by Megan Hart
When he shifts, he can feel the softness of the cotton riding up his ass crack. The panties are meant to fit Corinne, too small on him. She’s right about how they keep him constantly reminded of her.
“Never mind,” his father says. He shakes his head in disgust and waves a hand in Reese’s direction. Dismissing him. “Go out. Go waste your time and your money, come home with a sick belly. You already have the sick head.”
Reese had been backing out of the kitchen to avoid the tirade, but this stopped him, dead still. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
His father won’t look at him. He keeps his attention on the paper spread out on the table in front of him. The after-dinner cigarette smokes in the ashtray. Stinking. Reese’s father looks at what’s in front of him so he doesn’t have to see his only child.
“Dad.”
His father gives another of those dismissive waves, but Reese isn’t going to let him get away with it this time. He steps closer to the table, forcing himself into his father’s line of view until the old man looks up with a long sigh rooted so deep in his guts it seems to take forever to slip from his lips. Reese puts his hands on the table and leans forward, trying to catch his father’s eyes.
“What did you mean? Sick in the head?”
Finally, looking pained, his father raises his head. “Go. Just go. And if you’re going to stumble in with the stink of alcohol on your breath tomorrow morning instead of being ready to help with the milking, you might as well just stay out and not come home.”
“Are you kicking me out?”
“I’m sure,” his father says with a slightly curled lip, “that one of your boyfriends can give you a place to stay, if you need one.”
Reese doesn’t know what to say to this. A dozen responses rise to his tongue and are swallowed, making no sense. He can’t wrap his head around this accusation that feels like it must’ve been building inside his father for a long time.
“I have a girlfriend.”
“Sure, you do. That’s why you bring her around so much.”
Reese hasn’t brought Corinne around because she works nights, because his parents are old-fashioned and might not understand about her being a few years older, they would ask her embarrassing questions about if she goes to church and if she plans to marry him and push out babies. Even if Reese can’t imagine his life without Corinne as part of it, they aren’t anywhere close to that sort of relationship commitment yet. It’s occurred to him that she might not want to actually marry or raise a family with him. She’s never talked about it, never even hinted. In another couple of weeks, they’ll have been together for an entire year.
“I don’t bring her around because I’m afraid you’ll be rude to her.”
At this, his father looks up. His glasses have slipped down his nose. Tufts of hair burst from his ears, his nostrils. His eyebrows have grown immensely thick and gray. All of his dad’s hair has turned gray, and Reese discovers he can’t remember when that happened.
When’s the last time they went to the diner together for breakfast? Reese can’t remember. When’s the last time they did anything but snipe at each other? Reese can’t remember that, either.
He’s sure his dad’s going to say something so Reese can combat it. They can have a fight. It’ll be a little ugly, but Reese might be able to get some of the things off his chest that have been bothering him for a long time. His dad will yell and scold and accuse.
Instead, his father simply shrugs. His face holds no expression. Disappointment would’ve been easier to face than that utter lack of emotion.
All of Reese’s arguments dry up. He actually has nothing to say to the old man; that’s what he realizes as he straightens the knot on his tie. He can’t do much about the slide of cotton into his ass crack, but there, again, he is thinking of Corinne and what she does to him. And for him. How she makes him feel, as though he’s all full up and needs nothing more than to be with her, making her happy.
His dad wouldn’t understand, Reese thinks, watching his father ignore him. If Dad had ever wanted to make someone other than himself happy it had been a long, long time ago, and hell, it seems as though he’s even stopped trying to please himself.
Without another word, Reese stalks out of the kitchen and down the long country lane to the main road, where he finds Billy and Jonathan waiting for him. They’re going clubbing, and at the end of the night, they’ll drop him off at Triton’s Diner. Corinne will serve them all coffee and eggs and pancakes, but Reese is the only one she will take home.
Chapter Twelve
“There isn’t anything I can do about it, except maybe quit. And I’m not going to do that, not only so he doesn’t get the satisfaction, but of course because I’m not stupid enough to let what happened in the past ruin what I have going on now. I don’t want another job. I like the one I have.” Corinne mixed cake batter as she spoke to her sister, who was sitting at the breakfast bar allegedly looking up job prospects on her laptop. From the way Caitlyn occasionally giggled, Corinne suspected she was surfing Connex, instead.
Peyton had volunteered to bring in a dozen cupcakes for the bake sale. Typically, since the girl had spent the weekend with her dad and the new family, she’d been too busy with lots of other projects to remember that someone, somehow, needed to provide the treats. That left it up to Corinne, who hated baking, especially the last minute emergency aspect to it.
“Sprinkles,” Peyton said. “All different colors of sprinkles. But no coconut shavings, because coconut is the devil’s—”
Corinne watched in amusement as her daughter’s cheeks turned pink. “Uh-huh?”
“Dental floss!” Peyton burst into giggles.
“That’s not how that goes,” Caitlyn murmured.
The phrase was “coconut is the devil’s pubic hair,” uttered by Corinne any time she had to deal with the foul stuff, but now she laughed as hard as her kid was. “Dental floss. Right. Good one. Dental floss isn’t that gross, though.”
“Tyler must think it is. He never flosses his teeth.” Peyton made a face, wrinkling her nose and glancing into the living room where her brother was busy with some video game. “Or brushes them, either. And he pees on the seat, and he doesn’t flush… I wish I had my own bathroom here like I do at Dad’s.”
When she and Douglas had bought this house, it had been with the idea of settling for what they could afford without financially strapping themselves. Since at the time both kids were toddlers, neither she nor her ex-husband had looked ahead to the day when the sharing of their bathroom would lead to power struggles or other complications and cause so much domestic strife. Well, there were other things she’d need to change about this house before she could consider adding another bathroom. The kitchen, for one, with its outdated appliances and linoleum.
“Well,” Corinne said lightly, “I’m sorry that our house isn’t as big and nice as Dad’s new one, but I can talk to Tyler about being more considerate in the bathroom.”
Before Peyton could answer, the house phone jangled, catching them all off guard. The landline rarely rang, especially this late in the evening. It was almost bedtime.
“Yeah?” Corinne kept her voice hard, ready to put the smackdown on a telesolicitor. “Are you aware that you’re calling past nine p.m.?”
“I forgot about your phone rule,” said a familiar male voice. “I apologize, I should’ve called earlier.”
“Reese. Hi.” Turning, the phone’s long cord twisting as she did, Corinne kept her face away from Peyton’s curious look. The kid had eagle eyes, and Corinne didn’t want to give anything away with her expression. She also avoided Caitlyn’s scrutiny. Hell, she wasn’t sure what she was going to say or do.
“I have some questions on a few things about the accounts, and—”
“And you couldn’t wait until tomorrow morning?”
“You’ve taken tomorrow morning off,” he reminded her. “You won’t be in until the afternoon, and I’m heading back to Philadelphia i
n the morning to tie up a few things.”
He paused. She wondered if that was meant to be an innuendo. If it was, there was no way she was going to react to it.
“I won’t be back in Lancaster until next week,” Reese added. “I didn’t want to wait.”
“What kinds of questions?”
Reese hesitated before answering, though when he did speak his voice was strong and confident. A bit overbearing, actually. Arrogant. Another of those slow, rolling shivers that had so often run through her when they were together made its twisting, curving journey into her nervous system. He was putting on a show for her. Pushing her buttons, trying to get a rise out of her.
“I want to go over some of the numbers with you, make sure everything is properly squared up. There are some discrepancies.”
“In my work?” She’d closed her eyes, one arm crossed over her belly to tuck her elbow into her palm while she held the phone to her ear. She opened them to see both her daughter and sister staring, and she waved them out of the kitchen with a fierce look.
“I have questions. That’s all.”
She pictured him in the business suit he’d been wearing in that restaurant, the first time she’d seen him in fifteen years. Now she pictured him in that same suit but on his knees in front of her, head bowed. Hands behind his back, crossed at the wrists, the position he’d so willingly gone to for her, so many times.
I think you’ve got the wrong idea. I’m not your boy anymore.
He could not have been more clear. She could not have been more stung. Lifting her chin now, cheeks heating, Corinne opened her eyes. From upstairs she could hear the faint noise of Caitlyn urging the kids to get ready for bed.
“It’s getting late, Reese. I need to get my kids settled for the night.”
“This can’t wait,” he said. “I’ll need to talk to you about it tonight. Put your kids to bed and call me back.”
Corinne had never been a switch. It was true that after Reese, she’d never had another boy the way she’d had him, and that she’d settled into a pattern of traditional, vanilla relationships that had rarely even hinted at her proclivities. But she had definitely not gone in the other direction, ever, not in her personal or working life. At his arrogant assumption that she would rearrange everything to give him what she wanted, she smiled without humor. The rusted-shut tumblers of a long-abandoned lock began to click open, one by one, inside her.
“Tell you what,” she said. “Why don’t you come over here. They’ll be in bed and I’ll be able to address your issues without distraction then. Forty-seven minutes.”
Not forty-five. Not an hour. Forty-seven, a specifically odd number, meant to remind him of who was in charge. Meant to make him think hard about making sure he got it right.
“Fine,” Reese replied in a steely voice, giving her no hint as to whether or not he’d remembered all the other times she’d set him such a specific task. “I’ll be there.”
Chapter Thirteen
Reese pulled into her driveway exactly forty-five minutes after they’d hung up from the call. It would take two minutes to get from the car to the house. Arrival time, precisely forty-seven minutes.
He didn’t get out of the car.
He turned off the ignition and slipped the key into his pocket. He gathered the handful of folders he’d brought along. Patted his pocket to make sure his Parker fountain pen was in its place. He waited, hating the fact his heart had started to pound faster with every passing minute that he was late.
When I tell you to be ready at a certain time, puppy, I expect you to be ready. I despise being made to wait. It’s disrespectful.
Corinne’s words from the past echoed in his mind. Yet here he was, dallying in the front seat of his car on purpose just to fuck with her because she’d had the audacity to pull that forty-seven minute business with him, like even after all this time he was going to jump at her command.
Inside the house, the upstairs lights went out. A minute or so after that, the front porch light also went dark. Then the ones in the front room. She wasn’t going to wait up for him.
He’d pissed her off. Good, Reese thought as he got out of the car. She needed to remember that things were different now. So did he.
Standing on her porch in the dark though, at least ten minutes after she’d told him to be there, he wondered if he’d pissed her off so much that she wasn’t going to answer the door. He didn’t want to ring the bell, mindful that her kids were supposed to be sleeping—kids. The thought of it made him reel just enough to take a step back so his heel hung off the porch. Corinne had children. She’d had an entire life after him.
What the hell was he doing? Badgering her on a Sunday night, insisting they go over these stupid numbers that ultimately weren’t going to matter, not once he fully took over and the new budgets and strategies for growth were implemented. Why the hell was he on her porch when he could’ve phoned the office or even had a video meeting next week to talk about stuff?
Before he had the chance to turn and go, however, the door opened. Silhouetted in the glow from the hallway behind her, Corinne leaned in the doorway. She wore a pair of soft, clinging yoga pants and a tight T-shirt with a deep V that hinted at cleavage. She’d pulled her hair on top of her head with a few tendrils escaping to draw attention to the line of her neck. She held a glass of red wine.
“So. Are you coming in, or are we going to talk on the porch? I warn you, the mosquitos will devour you.”
Reese squared his shoulders. “Yeah, I’m coming in.”
She stepped aside to let him pass, closing the door behind him. “Shoes off, please.”
He’d already been toeing them off, remembering her house rule that had been in place back in that drafty old apartment on Queen Street. When he glanced over his shoulder, she was watching him with a small, faint smile as she sipped her wine. She caught him looking, and her expression changed. Got a little colder. She pointed her chin toward the rug at the side of the door.
He had to bend to pick up the shoes so he could put them on the rug, and he’d never been more aware in his life of another person’s gaze upon him as he did. She was watching his ass. He knew it. Watching him do as she’d ordered him to do. He would’ve acquiesced to anyone’s house rule about shoes because his mother had raised him to be polite as a guest in someone’s house, but this time, instead of neatly settling his leather oxfords on the rug, he tossed them in a jumble.
Behind him, he heard a soft, low sigh.
When he turned to look, Corinne was staring at the messy way he’d left the shoes, one arm crossed over her belly so she could rest her elbow in her hand. Her wine was still sloshing in the glass, her lips wet with it. Her tongue slipped out as he watched. Tasting.
She looked him right in the eyes then, and said nothing. She didn’t have to. She knew exactly what he’d done and why he had done it, or at least she thought she did. For fuck’s sakes, Reese wasn’t exactly sure why he’d done it, other than if he’d ever believed he could keep his shit together in the presence of this woman, he’d been fooling himself all along.
“Kitchen.” Corinne lifted her glass toward the end of the corridor. “We’ll sit in there.”
He followed her, of course. Her kitchen was big and bright and cheery, decorated in a red and black color scheme that didn’t surprise him. The kitchen on Queen Street had been smaller, but similar in decor, minus the report cards, school photos, and crayon drawings mostly covering the outdated fridge. A platter heaped high with cupcakes sat in the middle of the island counter. Glass sliders led to a stone patio out the back, and he caught a glimpse of a fire pit and a vast, sloping yard. Everything about this room spoke of a nice, suburban life and family. The complete opposite of his life.
“Wine?” She held up the bottle.
“What kind?”
With a raise of her eyebrow she turned the bottle to show him the label, which featured a colored line sketch of a zombie. “It’s called Malicious. It’s a Malbec.�
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She pulled a wineglass with a big bowl from the others hanging beneath the cabinet, and set it on the counter. She filled it. Put the bottle down. Held out the glass to him without coming closer.
He would have to step forward to take it. Of course he did. “You still buy wine based on if the label’s pretty.”
“How else are you supposed to do it?” she teased and lifted her glass, watching him over the rim of it as she sipped. “I suppose you rely on the advice of your personal sommelier.”
“I research,” Reese told her. “It’s not that hard.”
“Neither is picking out a bottle with a fun label,” Corinne said lightly. “Are you going to drink it, or are you going to waste it?”
“It’s already in my hand.”
“Good—” Her voice had dipped, but she cut herself off with a small cough and cut her gaze from his.
He wanted to take pleasure in the sight of her discomfort but couldn’t. He took a long sip of the wine and lifted the glass with a nod. “It’s good. Yeah.”
“So,” Corinne said crisply, “what is it, exactly, that you wanted to talk about?”
He took a seat at the breakfast nook, which had been styled to look like a retro diner booth. “This looks familiar.”
“It’s from the diner. About four years ago, Eddie did some renovations and auctioned off a bunch of the stuff he was replacing. I grabbed this and some other things that are still in storage until I can get around to fixing up my kitchen the way I’d like it to be. My ex didn’t like the diner look.”
“So as soon as you split up you put this in?”
She nodded. “Yep.”
“A good way to stick it to him, I guess.”
Her eyes narrowed. “It was a good way to start working toward turning this kitchen, which he now no longer uses, into a space that would please me.”
It had been a dickish thing to say, and he knew it. “You always did know exactly what you wanted and how to get it.”
That should not have been a dickish statement, but he came out sounding like a total asshole anyway.