“My what?”
Jaime gave him a disparaging look. “‘Life has many forks in the road and today I’ve decided to travel down the path leading your husband straight to my waiting and open arms.’”
Jaime looked up as Eric frowned and walked over to her.
“‘I can’t lie and say I have regrets. I love him more than you and I need him more’” she continued to read, raising her voice as he neared her.
“Who sent you that?” he asked.
“Jessa, your whore, Mr. Goody Two-Shoes.”
“You’re calling someone else a whore? Please.”
Jaime shook her head at him. “Are you defending your mistress to me?”
Eric stepped closer until his forehead nearly touched hers. “I don’t even need to address or defend anything to you. You lost your right to question me when you opened your legs to another man.”
Jaime didn’t back down from him like she normally would. In fact, she stepped even closer to him until their breaths mingled in the small inch between them. She raised her phone. “‘You saw him for the last time this morning. Tonight he comes home to me. He’s my man now,’” she read. “So I’m real surprised to see you.”
“Not that I care what you think, but those are lies. Hell, you’re probably making it up because of your own trash. Jessa wouldn’t lie on me like that.”
Jaime laughed bitterly. “Maybe the trick ain’t lying. Maybe you two have been messing around behind my back all this time.”
“After having to listen to my wife having sex over the phone, I really don’t care if I brought a woman home and screwed her in our—your bed.”
“Have you?” Jaime countered.
“Get the hell out of my room, and next time knock and wait for me to permit you to come in,” he said, walking over to hold the bedroom door open.
“Why are you with me?” she asked, her voice incredulous as she looked over at his boyishly handsome face, which was filled with the lines of coldness and bordering on dislike.
“Get out of my room, Jaime,” Eric said again. “And take your lies with you, slut.”
Jaime sauntered over to the door, feeling her empowerment rise. “You know, Eric, for an educated businessman, you do a lot of childish name calling.”
“Go to hell, Jaime.”
She stopped and stared up into the face of this man that she’d honestly married for better or for worse. His handsome face, which used to be filled with charm and smiles all the time, was constantly twisted with anger and dislike whenever they were alone. She was married to a stranger.
“I’ve been living in hell these last six months with your punishing my one mistake—”
He snorted in derision.
“I have apologized. I have punished myself and I have allowed you to punish me. But no more, Eric. No more,” she told him in a voice that was stern.
“What do you mean by that?” he asked.
Jaime just cocked a brow before she walked out of the room and continued up the stairs. She felt liberated. She felt free. Free of the shame and guilt she lived with all these months. Free of the charade of being happy only in public. Free of the masks she lived with all her life.
She heard his feet on the steps but she was still surprised when his hand closed around her upper arm to precariously spin her on the step to face him.
“I asked you what you meant by that,” he said, his voice and face arctic.
Jaime snatched her arm away as she shook her head. “Since I was a little girl I worried about being perfect. I never got dirty. I always got good grades. I always did what was right. I wanted my parents’ approval so badly that it mattered more than my own happiness,” she told him, emotions tightening her throat as she pointed her finger at her chest. “I was a little girl worrying about my own parents not loving me or wanting me or even thinking they would send me away if I wasn’t perfect.”
“And?” he snapped sarcastically.
“And I continued that pattern of being afraid of not being liked all through high school and college and in our marriage, Eric.” Jaime released a shaky breath. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been happy, and I’m not blaming you. I’m blaming myself because I didn’t try to do things or say things or even think things that suited me and made me feel whole. I put everybody else first and it was strangling me, Eric.”
“So your affair was done for me too, right. Man, please.” Eric shook his head as he looked away from her.
Jaime swallowed back the irritation and annoyance she felt at him completely overlooking her words of explanation. “This isn’t about that, Eric, and our marriage shouldn’t have become all about it either,” she told him, sounding as emotionally weary as she felt.
“Then you shouldn’t have stooped so low and done it.”
“And you shouldn’t have stooped so low to degrade and belittle me every chance you got,” she yelled before she took a deep calming breath and looked upward as her heart pounded in her chest. “I was so worried about what people thought that I let you treat me like shit, worse than shit, these last six months. I didn’t want to admit that my marriage was—no, it is over.”
She looked down at him, and the look of surprise in his face gave her pleasure. She was ready to claim her life. Enough was enough.
“Jaime—”
“No, Eric,” she said, holding up her hand before her. “I’m done. Done talking. Done explaining. Done begging forgiveness. Done being treated like a whore in my own home. Done with this marriage and you. You and Jessa have a wonderful life together. I wish you both the very best.”
“I’m not having an affair with Jessa, so don’t push your guilt on me.”
Jaime sighed and shrugged. “It really doesn’t matter, Eric,” she told him before turning to continue up the stairs and into her bedroom. She grabbed her suitcases from the closet and dropped them onto the bed.
As Jaime pulled her perfectly folded clothes from the drawers and packed them she felt like imaginary wings were growing out of her back, giving her the ability to finally fly and thus flee the entire situation.
“You’re not going anywhere, Jaime.”
She glanced at him briefly as he filled her doorway before she walked in the closet and began removing hanging items. “I’m done, Eric. Why keep punishing ourselves? It’s not healthy.”
“So you think I cheated and you leave?” he asked sarcastically.
Jaime was sick of his judgments of her. She had to admit that she was surprised that he gave a damn. “And I cheated and you’ve treated me like your in-house slave.”
“I didn’t leave our marriage.”
Jaime paused in putting her shoes in the suitcase to look up at him. “No, you just made our marriage as horrible for me as you possibly could.”
“No, I treated you like the slut you acted like when you slept with some stripper you didn’t even know!” he shouted across the room.
“Well, this slut is tired, okay?” she told him sardonically.
Eric came across the room to grab her wrist.
Jaime snatched away as she looked into his eyes. “I’m sorry that I cheated and I know that I hurt you, but I’m also sorry that my issues run so deep that I allowed myself to live like this,” she told him before breezing past him to begin picking up her dozen or so perfume bottles from her dressing table.
“I don’t believe in divorce, Jaime, and you know that.”
“Neither did I until I saw just how miserable marriage could be.” Jaime zipped up her suitcases.
“What is your mother going to say?” he threw at her, clutching for straws.
Jaime laughed bitterly as she sat the suitcases on the floor and pulled up the handles to roll them. “Don’t worry. I told her about my affair and she concurs with you that I am an embarrassing slut,” she told him over her shoulder as she walked out of the bedroom, rolling her cases behind her.
Eric followed behind. “How are you going to take care of yourself? You need me. Did you think about
that?”
Jaime noisily banged the suitcases against the stairs as she made her way down. “Well, let you and my mother tell it, I’m sitting on a gold mine, so maybe I’ll put it to work,” she snapped sarcastically.
Jaime yelped when Eric grabbed her neck and turned her to slam her against the front door. His eyes were filled with rage and his nostrils flared like a charging bull. “Let. Me. Go.”
His grip tightened and he lifted her by her neck until her feet floated above the floor.
“Successful businessman found guilty in the choking murder of his adulterous wife,” Jaime said. “I’m sure all of your colleagues will find this little news article amusing. Don’t you?”
Their eyes remained locked for a long time but Jaime felt his grip loosening. As soon as he dropped her to her feet, Jaime used both of her hands to push him away from her before massaging the tenderness of her neck.
“You know, I’m realizing that you are sick in the head. You get off on belittling me. For months you made me feel like you hated me. Whipped me. Made me do things to you that I didn’t want to do. Perverted things. And now that I’m leaving, you think I’m going to listen to you and stay, you sick bastard? I don’t know if it makes your dick hard to be a perverted son of a bitch, but you are.”
Jaime grabbed her purse and her keys from the foyer as Eric slumped down to sit on the bottom step of the staircase.
“Maybe you have masks too, Eric. Maybe you’ve always been an S-and-M freak and this was just your opportunity to have your freaky sex dreams come to life.”
He said nothing as she jerked the front door and the smell of suburbia filtered in. And then it hit her. She was leaving her marriage and her dream home in Richmond Hills. She didn’t even have a plan on where to go, but the debit card to her secret account nestled in her wallet would help.
Taking a deep breath, she grabbed the handles of her suitcases and walked out on her life as she knew it, not even bothering to close the front door behind her.
She loaded her suitcases into her trunk and closed it. Hopped into the driver’s seat. As she passed the houses of her friends, she decided it would be best to update them on her new status. They might have their own drama to deal with as the day came to an end.
Jessa Bell.
Jaime realized she hadn’t even asked Eric which of the men—if any—hadn’t returned from the trip. He’d denied a relationship with Jessa and Jaime didn’t know if she believed him, but she did know that right now she didn’t care one damn bit.
For once it was all about her.
Her wants.
Her needs.
Her desires.
As she eased the car through the open gates of Richmond Hills, Jaime felt the solace inside the vehicle. The old Jaime would hold all of this in and not dare let anyone behind the velvet rope of her private thoughts and feelings. But she was trying to leave that part of her behind. She wanted to talk it over with someone and get it all off her chest.
Jaime reached in her purse for her cigarette case and soon she was inhaling deeply on a cigarette. She pulled to a stop at a red light.
The only person she felt she could confide in without judgment was Renee, but Jaime wasn’t going to lump her drama onto her friend’s lap, especially not today.
Needing a distraction and afraid thoughts that she made the wrong decision would surface, Jaime turned on her satellite radio and hummed along to the slow jams being played.
As she drove through the streets she knew she had a lot to do in preparation for her life. She could have insisted Eric leave, but Jaime honestly didn’t want the memories attached to the home she once loved. She wanted a fresh start. New life. New home. New environment. New everything. But all of the decisions she had to make about her life would have to wait for tomorrow. There was not a thing she could accomplish tonight.
Well, almost nothing.
Jaime couldn’t really identify the exact moment she decided this was what she needed. But she was weak and wet with anticipation by the time she pulled her Volvo into the parking lot of the strip club. It had been months since she gave in to her monthly fix, but nothing about it had changed. Same brick building with neon flashing lights. Same steady thump of the music’s bass against the walls.
She eyed the door, knowing that all she had to do was walk inside and Pleasure could be all hers—for a little while, anyway. The familiarity of shame started to creep on her but she pushed it aside. She remembered how badly she felt lying on that floor, pussy still sore from his sex when he asked to be paid.
But goodness, she had never ever cum so much in all her life. Truth be told, sex that good was worth every red cent.
Over the months she hadn’t forgotten it, even when she felt guilt over hurting Eric and shame over paying for sex.
“What am I doing here?” she asked herself out loud, already putting her still-running car in reverse to back out of the parking spot.
“Whaddup, stranger?”
Jaime slammed on her brakes and looked out the driver’s side window at the man, the stripper, the walking sex himself standing there, looking down at her like he was ready, willing, and able to give her just the pleasure she craved…for a price. She took a deep breath of her cigarette as the heat infused her body. Six months and he only looked better. The black sleeveless shirt he wore showed off his muscled arms and clung to the rippled muscles of his chest and abdomen. Although his sweats were thick and baggy, his penis bulged against the material.
“Haven’t seen you in a while,” he said, hitching the Nike bookbag up higher on his shoulder.
Jaime had never really conversed with him before and she didn’t know what to say. “Just been really busy, you know,” she said weakly, putting out the cigarette and instantly hating how lame she sounded.
Pleasure smiled, his white teeth flashing against his chocolate skin as he bent down until they were eye level. “You came here for me, didn’t you?” he asked in a low voice that Jaime found sexy as shit.
She licked her suddenly dry lips and nodded, unable to look away from him.
“You don’t want to go back in that club, do you?”
She shook her head.
“And you want me to fuck the shit out of you…again…don’t you?” he asked her cockily.
Jaime shivered and pursed her lips at the very thought of his body and his dick on her…in her. She didn’t answer him but the look in his eyes let her know she didn’t have to.
He stood up and pulled a card out of his pocket. “Get a room and call me. I should be there by twelve,” he told her.
Am I really about to do this? she thought as she took the card from his hand and shivered from the touch of his skin breezing across hers.
He smiled and licked his lips, showing off deep dimples she wanted to bury her tongue in, before turning to walk toward the rear of the club.
“Pleasure,” she called.
He stopped and locked intense eyes on hers.
“How much?” she asked, hardly believing she was soliciting sex outside a seedy strip club. Maybe Eric isn’t the only pervert.
“How long?” he countered.
That forgotten bud between her legs swelled to life and called out for attention and satisfaction. “The rest of the night…if you can,” she said, feeling shy as butterflies claimed her stomach.
He nodded. “Five bills. Midnight,” he said, waving briefly before he disappeared around the back of the building.
Knock-knock-knock.
Jaime walked to the door of the hotel suite as naked as the day she was born in a pair of sequined Gucci heels. She had pushed aside thoughts of her failed marriage, Jessa’s text, and anything else beside enjoying herself.
As she stepped back to allow Pleasure inside the suite lit with candles, she eyed him and promised herself that this was the absolute last time. Just once more, she thought as he stopped and scooped her naked body up into his arms, pushing the door closed with his foot.
Just once more.
In the few hours that had passed since she left Aria’s house, Renee had busied herself settling back into her role as full-time housewife. She finished cleaning the entire house, including the kids’ bedrooms. She made red rice and sausage, a garden salad, and homemade hush puppies to go along with the fish he caught—and just in case they were still having friends over. She lit scented candles, put on subtle and inviting lighting, and took a leisurely bath.
It was time to get back to basics.
Once she settled onto the corner of the club chair by the window, she picked up her cordless phone and dialed Jackson, waiting for his voice mail to come on.
Beep.
She closed her eyes and spoke from her heart. “This morning you said that we needed to talk, and I will admit that those words can be the scariest thing a wife is ever told by her husband. They are words that can make a smart woman pause and reflect. For the first time in our marriage, those words introduced me to the fear of our marriage coming to an end.”
Renee paused and pressed the phone to her ear as she bit her bottom lip and closed her troubled eyes. “Of course, I could be assuming the worst, but that is what the end of this marriage is for me—the absolute worst. I love you and you are my heart. Our family is the most important thing to me and…and I am willing to work and fight for it.”
She took a deep breath, completely aware that the next words out her mouth meant giving up everything she had worked so hard for. “If my working means losing you, then…then…then I won’t work anymore. I just want things between us to be the way they used to be. I need things between us—”
Beep…beep…beep.
Renee ended the call and placed the phone back on the charger. She had reached the end of the allotted time for a message, but that was fine—she had said all that she wanted to say. Hopefully it was enough.
Renee sat there snuggled in the corner of her chair and witnessed the slow descent of night. She watched the cars slowly passing by on the street and the families arriving and leaving home, lost in her thoughts, wondering which road she was traveling on—and just how long she had been lost.
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