“What?”
He finally kisses me, though it’s a stiff kiss and barely a peck on the lips.
My heart fails when he turns, grabs his jacket and leaves the house, his body stiff.
What the fuck just happened?
Isaac
“Sign here,” he says, looking far too smug. “Quickly now.”
I rush my signature across the dotted line and exhale a long, tortured breath.
“And you said you couldn’t be bought,” Darren chuckles, handing me my copy of the contract.
“Fuck you,” I bite out, stuffing it into my jacket pocket.
“Do it tonight and the money will be in your account by tomorrow night, as soon as you’re gone.”
I push my hands through my hair and nod. They tremble. I don’t want to do this. I really don’t want to do this. What choice do I have?
“All of your problems will vanish.”
Not likely.
He seems to soften slightly. I wouldn’t have noticed the change if I hadn’t been staring at him with an anger so potent it could melt the world. “You’re doing the right thing. She’s not reaching her full potential with you. You’re only holding her back.”
He’s not wrong. “It’s done, so stop fucking talking to me.”
“And remember what this means. You can’t say a fucking word.” He waves the contract in my face, smiling once more. “I told you I’d win; I always do.”
My heart shatters as I leave him in the street and head back home. How the fuck am I going to do this as painlessly as possible for the both of us?
“Elle?” I call as I walk through the front door. I think of the documents in my pocket and quickly stash them behind the flower pot in the corner that holds a tree of some kind that Elle insists I water every two days. “Elle?”
I hear her sniffle and move into the room. Finding my father there was the last thing I was expecting.
Oh… fuck.
“You told her.” I bite, really fucking angry now.
My dad glares at me. “You didn’t?”
“Elle,” I go to grab her but she runs from the room, her face in her hands and vanishes up the stairs. “Well done.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell her.”
“This is my life and my marriage…”
“Which you’re ruining.”
If only he knew. “I need to speak to Eloise.” She can’t break up with me. She just can’t. This can’t be her decision; it has to be mine. “Alone.”
Fuck.
I can’t cope with this.
My dad exits the house without looking back and I don’t blame him. I’m a terrible son to him.
I’m a terrible person but I need to be, just for a little bit longer, while I sort out the mess I’ve made.
This is the first time I’ve had the upper hand. This is the first time I’ve been one step ahead of Darren. He thinks he’s won; he thinks it’s over. He’s wrong. So fucking wrong.
Chapter Twenty Five
Eloise
We promised Judith that she wouldn’t be put in a home, that she’d get to spend her last few years in the place where she raised her only child and the place where she grew with her husband.
Silent tears leak from my eyes and spill onto the carpet in my bedroom. “How could you not tell me?”
“Because of this reaction,” Isaac says softly, sitting on the bed beside me. He doesn’t offer me his hand or his arms. He doesn’t sit with his thigh pressed to mine. He sits tensely with about a foot of space and empty emotionless air between us. “I didn’t want you upset.”
“You knew I’d find out!” I shriek, turning my teary eyes to him.
“I wanted to save you the pain for as long as I possibly could!” He growls, standing abruptly. “Look… we need to…”
“I want to go and see her.”
He sighs, clearly frustrated. “We can’t; she only went in a few days ago. We’re giving her time to adjust. Only my dad is visiting at the moment.”
“Makes sense,” I agree reluctantly, wanting to throttle him at the same time as wanting to hug him, mostly to make myself feel better. “It’s like the sky just opened up.” I shake my head as so many realisations sink in.
“What?”
“This… you…” Looking at him, I don’t bother to wipe away the tears and instead allow them to spill down my cheeks and fall, hoping they take my worries and anguish with them. “This is why you’ve been so distant. It’s so fucking clear now.” I stand and press my forehead against his chest. “I’m sorry I’ve been awful to you. I thought… I don’t even know what I was thinking. I’m so fucking self-centred.”
“Christ…” He seems to choke a little. “Elle…”
“I hate myself.” I wrap my arms around him and nuzzle his shirt, not caring if I dampen it with my tears. “I miss everything. All I ever worry about is you and me. Hayley was in a car accident, not a bad one, but I didn’t know about it until a week after it happened. That’s how wrapped up in my own shit I am. And you… I didn’t even think to ask what was wrong.” I pull back and glare at him. “Not that you’d have told me anyway.” I slap his chest with my hand. “Stop keeping things from me!”
“Elle.” He cocks his head to one side and brings his warm fingers to my face. His eyes close for a moment. “Elle…”
“Do you hate me?”
He lets out a laugh and wraps his arms around me tightly. I can hardly breathe but I love it. “I could never hate you. Never.”
“Promise?”
Kissing the top of my head, he rests his chin on the space he kisses and rocks with me slightly. I stroke my fingers up and down his back as he continues to squeeze me tighter and tighter.
Suddenly he buries his face in my neck and I feel his eyelashes flutter before squeezing shut. Moisture lands on the skin there.
Is he… crying?
My heart flutters painfully at the thought. I don’t ask. I don’t pry or mention it, I only hold him tight, praying that whatever he’s feeling deep inside I can fix it for him.
“Elle,” he whispers, walking me backwards. I feel the backs of my legs touch the bed as Isaac’s tongue tastes the curve of my neck before his luscious lips clamp down.
A wave of bliss steers my body and my fingers dig into his back as pleasure pulses through me.
He lowers me onto the bed before covering my body with his.
“Isaac,” I plead on a stuttering breath, wishing he’d let me see his face, but he keeps it pressed against me, even after ridding me of my vest. He kisses my navel and removes my jeans.
I can hardly cope.
He kisses me everywhere, peppering gentle and rough kisses and sucks on every available part of me.
My hands find his hair and tug, trying to get him to come back up so I can kiss him, but his hands push mine away.
“Let me touch you,” I beg, writhing beneath him as he kisses my calves from ankle to knee. I ache between my legs worse than ever before. I want to feel him there, guiding himself into me. I need him. “Please.”
There’s no response from him as he slides up my body, somehow kicking his trousers off as he goes. I don’t have a clue how he did that without his hands, but for some reason it arouses me and I almost ask him to do it again.
But then I feel him there and feel his lips against my neck once more and I forget all previous thoughts as he slides inside, making us both groan.
His hips retreat slowly before slapping against mine, making me cry out and dig my nails into his shoulder and hip.
The intensity is too much.
His hand grips my thigh and pulls it higher and higher with each thrust. The entire time he keeps his face buried in my neck.
I can’t take it. I’m flailing and thrashing, trying to get him deeper at the same time as trying to push him away to make the delicious burning stop. It’s not going anywhere. I’m stuck at that tingly place directly before orgasm. It’s driving me crazy.
I fe
el it in my nose, right down to the soles of my feet.
“Isaac,” I beg, for what I have no idea.
Then he delivers. He presses his mouth to mine and hammers into me, faster than ever before. I reach my climax with a loud cry. It burns and tears through me relentlessly, so good it’s almost painful. It’s so good I never want it to end at the same time that I want it to stop.
Isaac, seeming shocked by my mewling, pulls up, now thrusting slowly so he can see my eyes. He smiles a languid smile and kisses my lips.
I let out one last groan as I finally come to the end of my orgasm and he loses it. He tenses and clenches every part of his body, jerking as incoherent nonsense spills from his lips.
I love the feeling of him inside as he pulses. It’s my favourite part, knowing I’ve done that to him.
And then he collapses on top of me, breathing heavily and definitely satisfied as am I.
“I love you,” I tell him honestly, laying myself bare for him in all ways.
He doesn’t say it back but he does tense on top of me. It was subtle. If he hadn’t been pressed against me from shoulder to knee I’d not have noticed it.
It worries me.
The day floats by slowly, like a row boat against a tide with only one person doing the work. I’m that person today, the rower: pushing and pushing… getting nowhere.
Isaac is distant. He’s not meeting my eyes. He seems tense, down and almost like he’s keeping something from me. We make small talk but nothing significant and eventually go to bed, though not together. I go up, enjoy a nice shower and wait, naked in bed, for my husband to join me, my stressed husband who has the weight of the world on his shoulders right now.
I’m still frustrated that he didn’t tell me about Judith but I can understand his reasoning too. I’m also frustrated that he had a job interview in Boston that he didn’t tell me about. That’s something we need to discuss, but right now I’m too worried about his state of mind to focus on my own dramas. There’s something severely wrong with him, I just know it, and the more time I spend with him the more I see it in the depths of his dark blue eyes.
I just want… no, I just need for him to speak with me. Why can’t he just talk to me?
I know things are hard right now, harder than they’ve ever been. He’s lost his job and then there’s the fact he’s facing serious charges and possibly jail time. Then there’s the fact his mum is now in a home.
I’m not sure he realises that everything he’s feeling, I’m feeling too. These stresses are also my stresses and I need him to be strong.
He’s not, though. I can see him crumbling under the pressure. I see his mind constantly turning.
And so I wait, in our marital bed, quietly, on the verge of tears, for him to come to me.
He doesn’t.
It’s four in the morning when I wake up, cold and alone. I’m not sure what has woken me up as the dark house seems all quiet.
Sitting up, I rub my eyes and look around the room. I take note of Isaac’s shoes on the floor by the door; they weren’t there last night. He must have come upstairs and started to undress before changing his mind and going back down.
Everything in me burns with devastation. I can’t handle this.
I climb from bed and quickly pull on a pair of jeans and a shirt after donning a clean set of underwear. It’s early but I doubt I’ll be able to sleep again now that I’m up and I don’t want to be in my robe when I’m yelling at Isaac.
That’s my next plan - go to Isaac and yell at him, beg him to tell me what’s wrong.
With heavy feet I trudge downstairs, feeling my chest get tighter with each step as a panic attack threatens to torment me. I’m not sure why it comes and I don’t care. I stop for a second and take a few calming breaths to keep it at bay.
“Isaac?” I quietly tread into the living room. The only light is from the gentle, glowing ambers left in the fireplace amidst a pile of white coals and ash. It’s enough to light the outline of his body on the couch. I consider turning the light on, but I can’t bring myself to see him peacefully sleeping without me, illuminated. The reality of it would hurt too much. “Isaac?” Creeping towards him, I stop and kneel when I get to the couch and my knee taps against something cold, knocking it over. I grasp it with my hand and flick at it with my index finger.
It’s a glass bottle.
Probably whiskey.
This thought is confirmed when Isaac lets out a heavy breath in his comatose state. I smell it on his breath as it fans across the couch and up to me.
Something awful slices through me; it burns and stings like a real knife just cut my heart out. I reach out a trembling hand to touch him but stop an inch about his hair.
“You’ve been drinking… again,” I say, so quietly even I hardly hear myself.
He always drinks when I’m home. Does he drink this much when I’m not?
Why though?
I choke on a sob and take a breath to calm the burning behind my eyes.
I finally lay my hand on his chest but don’t move it. I don’t know how to. My life is spiralling out of control and I don’t know how to stop it.
“I love you.”
He doesn’t hear me; he’s too intoxicated and too far gone.
A shuddering breath leaves me and a lone tear falls from my eye. “But I’m starting to wonder if you love me back anymore.”
Isaac
I lie still, my breathing even as she rests her hand on my chest and keeps it there.
I heard her and her words broke me.
She just gave me an out. She just gave me an opportunity. Even in my drunken state I know I shouldn’t pass this up.
But… how?
I remain silent, my mind set on tomorrow.
I’ll deal with this tomorrow.
It has to be tomorrow. I just need this girl for one more night.
Chapter Twenty Six
Eloise
I awaken to warm arms around me, holding me tight, and a face buried in my hair.
Vaguely I remember climbing onto the couch with Isaac. I don’t remember feeling tired enough to fall asleep, though.
I do feel a little better now the sun is up and I’ve had a few good hours sleep.
I yawn loudly and stretch my body, streaked with diagonal lines of sunshine from the gaps in the blinds. It’s warmer than it was yesterday, or maybe that’s just my mood.
“Morning.” I roll and kiss Isaac’s neck. He sighs in his sleep and doesn’t help me at all as I try to shove his heavy body from mine. “I’ll make breakfast.”
I try to be as cheery as I can but it’s hard when I feel so… out of synch. I feel like my body isn’t my own, like I’m on the outside looking in. Maybe it’s because right now I don’t want to be in my body.
I pour the last of the cereal into two bowls and shove on my trainers that sit by the back door. With the cardboard box in hand, I creep across the damp garden, frowning at the sight of the grass. It’s about seven inches longer than it should be.
I chuck the box into the recycling tub and go to walk away, but I spot something by the wall next to the tub. Crouching low, I use a stick to dislodge the cigarette butt from the crack in the concrete slab.
An epiphany hits me as I stare at the cigarette end, a strong epiphany that suddenly lights up everything. I thought the sky opened up yesterday… I was wrong. The sky just opened up now and this makes a lot more sense.
I have been a fool.
I race back inside, forgetting to take my trainers off as I run into the room with only one goal in mind.
I pull Isaac by the arm until his top half falls off the couch and he shoots up, his blonde hair a tangled mess across his face. “The fuck…?” His eyes come to me and they soften. “Morning…”
“I remember something you told me a while ago, not long after we moved in,” I begin as he rubs his eyes and tries to focus on me. “About how you don’t get addicted but you go through phases where you obsess over something and th
en one day you wake up and realise it’s not what you want anymore.”
He rolls his eyes and then winces. “What’s your point, Elle? I have a headache.”
That hurts… way to sink the knife in, Isaac.
“I’m just thinking…” He stares at me impassively, dark rings under his cold eyes. “Maybe I was that obsession and maybe…” I want to be wrong, I really do. “You’ve woken up and realised that it’s not what you want anymore. That… that I’m not what you want anymore.”
His body tenses and his eyes come to mine. They hold an anger in them I haven’t seen in a while and it’s directed at me. “Is that what you think?”
Now I’m not so sure. He seems genuinely ticked off. “N… nothing else makes this much sense. I’m not stupid, Isaac… I know when somebody doesn’t like me.”
“I fucking love you! Everything I do is for you and for every fucker else!”
“So you say…”
“Piss off.” He turns away from me. “I’m not in the mood for this.”
My hands clench into fists as my body shakes with anger and sorrow. “You know something, Isaac? I’m not sure I’m in the mood for this either.” I need to get away from him, from this, just for a short while. Nothing good is coming out of this discussion and I fear I might break up with him out of anger and tell myself it’s a good idea while I do so.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means… gah!” I move to the door. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.”
“Elle, don’t walk away from me. I’m talking to you.”
“You just told me to piss off,” I laugh incredulously, stopping at the bottom of the stairs and gripping the banister tightly with my hand until my fingers ache and my knuckles turn white.
“We’re falling apart,” I say quietly, willing the tears to stay away. “I’m losing it. I’m losing you.”
He doesn’t argue. He just stands in the hall and stares at me with those beautiful round eyes, the colour of the ocean at night. His hair is tousled and a bit tangled, but it only makes him look more handsome. His body is toned and gorgeous under his thin vest and jeans. He’s mine… or he was mine.
Destruction: The Distraction Trilogy #2 Page 29