by Emily Snow
Drawing in a harsh breath through my nose, I turn off my car. For a long time, I stay within the safety of my vehicle, clutching my keys in my palm. I already know my ex has gone to my mother with something that will ruin my night—and I have a feeling I know exactly what that is. Closing my eyes, I take deep breaths but even those eventually fall apart. When I’m left with the choppy gasps that remind me of the way I sounded the night I found out about Tom’s affair, I press my lips into a firm line and stumble out of the car.
Whatever he’s told my mom—it’s better to face it now than to let it get worse. When I find that the front door is already unlocked, I trudge inside. They’re both in the living room, sitting on opposite ends of the couch and drinking coffee. Even though she’s never been particularly fond of Tom, and her tolerance for him went right into the shitter when she found out he carried on an affair with Shane the entire time we were married, she's always been a gracious hostess. Her expression is drawn, miserable, but Tom looks like he’s just won the world’s biggest dick award. I suck in my cheeks, shove my hands into the shallow pockets of my black skirt because there’s nothing I want more than to reach out and knock that cup of coffee right down the front of his perfect suit.
I slam the front door behind me.
“I thought you said you were heading back to California hours ago. Why are you still here?” I demand, refusing to give him a cordial greeting. He got one of those from me earlier this afternoon, and he responded by trying to manipulate me into returning to San Francisco and putting down my role at EXtreme. “I’m tired, Tom. It’s been a long day and Mom and I have plans tonight. Can we just—”
“My flight got canceled,” he says, his light blue eyes focused intently on me as I pace across the living room to stand in the center of the floor. Heat creeps over the back of my neck because, suddenly, I feel like I’m on trial. On one hand, there’s my mom who’s glaring at me condemningly, and then there’s Tom. My ex will go low to get what he wants, and I wish my former friend Sarah had mentioned that all those years ago when she encouraged me to call him. “I figured I would visit Susie while I waited.”
“Boston and the airport is in the other direction,” I point out, taking a few steps back to ease down on the edge of the coffee table. Normally, Mom would throw a fit and remind me that couches and loveseats are for bottoms, not coffee tables, but she remains silent, angrily working her lips together. I can’t tell if she’s upset because he’s here or due to what he might have said, and I move my hands from my pockets. I splay them on my stomach but it doesn’t stop the pressure that makes it hard to breathe.
“Wouldn’t it have been easier for you to wait at the airport in case something else came available?” I ask Tom.
“You are my wife, Luce—”
I clear my throat. “Was your wife, and that was before you cheated on me with your business partner.”
“And Susie was my mother-in-law. I don’t see anything wrong with coming by. If you hadn’t been so hell bent on getting promotions and being the best at WLC, she would have been the grandmother to our children.”
This isn’t the first time he threw those words up in my face—when I confronted him about Shane, he said that maybe he wouldn’t have resumed the affair if I’d put aside my career to get pregnant—but it still burns. He hadn’t wanted kids, had never even mentioned the possibility, until he needed a reason to place blame on me. Before I can stop myself, I’m back on my feet, glaring down at him.
“Get the hell out of here.” My hand trembles as I lift my finger toward the front door. I prepare to repeat myself, but he scoots forward on the couch, placing his coffee mug on the table behind me. My spine goes taut when his forearm brushes over my calf.
“I’m leaving in a few, Luce. Like I said, I just wanted to stop by and catch up with your mom.”
“And now that you have you can—”
“I thought you said she knew all about your … new job,” Tom continues, his blue eyes narrowing. “You never were the type to lie, but I guess that comes along with distributing porn.”
Even though I suspected he might say something about my role at EXtreme when I pulled up to find his car outside, nothing could have prepared me for my mother’s sharp gasp when he says those words. While the shock of my new job wore off for me after a couple of weeks, it’s a reality I knew Mom wouldn’t accept—even if I’m not actually involved in the lifestyle EXtreme derives most of its business from. I squeeze my eyes closed for a second, taking a deep breath before I focus my attention on her.
“It’s not what you think,” I say softly.
But her brown eyes crinkle at the corners and her short hair bounces around her face as she moves her head to either side. “Why didn't you tell me what you were doing?” She sounds hurt, and I feel a violent pain jabbing the center of my chest. Oh god, why the hell would Tom do this to me? Why couldn’t he just accept no and let me move on?
And the answer is as clear as day: Because Tom Duncan likes to get his way. He got his way with me, and with Shane, and even with a company that should have failed months ago.
“What’s happened to you, Lucy?” he speaks up, and I see red. I see red because not only did he make it difficult for me to secure any other job aside from EXtreme, he’s gone out of his way to belittle me for the choices I made to fix my situation.
Filtering in a harsh breath, I whirl on him. “Me telling you to go away hurt your ego so much that you had to run here to tell my mother?”
He widens his eyes in surprise, but that look doesn’t fool me for a second. Tom knows how conservative my mother is—on the weekend of our wedding four years ago, she had been adamant that he stay in a nearby hotel. I hadn't had the heart to tell her that I hadn't been a virgin since my freshman year of college, so I had forced Tom to comply with her wishes.
When he came here today, he knew exactly what he was doing. He knew how disapproving she would be of my work with Jace, and once again he has screwed me over out of spite.
“Mom,” I whisper, taking a step toward where she’s huddled in one corner of the couch. “I’m sorry.”
She moves her head, then releases a sharp curse in Vietnamese. “I don’t want to hear you say sorry,” she says, the disappointment dripping from her voice. “I want to know why you lied. You can tell me anything, Lucy, you know that.”
Letting out a breath that rips apart my lungs, I drop my eyes to the floor and shake my head. “I didn't tell you because I didn't want you to worry about me. I didn't want you to say that you were disappointed in me. I didn't tell you because—”
Tom’s melodic voice cutting me off snaps my head back up. “She didn't tell you because she’s sleeping with her boss.” He must not have already revealed that to her, because Mom’s head snaps in my direction, and she looks at me like this is the first time she’s ever laid eyes on me.
“I see.” Mom’s hands are shaking as she stands and runs them over the front of her slacks, and the stare she shoots my way makes me wilt even more inside. I’ve spent most of my life being an overachiever, desperate to please my mother and father and, later, Tom. The fact that I’ve managed to shatter Mom’s faith in me in a matter of minutes nearly brings me to my knees.
“I’m so sorry,” I say again, folding my arms tightly over my stomach.
Mom moves from the couch, her shoulders bowed as she heads into the hallway. She doesn’t even look at me when she mutters, “You should have told me the truth, Lucy. I would have gotten over it. And Tom?”
“Yes, Susie?”
“Please leave my home, I think you've done enough damage.”
Then she disappears toward her bedroom without so much as another word, leaving me alone with the man who’s become my biggest regret.
TWENTY-THREE
LUCY
Although my mother’s wish for Tom to fuck off is apparent, he doesn’t make any effort to leave. He just stays there, on the couch. We stare each other down for a long time. Finally, he of
fers me a self-indulgent grin, and my face catches fire. “All you had to do was come back to California, and you wouldn't be in this situation,” he says calmly. Standing, he presses his lips together and jerks at the hem of his suit jacket. It's immaculate, like always, and I hate him for the façade. I wish Jace had ruined it when he had the chance earlier today.
And I’m so ashamed of myself for admitting that.
I rush over to him until the toes of my pumps bump against his perfectly polished shoes. “Come back to California?” I demand in a hushed voice. “For what? To work for you? To have your relationship with Shane thrown up in my face every time I stepped into that office with the douchebags you hired? And do you know what they said about me behind my back? Do you know how it made me feel that everyone in that office knew what you were doing but me?”
“How it made you feel?” He cups my face, but none of the warmth that radiates from Jace’s touch is there. Instead, everything is cold, from his eyes to his body language. When I recoil, it doesn’t even seem to bother him. “The Lucy I married cared more about getting things done than feelings.”
Is he kidding me? Does he honestly believe that I was so driven that love and happiness hadn’t mattered to me? Apparently, he does, and it’s tragic that, had I not found out about his affair, I might have spent the rest of my life with a man who thought I valued my career and achievements over the welfare of my heart.
“You’re wrong,” I say shakily. “The Lucy you married thought she was in love. She thought she was in love and then she found out he loved someone else. I don’t know any woman who would be able to get shit done with that kind of clusterfuck happening all around her.”
Bending his head close to mine, he sneers. “You could have at least fulfilled your obligations.”
“No, I couldn’t. And I’m not going to—not when it comes to you. So if you think you're accomplishing something by coming to my job, insulting the people that I work with, and then popping up at to my house to tattle on me to my mother, you're not. All you're doing is making me see how stupid I was for not realizing exactly who you were sooner.” I’m trembling from my head to my feet by the time I finish speaking.
“You belong in San Francisco. I need you to make the company work. We had a deal.”
I clench my hands into fists to ground myself. “I’m not coming back to San Francisco,” I say as slowly as possible. “I'm not helping your company. And if you want to sue me, go right ahead. It’s going to take more money than you can afford and at the end of the day, I'll still have my job here while you make shitty coffee from your apartment.”
His light blue eyes are tight at the edges as he stiffly walks to the front door. He looks over his shoulder, so I meet his glare with my own. “You really are a bitch, Lucy. And a lousy lay which is why I fucked around all those years. If you think a man like your boss is going to stick with you, you have another thing coming.”
A vicious slap of pain rockets through me, but I pretend it doesn’t hurt. I grit my teeth and I bear it. “You're right,” I whisper. “You shouldn’t have married me. Let's just chalk it up to bad life decisions and move on.”
He flashes me an angry smile. The sound of the front door rattling behind him startles my heart, and I stare blankly ahead for a long time before I sag onto the couch. I hold my arms around myself, replaying every detail of our conversation until the sharp pain in my chest overwhelms me. Then, drying my cheeks with the heels of my palms, I take off to my mother’s bedroom to explain myself.
“You know, Williams, I really didn’t expect you to come,” Jace drawls when he opens his front door several hours later. He’s shirtless, with nothing on but a pair of boxer briefs. Before he can get out another question, I press my body up against his and shove him back into the foyer. I kick the door closed behind me, and a dark gleam leaps into his slate blue eyes. “That’s my sweet girl. You want it rough tonight?”
“I want it any way you give it to me.” Because I’m desperate to take my mind off the thoughts that made it too difficult for me to fall asleep when I climbed into bed. I hadn’t warned him I was coming. I had simply gotten in my car and drove, blasting the same rock station he listened to whenever we were together. I hadn’t even bothered to change out of my night shorts and oversized tee shirt. “Don’t talk, Jace. Just … fuck me.”
He takes my face in his hands, fanning his thumbs over the outline of my cheekbones. “What happened, Lucy?”
“Nothing,” I whisper.
“Lucy, I think we should—”
“Please don’t talk.” My voice sounds desperate, and I’m sure my eyes mirror the emotion. When he draws away from me, he’s out of breath, but then he gives me an angry nod. Doing away with his boxers and kicking them into a corner, he hoists me up, positioning my legs on either side of his bronze body. The air floats from my lungs as he pins me against the wall by his front door, and I swallow a gasp.
He doesn’t apologize. Doesn’t say a thing. Instead, he shoves the center of my skimpy shorts to the side, rubs the head of his cock over my slick flesh, and drives into me with a force that rips the breath out of my body all over again. When I start to talk, to apologize, he cuts me off with a bruising kiss that makes my sex tighten and pulse around his cock. He sucks in a harsh exhale and grips the outsides of my thighs, picking up speed.
“No, you don’t fucking speak, Williams.”
So, I don’t. The only sound that falls from my lips are whimpers of pain intermingled with the sweet buzz of pleasure. I hold on to him, my fingernails raking over the tattoos on his chest and my head banging against the blue-gray wall behind me, as he takes me like this is the last time we’ll ever do this. After I come, he pulls out of me without a word, and I sink to my knees in front of him. My climax is still zinging through me, shaking me to my core, but I want more of him.
I need it.
The moan that breaks his silence when I wrap my fingers tightly around his shaft and stare up at him from beneath my lashes is the best thing I’ve heard all night. And when my mouth is full of him a moment later, and he gathers a fistful of my hair, I peak again at the tremulous way he whispers my name.
“Stay the night,” he orders long after we’re done and I’m sitting across from him on the foyer floor.
I take a moment to catch my breath, then I shake my head. “I can’t, I—”
“Then at least tell me what the fuck is wrong. You show up here telling me to shut up, let me fuck you raw, suck me off until I can’t stand up straight, and now you can’t even stay?” His blue eyes are hard as they take me in, and my breath catches when he moves across the narrow space to sit right beside me. He smells like a mixture of his cologne, my amber-scented perfume, and sex, and my mouth goes dry in anticipation of more.
“I had a rough night,” I admit.
He groans, dragging one large hand through his hair and over his face where he rests it over his mouth. “You shouldn’t tell me that. I’ve been known to be a bit of a tosser, and I might make your work environment a living hell just to get a repeat of that.” When I don’t crack a smile, his expression sobers, and he squeezes the inside of my thigh. “What happened, Williams?”
I consider evading his question, but then I release a harsh, painful breath, and I let everything out. It’s like the afternoon I revealed the truth about Tom’s relationship with Shane, but tonight, I detail my ex-husband’s visit and what had happened with my mother. I tell him how Mom had left shortly after I tried to speak to her, and how she hadn’t said a word to me when she returned home a couple of hours later.
I tell him that it hurts.
I don’t realize I’m pressing my palm to my chest until he pulls my hand into his and kisses the inside of my wrist. In one swift motion, he pulls me on top of him, and I drop my forehead to his, blanketing our faces with my black hair. “Are you embarrassed of what you do?” he asks after a beat passes. “Of working with me?”
Without hesitating, I shake my head. “I’m
embarrassed that I was too chicken to tell my mother, that I let Tom get me into this mess, but I’m not embarrassed of working with you. You gave me a chance when nobody else would, I appreciate that. And there’s nothing—nothing—I would do to jeopardize that.”
Though I won’t say the words aloud, he must know what I’m saying. That I won’t let my feelings for him, my desire for him, ruin the work I do for EXtreme. I can’t because I’ve assured him all along that I can handle the intimacy.
“I understand, but I think you need to fix things with your mother.” He sifts his fingers through my hair, brushing the ends of my locks between his thumb and forefinger. He does this for a long time before he finally clears his throat. “When we were broke, and the chemo was killing my mum because she couldn’t take what it was doing to her body, I was angry with her for a long time because I didn’t understand why she wouldn’t ask for help. She died knowing I felt like that.” It’s the first time he’s directly mentioned his mother, and I swallow hard at the sharp pang that twists my chest.
“I’m sorry, Jace,” I whisper, but he shrugs it off.
“I don’t have many regrets but that’s one of them. I spent the year after she died homeless, bouncing around and living with neighbors and friends. Gwen’s dad, my uncle, finally found out what was going on and brought me to America. He took me in and gave me some sense of normal. It wasn’t the same, though. Didn’t feel like family. You know, it’s why…” He leans back from me, and I bite down on the inside of my cheek at the ghost of a smile lingering on his full lips. “It’s why there’s that pesky two-year difference between you and I.”
“I haven’t brought that up since our interview,” I say over the lump that’s taken residence in the back of my throat. I still feel pathetic for pointing out that, while I had graduated at seventeen thanks to skipping a grade in elementary school, he was nineteen when he graduated. Supposedly, he missed so much school his seventh year in England that he had no other choice but repeat the grade when he moved to the states.