leave,” I said. Then, I saw her come out of the bar, she looked like a lost person. She saw me, and her arms dropped to her sides.
She didn't smile. If she would have smiled at me, I would have been one thousand percent sure she was taking steps toward me, but instead as she got closer, she felt farther away. I stepped to the door of the stretch-sedan and he followed my eyes and then my cue, like a natural wing man. I had the driver, who told me his name was Andy, leave. We didn't get to the next block before I told him to head back.
I had him stop us just short of the doors so I could watch if anyone were to leave. I needed to see them walk out together. I needed to nail this coffin shut, my new tattoo was becoming a memorial. A tribute to love lost. Time and time again.
Betty.
Mine.
His. Always his.
I didn't know her.
He didn't know her.
I waited. Andy turned on the radio.
We waited some more.
Grant came out, raised his arm and almost immediately flagged down a taxi. He never looked behind himself to see if she was coming. Not once.
He got in and he drove away. Alone.
My heart sprinted.
Then, after a little more time, I saw her come off the elevator through the large glass windows. She had her suitcases. She was leaving, too. She looked around.
Was she looking for me? Had she really done it?
Her steps were rushed across the marble floor and she skidded to a stop in front of the doors to get through the glass turnstiles.
“Pull up, Andy. Please?” I asked.
He put the car in drive and crept ahead a few dozen feet so that my window was centered with the hotel doors. I rolled it down and looked out from my seat, waiting for her to see me. I knew she would.
And when she did her face eased, but her lip quivered and her shoulders sagged. Like she’d been holding everything together until that exact moment.
I got out and went to her. Her hands dropped the bags and wrapped around me. She clung to me so tightly and she cried. She didn't say anything, she just sobbed into my chest. I ran my hand across her back and let her do it.
When she calmed some, I lifted her chin to see puffy eyes and tear-streaked cheeks.
“Come on,” I said. “Let's get in the car.” I lowered to pick up her bags and carried them in one hand. Wrapping the other around her shoulder, I tucked her into my side.
Andy got out of the car and popped the trunk, taking her things from me and stowing them in the back. I opened the door and let her get in first then followed. I looked back at Andy and asked, “Can you give us a minute?”
He nodded and walked inside the hotel. Then I closed the door with us hidden away inside.
We sat facing each other, neither she nor I knew what to say. So we did what came easy, that with which reconnected us on an elemental level.
Our mouths touched, and after not touching for far too long, it seemed like a dam was finally opened. Our bodies let everything both physical and verbal go.
My hands pulled her onto my lap. I was elated. I said, “I can't believe this.”
“I miss you so much,” she said back. Her hands unfastened my belt buckle and she leaned back to expose me, not wasting any time. She was almost frantic.
Between kisses, I apologized for everything. For never standing up for us, even to her. For hurting her. For letting her go.
She moved her panties aside, brought my fingers to her mouth and licked them, preparing them to touch her and make sure she was ready.
She ran her hand over the words written on my chest and kissed them like they were the top of a baby's head. Tenderly. Her eyes closed tighter with every peck.
My dampened fingers found her already slick and wet for me. She lifted up and then sat down on me. My hands found her ass under the dress, which she had hiked up around her waist.
The moment she took all of me, I felt complete. She was here. She was with me. She was mine.
“Casey,” she said as she began to ride me.
I tasted her neck and laved at her skin. Although I was already buried inside her, I felt my dick get harder still. Her scent made me harder. Her sounds made me harder. The sight of her rosy nose, as she arched her back and let her head fall away from me, soaking up the pleasure made me harder yet.
I felt the beginnings of her orgasm every time she came down on me, her muscles kneading me rhythmically. Her compressions growing fevered with intensity.
“F*ck me,” she moaned.
I held her in my arms and turned us, laying her down against the seat, but I didn't let go of her. My body operated on instinct, thrusting into her. Her hands wrapped around my upper arms and she met me swell for swell.
“You're mine, Blake.” I panted, everything felt urgent all at once. My words and my body claimed her.
“Yes, I'm coming. I'm coming,” she confessed.
That made two of us.
“Ahhh. F*ck. Ahhh. Fuuuuuck!” I screamed and we shouted together, but our bodies kept moving. Pulsing again and again at different times, grasping onto our orgasms.
I sat her back up and leaned her against my chest.
Finally, she said, “Being with you makes it harder to be without you.”
“You're not without me, honeybee. It's over. We made it.”
Her head lifted and her brown eyes searched mine.
“I have to go to the airport,” she said.
She had to go to the airport? The airport? To leave?
“No. You're not leaving this time,” I told her. “I'm not letting you.” That’s just the way it was.
“I have to. I want this. I have to finish this. I have to make us right.” She explained with the same thing she’d said before. Her manicured eyebrows arched and she looked at me for understanding, but she wasn't going to find it. As far as I was concerned, it had ended.
I clarified, maybe all of the events of the night had become too much to process, “We are right. He's gone. You're going to stay.”
“I can't just leave it like that!”
“Yes, you can,” I argued. She shuffled off me and pulled down her dress so that her legs were covered.
“I want you. Do you believe that?” she questioned.
“I think you believe that.” I zipped up my pants and did up my buckle. “You have got to be out of your beautiful f*cking mind if you think I'm letting you go back to him.”
“You know I have to go back. I have to deal with this.”
“Why the f*ck do you do this to yourself? Why do you do this to me? Don't you understand how bad this hurts? F*ck!” My temper was back, but this time it was on the defense.
“This hurts me, too!” she shouted. She was in fight mode, just like me. Always fighting on the same side of the argument, but at the same time against each other. “You hurt me, too!” She yelled again.
“Not like this. I don't hurt you like this. He knows about Betty!” That last part fell out with everything else, but it hurt all the same.
“Did you f*ck Aly?” she asked point blank.
“Yes, do you f*ck Grant? Your husband?” I fired back.
“Yes, and you know what? You're going to love this—I made him call me Betty. Just. So. I. Could. Come.”
“You’re a real piece of work. You know that, right?” I scolded. “I don’t even know why I fight with you anymore. I never win.”
I rolled down the window and whistled loud enough to get Andy’s attention. He was chatting with the valet near the door.
He walked out and I said, “We’re going to the airport.”
He tipped his hat and got in the driver’s seat.
There was no point in arguing. Everything had been said.
When we arrived at the departure terminal, I watched her hand touch, let go, and then touch the door handle again. I saw the hesitation, but there wasn’t anything that I had left to give.
Blake looked at me, there were no tears in her eyes and she smiled.
“Casey, I love you so much that it ruins me. It cripples me and wrecks my sanity. But, I do, I love you so much that it blinds me to right and wrong. But I’m not free. I can’t give you my heart until it’s mine. But you can bet your life on it, I will.”
I turned my head and looked away. Her words were both acid and salve on my shredded heart. I was so tired.
Time would tell.
She got out of the car, and Andy helped with her bags.
I thought that she’d already walked off, that was the only reason I stole a look in the direction of the doors. But she hadn’t, she was pulling something out of her bag. She knocked on the window, and I reached her direction, pressing the button of it to descend.
She tossed a piece of paper into the car and walked away.
Like a masochist, I watched her go.
When she was deep inside the doors and I couldn’t see her through the people walking around anymore, I pulled out my phone.
I read a message that she’d sent earlier.
Honeybee: Are you trying to hurt me?
I looked at the time. It was midnight on the dot. Another New Year, another new day.
Me: Our pain and our love are one and the same. I’ll wait for you. Probably, forever if that’s what it takes.
Delete.
Me: Happy 2010. Goodbye.
…The Bait
To you,
I’m sitting here this morning making wishes on waves.
I’m on my honeymoon, yet I can only think of you. Of us. I wish I could talk to you right now, but we both know I never say the things that I should. Or maybe I do, but just to the wrong people.
I’ve used the excuse that we met in a bar, and that we were only a one-night stand, but you know me. It turns out that I’m a liar. Because the truth is, we’ve met lots of places. And no matter how hard I fought not to, I fell in love with you every single time.
I made a mistake when I said my wedding vows, because my heart had already promised them all to you. And you deserve someone who isn’t afraid to tell the whole world how sacred a feeling it is being loved by you.
I wish that someday that someone is me. The whole me. All of the parts of me. Because you’re the only one who’s ever seen them and it’s a crime that I’ve made you feel like they weren’t yours all along.
You asked me once what parts of you I wanted. I’m selfish because I want them all. I want to find new parts of you and plant flags with my name on them.
If the saying “you hurt the ones you love the most” is true, then I wish I could love you less so that loving me wasn’t so hard.
We fight. And we fight hard. I’ve only just realized that we were on the same side. And I’m rooting for us.
I don’t know how I’m going to do it, and it might take me the rest of my life, but I’ll see to it that you and that bait of yours catch this fish.
But most of all, you precious man, I wish you knew that I’m here, wishing for you.
Your honeybee,
Your Blake,
Yours only, always.
Dear Reader,
We have a very important announcement to share with you.
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Love,
M. Mabie & N.A. Alcorn
To my readers, my love for you has no boundaries or borders—it goes everywhere.
To the Mo Stash, you girls are the most fun cheerleaders I’ve ever met. I LOVE YOU SO MUCH.
To the blogs that drop everything for me at the drop of a hat. Bare Naked Words, The Never-ending Book Basket, Back Off My Books, Mixed Emotions Book Blog, Two Unruly Girls with a Romance Book Buzz and so many others that I hate myself for leaving out.
To Wendy and Claire, there are no bigger hearts than yours. Anywhere.
To my beta and proofreaders, Aly, Megan, Elizabeth, Michelle, Wendy, Tara, Jordan, Sandie, Laura, Sandra and Alexis this book is better because of you. Thank you.
To Laurel, your sweet heart and kindness make me want to be a better girl. So, you’re stuck with me. When are you moving?
To Aly, you boss me around and I like it. You’re my backbone. You say no when I want you to say yes. You make me look at things from the best possible angles, twisted as they might be.
To Erin, I can only hope to be as cool you when I grow up. Maybe we’ll set off the airport metal detectors together one day.
To Natalie, I get emotional thinking about how much I love you. That’s not healthy. You’ve been cheering these two characters on for over a year now. Part of my heart belongs to you—it’s the weird part that no one else wants. Never leave me.
To my husband, you let me pass go AND collect $200 by taking the steering wheel of our home while I wrote this book. I love you so much. Forever and ever and probably the time life comes around, too. Kindred spirits we are. I’m chasing my dreams and I learned how from you. Fifty-fife cents, my love.
M. Mabie lives in Illinois with her husband. She loves reading and writing romance. She cares about politics but will not discuss them in public. She uses the same fork at every meal, watches Wayne’s World while cleaning, and lets her dog sleep on her head. M. Mabie has never been accused of being tight lipped or shy. In fact, if you listen very closely, you can probably hear her flapping her gums.
You’re encouraged to contact M. Mabie about her future works, as well as this one.