“You want me to stop being nice to everyone? That’s an interesting request. Can I ask why?”
Blinking back the tears, I cleared my throat and let my gaze attach to the crowd at the skating rink beyond his left shoulder. “It’s not fair to be all the things … and then … just …” My quivering lips pressed together.
“What is all the things?”
I didn’t move. I couldn’t. Not an inch. Not a breath.
It wasn’t just my heart—my entire existence seemed to be on the verge of crumbling.
“Elsie, look at me.” His finger lifted my chin.
My eyes closed—but not before a few tears broke free, sliding down my painted face. He didn’t want to carry my baggage.
I didn’t want to have baggage, and I didn’t think I did.
Until … Kael said those words. I had so much baggage, and it was tangled around my heart, constricting my chest, making it so hard to breathe.
“Say nothing or say everything.” He fed my words back to me.
I blinked open my eyes. Again, like the day at his house, he wiped away my tears.
“Nothing,” I whispered.
His brow wrinkled. “Why nothing?”
“Because I’m not ready to say goodbye. And everything would be too … final.”
“Why?” He kept prodding.
“Because I let you touch me too deeply. And it’s made me feel … which is what I wanted. It’s what I needed. I wanted to feel alive not …”
“Not what?”
“Nothing.”
“Say it.”
My head inched side to side. “Nothing. I choose to say nothing.”
Kael took a few steps backward. “Now what?”
I shrugged. “We go back to your place and have sex. I go home. You sleep three hours, wake up, and do good things for people. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.”
His expression seemed to harden for a few seconds as he drew in a deep breath, held it, and blew it out his nose in a harsh sigh. “Why go to my place? You have a back room to your store. Don’t you have a backdoor entrance as well?”
He sounded different. Colder.
I didn’t like it.
I also didn’t want to say everything. I chose nothing. I made my bed—the bed where I wanted him to fuck me. And that was what he was offering me.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
Just our no-strings-attached status quo.
I returned a barely detectable nod and reached into my handbag for the keys to my store. Kael followed my lead, keeping a short distance between us. No one was in the parking lot, so we easily slipped into the small, dark, storage room to Smith’s. As soon as the door closed behind us, I reached for the light switch.
Kael grabbed my wrist to stop me. I couldn’t see anything. There wasn’t a window or even a sliver of light from under the door. When I started to turn toward him, he grabbed my waist from behind, shoving me forward until my hands landed on a pile of boxes against the wall. With his chest to my back and my hands splayed onto the boxes, he ripped my scarf off, sucking and biting at my neck while his hands roughly unbuttoned my jeans.
The second he unzipped them, he curled his fingers around the waist and yanked them down my legs, taking my panties with them. The cold air arrested my skin, but the ripple of goose bumps didn’t last long. They didn’t stand a chance against his lips and hot tongue mapping a trail up my legs.
I couldn’t see one damn thing, but I felt him … his mouth and his fingers between my legs. My hands slid forward, gripping the edge of the box, my fingernails scratching the cardboard.
I didn’t think sex with Kael could feel more carnal than it did on Thanksgiving in the back of my Tahoe. I was wrong.
He wasn’t looking into my eyes. I wasn’t facing him. There was nothing personal or intimate about what we were doing. It was nothing but fucking.
No kissing.
No flirty glances.
No clinging to each other.
The moment felt as dark as the room.
But I couldn’t stop.
Like every time before that night, Kael knew what I wanted even if it wasn’t what I needed.
He willingly became my addiction—the needle, the narcotic.
He fed it.
He jumped off every cliff with me.
He was my highest high … and my lowest low.
No condom.
No questions.
No objections.
I sucked in a sharp breath when he entered me—one hand clenching my hip, one hand gripping my shoulder as he pounded into me.
Why?
Why didn’t it feel more wrong?
Why didn’t I feel used?
Everything in that moment was a metaphor for my life. Eyes wide open but blinded by the dark. Seduced by anything that felt like the opposite of the twenty-two years with Craig. Reveling in taking risks and equally as intoxicated by the idea of eschewing the moral code ingrained into my conscience.
It wasn’t a midlife crisis—it was a catastrophe on every level of my being. What initially felt like a quest for independence—a rebirth of my individuality—turned into the demise of my heart, the tarnishing of my soul. I didn’t lose myself from being married to Craig for twenty-two years; I lost myself when he died because he took such a huge piece of me with him.