More: A Body Work Novel (The Body Work Trilogy Book 4)

by Sierra Kincade

  “What is it, honey?” When Paisley buried her damp face in Amy’s neck, she whispered, “Take a deep breath. Then give me three seconds.”

  It was something they’d started after her ex had left, when Paisley had stopped talking. One deep breath, three scary beats to say what you needed to, and then it was over. You rarely had to be brave for longer than that.

  Unless some psycho like Jonathan Marshall was going to toss you off a bridge. That took a little more time.

  Paisley swallowed a shaking breath.

  “Don’t go away,” she said.

  “I’m not going anywhere.” Amy tried to make her voice strong, but she had a huge lump in her throat.

  “Where do you think your mommy’s going?” asked Carolyn, who was now sitting on the edge of the couch looking over them.

  “Heaven,” said Paisley.

  “Whoa,” said Amy. “I’m definitely not going there. Not for a long time. Who told you about Heaven, Pais?”

  “Chloe’s mom’s in Heaven. She went there when Chloe was a baby.”

  Amy stroked her back, feeling her fast little breaths slowly subside. Chloe’s mom was dead? She’d thought Mike was divorced, not a widower. Occasionally, Amy had let herself think not the nicest thoughts about the woman—that Mike and she hadn’t gotten along, or that she had done something terrible and lost custody. But if she’d died, that was a whole different story. She could have been the best mother in the world. She could have been the love of Mike’s life.

  Amy felt a little sick. And awful, too, because kids needed their mommies. Her mind shifted to all his late night workout sessions in the basement she’d listened to from upstairs. She wondered if it was hard for him to sleep. Grief was always heavier at night; her brother’s death had taught her that.

  “I didn’t know,” Amy admitted. “That makes me sad to hear.”

  It took a little while, but Paisley gradually relaxed. She told Carolyn about the hermit crab at school, and the water balloon fight the day before. When she played with the mommy and daddy doll, she didn’t make the daddy yell at mommy, or throw the daddy into the bucket. That made Amy feel a little better.

  The end of the session was always reserved for Amy, and during those fifteen minutes, Carolyn’s assistant, a psychology student at the local university, came in to play with Paisley on the floor.

  “So,” said Carolyn, when Paisley was distracted. “How are things going at Chloe’s house for you?”

  “Fuck if I know,” said Amy under her breath, eliciting a snort from her clever therapist.

  “She’s swearing,” said Carolyn. “I guess that means we’ve reached the juicy stuff.”

  “You’re evil, you know that, right?”

  Carolyn rubbed her hands together with a cackle.

  Amy sighed. “Yesterday he said he liked me. Or that he liked a lot of things about me.”

  “That is confusing,” she mused. “Could mean anything.”

  Amy might have admired her therapist’s snark if it hadn’t been aimed her direction.

  “According to Anna we’re married, but we don’t even sleep in the same bedroom.”

  “Lots of perfectly happy couples don’t sleep in the same bedroom.”

  “Believe me, I know,” said Amy. “My ex slept in another woman’s bedroom for years. We were both happier.” She laughed dryly, but Carolyn didn’t seem to think she was funny.

  “So you think Mike’s having sex with other women?”

  The woman certainly didn’t waste time beating around the bush.

  Amy thought about Mike touching another woman the way he’d touched her feather brooch yesterday. Of his arms around another woman’s back, and his fingers in her hair. She couldn’t say for certain if he was, but she certainly didn’t like thinking about it.

  “Well he’s not getting it at home.”

  Amy crossed her arms.

  Carolyn tilted her head.

  “This makes you uncomfortable,” she noticed.

  “I’m not uncomfortable,” Amy lied.

  “Have you ever had sex?” asked Carolyn.

  Now Amy scoffed. “Uh, yeah,” she said, jutting a thumb over her shoulder. “Don’t know if you saw the little one, but she came with me.”

  “There are lots of ways to make a baby.”

  She supposed Carolyn had her there.

  “Well, Pais was made the old-fashioned way.”

  “Do you like sex?”

  Amy balked. She glanced to Paisley on the floor, relieved that she couldn’t hear the conversation.

  “In theory.”

  “And in practice?”

  Amy shrugged. She wished she was the one playing with dolls on the floor. That had to be easier than facing Carolyn the sniper.

  “It’s all right, I guess.” She shifted her weight onto her right hip. Then left.

  It doesn’t feel right.

  Danny had told her that the first time they’d been together after Paisley had been born.

  Carolyn turned, so that she was facing the large window that looked down onto the street. Amy angled her body the same way, away from Paisley and the toys.

  “Did you ever do it just for fun?” her therapist asked.

  Fun.

  She was lying on her back on the bed, eyes wide and burning with tears. The lights were off so he couldn’t see the way her body had changed since the baby. She knew how he looked at her when she undressed—it was why she’d started bringing her clothes into the bathroom to get ready.

  He started. Stopped. Tried again. She grit her teeth and gripped the sheets.

  When he finally gave up, it wasn’t relief that flooded through her, but despair. This was the most basic thing in the world, and she couldn’t even do it right.

  On the best days, sex was uncomfortable, but over quickly. On the other days, it hurt, went on way to long, and included pillow talk like, You’re not even trying and Your cunt feels like sandpaper.

  It hadn’t been fun since before she’d gotten pregnant.

  She kept her eyes glued on the window, willing the minutes to tick by a little faster. The memories of her marriage were all brighter after seeing Danny the previous day. She made the decision right then not to bring up that she’d seen him. He’d controlled her life enough. He wasn’t still fucking with her. He couldn’t. Because she was strong now, and her past was behind her.

  “Is there any other way?” she said flatly.

  “There are about a hundred other ways,” said Carolyn. “Sometimes it’s to hurt another person.”

  Nice try, Carolyn. Some secrets weren’t meant to be shared in therapy.

  “Sometimes it’s just to get pregnant,” Carolyn continued.

  Right. Like she and Danny had ever done it with the purpose of getting pregnant. Paisley was an accident, and even if Danny genuinely had loved their daughter, he’d never wanted kids.

  “Sometimes,” said Carolyn. “Being intimate isn’t about the actual act of sex at all.”

  She thought of the way Mike had touched her pin yesterday, about the way he sometimes looked at her that made her feel like her skin was made of glass.

  “I wish I knew what Mike wanted,” she admitted.

  “What do you want?” asked Carolyn.

  Amy closed her eyes. After a long moment, she said, “Him.”

  She wanted him to feel that overwhelming need to touch her. She wanted to hear his harsh breaths in her ear, and feel his hard, naked body slide against hers. She wanted to make him feel good, and somehow, even though she hadn’t felt this way in years, she felt certain he could make her feel good, too. Sometimes she’d accidently get in his way, just so his arm would touch hers when he passed. That’s what her sex life had come to.

  “So,” said Carolyn. “Want to talk about what’s really bothering you?”

  Amy couldn’t help but give a small smile. The woman was freaking psychic.

  “Not really,” she said.

  Carolyn gave a slow nod. “All righ
t. But it’d be a good idea if you did tell someone. Maybe Mike.”

  “Sure,” said Amy. At some point. If it came up.

  Chapter Five

  One thing about having a kid—whatever personal turmoil you were going through got pushed to the backburner. Paisley’s needs came first, and since it was Tuesday, they swung back to school to pick up Chloe from the latchkey program, and headed to Mike’s. It was a routine they’d established in the first weeks after Amy and Paisley had moved in, an exchange so that Ms. Iris could have a break and Mike could teach self-defense on Thursdays.

  By the time laundry was started, homework was done, mac and cheese was served, and plates were in the dishwasher, Carolyn’s suggestion to talk to Mike about sex couldn’t have been further from Amy’s mind. After she’d been adequately soaked during bath time, managed a fight over who got to sleep with Mr. Jenkins the teddy bear, and read no less than seven books, Amy could barely see straight.

  It wasn’t even eight-thirty.

  She dragged herself down to the basement to check the washing machine, and pushed past the handwritten note on the door that said Welcome to the Laundromat! For the first three weeks she’d been here, Amy had taken their clothes back to her apartment complex every few days. When Mike had found out she was doing this, he’d put signs up all over the house that said Laundromat in Basement. When she’d tried to split the water and electric bill with her, he’d said she could make up for it by watching Chloe. When she’d tried to point out that he babysat just as much as she did, he pointed out all the nights he worked late or went to school.

  He had an answer for everything.

  The basement was a carpeted, one-room space, with a giant weight-lifting death trap—carefully rigged with pink child-safety locks—as a centerpiece. Amy changed the wet clothes over to the dryer, and examined the metal bars and cracked leather benches that had sculpted every line on Mike’s perfect body. Her mind flashed to a dozen different nights she’d laid awake in bed listening to that barely audible clink of the weights two stories below, and imagined him, sweating and masculine, muscles primed. Blowing out a tight breath she skirted around the machine to the pullout couch where he had been sleeping since she’d taken over his room.

  I’m good down here, he’d said. Right before he’d told her he liked thinking of her in his bed. It had probably just been his sweet way of trying to keep her comfortable, and she suspected he’d stayed here to do the same. But it had to come with a cost.

  The twin-sized Disney princesses comforter didn’t fit the larger folding mattress, and there was only one pillow. It made her feel a little guilty to think of him sleeping with his feet sticking out from the blanket while she spread out on his king-sized bed upstairs. It was kind of adorable though, too.

  The sweetness of it warmed into something else the longer she considered that this was the place where he slept, probably in limited clothing.

  On the chair that had been pulled up beside the couch was a stack of heavy books, each marked by post-it notes. Her fingers trailed over them

  “Constitutional Criminal Practices,” she read aloud. “Advanced Economics.” Beneath that one, at the bottom, was a fat red book entitled Justice.

  “Damn.” Just looking at them made her head spin. She knew Mike was taking pre-law classes in his night school, but he never came off as snooty or made her feel bad about the fact that she didn’t have a degree. She’d only been on a college campus once, in high school, when she and Anna had snuck into a University of Cincinnati frat party. The only advanced education she’d done was beauty school.

  She didn’t mind. She liked cutting hair. Liked talking to her clients about what was going on in their lives. It was its own kind of therapy, and more than any other time in her day, she felt like she was good at what she was doing. So what if she couldn’t manage her own personal life? She could help other people manage theirs.

  And if she ever thought about doing something more, she reined it right back in. She’d had her chance to rebel and follow her dreams and they’d turned around and slapped her in the face. Steadiness was important now. Routine. For Paisley.

  But sometimes the possibility of what could be tempted her. Safe with the knowledge that he wasn’t going to be home for a while, she touched Mike’s pillow. Closing her eyes, she pictured him watching her while she laid beside him.

  She imagined him moving closer, pressing his lips against hers. How his body would shift as he came over her. How he’d tell her all the right things. That she was pretty, and that she felt good, and that there was no one else because she was more than enough. It was so real she could hear that quiet rasp in his voice when he whispered, feel the sudden, strong ache in her breasts when she imagined him touching her there.

  Her hand snapped back.

  “Wow,” she said, voice too loud in the quiet. She was breathing harder than before, and her skin was flushed. If the fantasy Mike could get her turned on, the real thing had to be good.

  Feeling like she’d just had a shot of caffeine, she returned to the main floor and listened up the stairs to the second story for the girls. No peep from the room they shared. She picked up the toys and crayons scattered throughout the living room. Mike had piled the mail in the kitchen nook, and she organized it into bills and coupons she’d cut later. It looked like he had mortgage statements from not one, but two companies. She wondered if he’d had to get a second mortgage—this was a nice house in a good neighborhood, and he was a single parent. She definitely needed to contribute more than just groceries.

  Danny’s voice whispered in her ear.

  I got bills.

  Poor guy. It was so hard being him.

  Her mind shifted to Mike’s ex-wife, Chloe’s mother, when she again glanced at her picture on the fridge. Had she lived here with him? How had she died? It wasn’t that she intended on snooping, but the next thing she knew she found herself looking around for some other sign that the woman existed. Nothing obvious popped up. No pictures besides the one on the fridge. No boxes of her things that said Hey Nosy, right here. She didn’t even know the woman’s name. After a few minutes, Amy gave up.

  She thought about going to bed, but wondered if they’d slept there together, and opted for a movie until she could clear the images from her mind.

  Although many of Mike’s things were modest, he did have a flatscreen that was probably longer than she was tall. It only took her six tries to turn the damn thing on, and when she did, it took her five minutes of scanning to get to the movie channels. She kept pressing buttons until she found the ones that were free, though somehow ended up in a new menu that offered some kind of travel series—the shows were all named for places around the world—Berlin, Tokyo, Ontario. She clicked on Madrid, thinking Spain sounded like a good Bucket List kind of destination, and went to microwave some popcorn and finally change her clothes.

  In sweatpants and a tank top she returned to the kitchen, just in time to not completely burn the entire bag. Her hair was swept back in a ponytail, her makeup scrubbed clean. She’d left the bra behind since Mike wasn’t due back until after she fell asleep. It was time to relax.

  Madrid was already playing. And as it turned out, Madrid was location of a sex club, and the movie was a porno.

  “Holy fucking shit,” said Amy when the extremely well built male lead hiked up the skirt of the topless woman he’d been dancing with, and slid his fingers between her legs. She had big, yellow-blonde hair, teased to the extreme. Someone had done a terrible dye job; Amy bet the girl had paid a fortune for it, too.

  She stared in awe for one long moment before she remembered that she was in Mike’s house, with the girls upstairs asleep. Snatching the remote off the coffee table, she held it poised before her, but the channel didn’t change.

  Because she wasn’t pressing a button.

  The woman began to moan as the man’s hand worked faster. She looked like she’d probably been doing some kind of seductive Latin dance based on the swatches
of clothing that hung around her waist. It was hard to get the gist of the story since Amy had come in late.

  “You dirty girl,” he muttered, in a not very Madrid-ish accent. “Your cunt’s so hot for me.”

  “Hey now,” said Amy quietly, turning the volume down a few notches. Her cheeks were hot. No one was around, but she was still embarrassed.

  And a little turned on.

  “I want you, Papi. I want it.”

  The blonde grew weak in her lover’s arms, sitting on his hand while he supported her weight with his other arm.

  Still holding the remote in one hand, Amy reached for a fistful of popcorn. Shoved it in her mouth. Chew, chew, chew.

  The man dropped to his knees. Right there in the middle of the dance floor, while the other couples danced around them. Her skirt was still lifted, and he reached around her bottom to pull her close.

  “You want me to lick you?” he asked.

  “Fuck yeah she does,” muttered Amy.

  This was wrong. Like, way wrong. If Mike knew she was watching this, she’d never be able to face him again.

  The man spread the blonde’s legs while she looked down on him. Amy knew it was a movie, knew these people were acting—they probably weren’t really even getting off—but the power in that woman’s face sent a wave of tremors through Amy’s body. What was it like to look down on a man who liked you enough to do that?

  You want me to lick you? Mike’s voice filled her head.

  She gave a soft groan. Caught herself. Glanced at the stairs.

  Her razor sharp Mom hearing detected no changes.

  She turned back to the television, which had switched to the woman’s point of view. You couldn’t really see what was happening, but you could hear her soft pants and then her sharp cry. The man looked up at her between her enormous fake boobs, eyes glazed.

  Amy saw Mike’s eyes. Lion eyes, softly hooded.

  “Your pussy tastes so good,” the man said. She made it Mike’s voice.

  You taste so good, Amy. I can’t stop.