I roll onto my back, keeping her connected to me, staying inside of her, our bellies kissing. Her legs fall limply on either side of my hips. She pushes up onto her elbows to study me, tears spilling unapologetically down her face. Her mouth trembles, works around sounds for a few seconds before she speaks.
“You made me feel,” she whispers. “Damn you.”
And then she collapses onto my chest and weeps.
11
Avery
“He left a note.”
The confession slips seamlessly into the intimacy our bodies, maybe even our hearts, made in this bed. In the darkness of this room only brightened by the skyline twinkling beyond the window.
“What?” Deck adjusts me in the crook of his shoulder, kissing my temple and pushing my hair aside to nuzzle into my neck, too. “What’d you say, Ave?”
He sounds sleepy. We just finished round two, and I must say I’ve never been fucked like that in my life. It was . . . possession and dominance and tenderness and ferocity taking turns, all sides of him sharing me. I love the way he arranges me exactly how he wants, pushes my legs back just so. Tips my ass up to the desired angle. Spreads me to his specifications. And then fucks me like a train.
The man fucks like a train.
And I’ve been railroaded; possibly ruined for everyone else. If I had known there were men out there, fucking like that, I’d have a lot more notches on my bedpost in my quest to find them.
“Ave?” he asks again, reminding me of what I want to tell him, as much as I would love to stay distracted thinking of what we just did . . . twice. For the first time, I want to tell someone other than my therapist the secret I’ve been wearing like an albatross around my neck for the last year.
“He, um . . . Will, my fiancé. He left a note.”
Deck shifts, carefully pulling his shoulder from under my head so he can lie on his side. So he can see my face while he waits for me to go on. I punish my lip trapped between my tee
th.
“It was in the bathroom with my ring.”
In the sliver of silence following my last words, I know he’s mentally assembling the pieces of this puzzle before he asks his next question.
“You weren’t wearing your ring?”
The question comes low and soft, a sympathetic query. Not a threat or an accusation or any of the things I’ve told myself I deserve.
“No, I had taken it off a few days before.” I try to swallow, but can’t past the scalding, swollen walls of my throat. “I . . . I . . . God, I . . .”
My breaths come in choppy heaves. I clutch the sheet to my naked breasts to keep my hands from shaking.
“Hey, hey.” Decker cups my jaw in one big hand, brushing his thumb over the tears trickling down my cheek. “Baby, it’s okay. Take your time.”
It’s been so long since a man called me “baby.” Since I shared any intimacy with another person. Long before Will and I ended, our sex life dried up. The casual affection of intimate touches, naked skin, bared souls and endearments had long departed.
“I broke our engagement off a few days before he killed himself.” The admission storms past my lips as if the words know this is their last chance; know that if they don’t escape now I won’t ever let them out.
Decker scoots down until his forehead lines up with mine, the height difference so great my feet stop at his knees under the cover.
“I’m so sorry.” He dusts kisses over my wet cheeks, spearing his long fingers into my hair. “I can’t even imagine. Tell me.”
I stare through the dim light, searching his face for judgment, but it’s not there; just a patient, waiting compassion. It gives me courage to go on.
“We had been over for a long time, I think.” I squeeze my eyes tightly closed. “He suffered from depression. His medication made it so much better, but he didn’t like to take it. Sometimes he wouldn’t take it, and he wouldn’t take care of himself. He’d lose friends. His work would go bad.”
I lick at the bitter smile festering on my lips.
“We would go bad.”