Maybe It's Real

by North, Isabel

  “I’m not running.” Owen was on his feet. “But I do have to go. Been a long day. Stuff to do. Laundry. Clean the bathroom. Early shift.”

  Janet let the excuses wind down, marched to the kitchen for his leftovers, and hugged him hard as he said goodbye at the front door.

  “You’re allowed to be happy, sweetheart. We all want that for you. Don’t overthink things and talk yourself out of it. Okay?”

  “Would I do that?”

  She squeezed him again. “We love you, you know? Unconditionally.”

  “I know, Mom. I love you guys, too.”

  * * * *

  Once home, Owen grabbed a shower then sat on his couch with an unopened bottle of beer. His phone was in his hand and he fiddled with it restlessly. he gazed at the picture that had thrilled Janet and Bruce so much.

  He sighed and braced his forearms along his thighs, tapping the phone to his forehead.

  He was stalling.

  Owen had had big plans to never talk to Rob Calhoun again, and yet here he was. About to call the man who’d played a starring role in the end of Owen’s marriage.

  They’d been partners for five years. How long had the affair lasted? How soon after Rob entered their lives had it started?

  Had Owen, the detective, been oblivious to what was going on under his nose for that long?

  Or had it been a short fling, one and done?

  These were the questions that kept Owen awake at night. He was used to them. After three years, they were familiar friends.

  He didn’t have to do this. He’d managed to live with not knowing for this long. But he wanted a chance with Chloe.

  He needed it.

  He dialed.

  “Calhoun,” was all Owen said when his ex-partner picked up.

  There was a beat of silence at the other end. “Owen? Owen! Great to hear from you, man. How you been?”

  “Fantastic,” Owen said.

  “What’s up? We haven’t talked since… And you didn’t even say goodbye? I showed up at work one day, and your desk was empty and you were gone. What the hell, Owen? I called you.”

  He had. He’d called a lot.

  Owen had blocked his number.

  “What’s going on with you, why are you returning my calls now? Hey. You okay? You are okay, right?”

  Fuck. He had to ask that, didn’t he, and sound like the answer mattered.

  Rob Calhoun was a self-centered cheating prick, but that wasn’t all he was. He was also, sporadically, a good guy.

  Nope. Not a good guy, but not a complete asshole, either. Because that would make things too easy. It would make hate easy.

  Owen had once considered them friends. That thinking had changed after he’d found out that his “friend” was sleeping with his wife, of course.

  After experiencing the good humor, strength of spirit and unflagging support of Jim Cortez, in the face of Owen’s surliness and his hard-fought battle to remain aloof, Owen had come to the realization that he and Rob hadn’t ever been more than cordial acquaintances who worked together.

  “I need to talk to you,” Owen said.

  “Cool. You want to meet for a beer or something? What about the Grill? It’ll be like old times.”

  “No.”

  “Why not? C’mon, meet me for a beer. We’ll catch up.”

  “I don’t want to catch up, Rob. I want to move on. Before I can do that, I need to clear something up, and you’re the one who’s gonna help me do it.”

  “Okay. Sure.” Rob’s voice was cautious.

  “I want to talk about May.”

  “Ah.”

  Owen remembered that day at the cemetery with painful clarity, the day he’d lost May for the third and final time.

  He’d parked his car in the lot and sat with the windows down, breathing in the damp morning air and listening to a bird sing high and clear for the better part of an hour.

  He’d buried May six months earlier, and he didn’t have a damn thing else to do that day beyond stand at her grave, so he decided to sit and listen until the bird stopped singing.

  Meaning it was dumb luck that he was still there when he watched his partner pull into the far side of the lot.

  Owen’s first thought was that Rob had been trying to get in touch with him and his cell phone had run out of battery, or perhaps he’d set it to vibrate and forgotten.

  He checked the phone. No missed calls, no notifications, and the settings were fine.

  By then, Rob had gotten out of the car, a bunch of flowers clutched in his hand. He looked at the flowers with a lost expression before he tossed them into the back of the car, slammed the door, and strode off into the cemetery, his shoulders tight.

  Owen gave it a minute and followed him.

  He didn’t join Rob at the graveside. Didn’t quite trust himself for that. He didn’t trust anything or anyone at all right then, he realized with a hot sour burst of emotion, and wondered if he ever would again.

  He stopped on the path and stood, jaw set, while Rob hunkered down in an awkward crouch by the gravestone. Rob rested a hand on the grass to brace himself, and his head drooped.

  Eventually, Rob straightened and turned. The abrupt double take as his horrified eyes clashed with Owen’s would have been comical, if it hadn’t been so very unfunny.

  Rob didn’t say anything. He opened his mouth to, but something in Owen’s face made him close it again.

  They stared at each other across the distance, then Owen turned on his heel and walked away.

  He’d put in for a transfer the next day.

  He’d never spoken to Rob again.

  Until now.

  “D’you want me to apologize, Owen? I’ll do it. I’m sorry. I’m sorry, okay? It was a mistake.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “I didn’t seek her out or anything, but…it happened. You weren’t ever supposed to know. It was nothing. I thought it was the ten-year itch, I was your partner…”

  The balls on this guy. “You did it for me, huh?”

  Rob gave an uneasy laugh. “I don’t think even I can believe that one. But… shit, Owen, May was unhappy. She was fucking miserable with you. I thought, maybe let her have some fun with me, and you know what I’m like with women, right?”

  “Yeah.” He was a cold son of a bitch once he’d gotten what he wanted from a woman.

  “That way, she’d get the grass-is-greener crap out of her system, realize what a good thing she had with you, things would go back to normal, and no one would get hurt.”

  “Are you telling me you didn’t know about the divorce?”

  The silence at the other end of the phone answered his question.

  When Rob spoke, any hint of cajoling had vanished from his tone. “She went through with it?”

  “I got the papers after the accident.”

  Rob breathed heavily. “Okay, you have to believe me about this, at least. I did not ask her to divorce you. I didn’t want her to do it. It never even crossed my mind she’d come up with the crazy idea in the first place, I sure as hell never gave her any indication we were a real thing. We were never real. When she told me she’d hired a lawyer, I did my best to talk her out of it. The moment she got serious, I stopped fucking her.”

  Jesus.

  “I told her to stay with you. I can’t do that monogamy shit. I don’t want to. I’m not built that way.”

  “So she wasn’t divorcing me in preparation for becoming Mrs. Calhoun?”

  “No!”

  Owen gritted his teeth. “Then why did she go through with it, even when you two were over?”

  “She must have meant it when she said she didn’t want to be married to you anymore. It wasn’t about me, Owen, d’you see? Me and May, we were together, what, six months?”

  Owen closed his eyes tight.

  Rob continued, “And we were done about a month before she died. She wasn’t leaving you for me. She was just leaving you.”

  “Why?” The one question he
wanted, needed, the answer to.

  “I don’t know, I—”

  “You’re a smart guy. Guess.”

  “Well, this was May, right? Girl loved attention. Thrived on it. And Owen, she didn’t get it from you.”

  “I gave her plenty—”

  “You gave the job plenty. You were always at work. Always working late. You’d be at your desk long after I’d gone home.”

  Owen had to wonder how many of those times Rob had left Owen at his desk and driven to his—Owen’s—house.

  To May.

  “You didn’t have time for her. She got sick of being second best. All I know is, she told me that your marriage didn’t even feel real anymore. It was like you were roommates who ran into each other every now and then.”

  His words hit Owen hard.

  Roommates. He’d had the same thought.

  May had called him on working late a hundred times. They’d argued about it.

  He’d listened, dammit. He hadn’t ignored her, or failed to pay attention to her concerns, or her demands. He’d made demands of his own. He wasn’t the only one who worked late. May was the VP of a prestigious PR company, and she was always going out of town for events.

  “Hey, it can’t have been the biggest surprise in the world, right?” Rob was still talking. “You’re like me, Owen.”

  “The hell does that mean?”

  “Men like us, we’re not designed for marriage or monogamy.”

  He was wrong. Owen knew that much. The brief time after May when he’d engaged in casual sex? He’d never felt less himself. Owen was a one-woman man, to his very core.

  “I’m nothing like you, Calhoun,” he said with conviction. “I’m not led around by my dick.”

  Rob laughed, amused. “I know that. Five years, I watched you pass up opportunity after opportunity to get it on with all those hot pieces who want to bang a badge. That’s my wheelhouse. The reason you’ll never have a good marriage with a woman is because you’re already married to the job. The cases that stop you going home on time, making your dinner date on time, taking vacations, showing up at parties? Those cases are your revolving door of girlfriends. Where the hell are you gonna fit an actual real woman in there? No woman would agree to be second best.”

  “You’re wrong.”

  Chloe could never be second best.

  “I’m not wrong. You wanted to find out what May thought about your marriage, why she was leaving you? That’s why. She knew you would never change. She knew you’d never be the husband she wanted or needed. Sorry, Owen. You and May? It wasn’t about her, or me. It’s all on you.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Chloe opened the door to an exhausted and stressed-out Owen. His skin was pale, the lines around his eyes deep, and his mouth set. His dark brows were lowered.

  Wow. She hadn’t seen him quite this tense for some time.

  She tilted her head to the side, and when he didn’t say anything, not even hello, she remarked, “I am one hundred percent innocent, detective, so if you’re waiting for me to fill this chilling silence with a desperate confession, you’ll be standing there for a while.”

  His face relaxed by a minute degree. “No one is one hundred percent innocent.”

  “What about puppies?”

  He smiled, and his shoulders lowered. “Clearly you’ve never had a dog.”

  “Not yet. My parents wouldn’t let me or Fraser have anything bigger than a hamster when we were growing up. After that, I never lived anywhere big enough for the kind of dog I want. I have plans, though.”

  “When the day comes that you have a puppy of your own, you’ll think back to this moment and you’ll wonder how you could have ever been so naive. Puppies are great. They are also tiny packages of pure destruction when the mood takes them.”

  “I’ll remember you told me so.”

  “You do that.”

  “Are you coming in?” Chloe asked softly.

  His eyes heated, but he shook his head. “Better not.”

  “Still working?”

  “No.”

  He wasn’t coming in. He wasn’t making any move to leave, either.

  “What’s wrong, Owen?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “I need to apologize about the other night.”

  “I am wracking my brains here, but I can’t come up with a single thing you need to apologize for.”

  “I shouldn’t have stayed,” he said, sounding frustrated.

  “Why not?” Owen wasn’t the only one who sounded frustrated.

  “It wasn’t fair.”

  “How was it not fair? Yes, you’re a massive cover hog, and don’t get me started on your repeated sleeping attempts to climb on top of me, but that’s nothing to beat yourself up about.”

  “We’re friends, right?”

  “Are you serious? Yes!”

  “Okay, then asking to stay with you, sleeping with you… It wasn’t fair. I was manipulating the boundaries of our friendship and our, whatever it is, our fake relationship.”

  “I suppose you could look at it like that. If you wanted to be really freaking hard on yourself. And if you set aside the fact I was more than okay with it, which I thought I’d made more than clear at the time. Hate to break it to you, Owen, but you didn’t push or talk me into anything I didn’t want to do.” Chloe took a deep breath. “In fact, I’d have been happier if you’d forgotten all about boundaries and asked for whatever you wanted.”

  Owen stared at her.

  “Because I’d have said yes.”

  Owen didn’t reply.

  She took in the quality of his stare, and her nerves prickled. His eyes were focused on her with searing intensity, and the tension in his body had shifted from stressed to predatory. It was as if he was listening to her, tracking her, with every part of him.

  She swallowed hard. “I’d have said I’m yours if you want me.”

  For god’s sake, man, do something.

  Why wouldn’t he do something?

  Chloe’s bravado deserted her in a cold rush. Wrapping her arms around her middle, she stepped back.

  Owen let out a hard breath and stepped forward.

  “Fraser home?” he said roughly.

  “No. He moved out. Yesterday.”

  “Good.”

  He crossed the threshold of her apartment and booted the door shut behind him. A hard hand curled around the back of her neck and drew her up onto her toes to meet his mouth as it crashed down on hers.

  Chloe stumbled against him and the heat of his body blasted away the cold doubt, soaking into her skin all the way down to her bones.

  For a moment all he did was hold her to him with that one hand as their lips touched. His parted and she felt the graze of his teeth over her bottom lip in a soft, claiming bite that pulsed through her.

  “Chloe,” he breathed.

  His fingers firmed as they slid to the side of her neck and his free hand came up to tug the elastic out of her hair. As her hair came down, Owen stopped holding back, and he kissed her.

  Really kissed her. His tongue, hot and wet, slid over hers in uncompromising demand. His hands were hard on her hips, guiding her backward, still kissing her.

  He pressed her against a wall—where, the living room? Yes, the living room—and pushed a thigh between hers. He nipped at her bottom lip again, then her jaw, then he dragged his mouth to her neck.

  “Owen,” she gasped, “what—”

  He pulled her T-shirt up and pushed his hands down the back of her jeans.

  Chloe hissed and her hips bucked at the shock of his palms cupping her butt.

  “Yes?” he asked. “You want this?”

  “Oh, yes. What about you?” Chloe unzipped his jeans. “You want this?”

  Owen unzipped her jeans. “That’s a yes from me.”

  She got to work on his shirt, slipping the buttons free one after the other in rapid succession. He swatted her hands away and s
tripped it off, swiftly followed by the T-shirt he wore underneath.

  With his jeans undone and hanging low on his hips, his brown hair mussed and his lips red from her kisses, Owen just about drove her crazy with desire.

  He studied her, his harsh breathing picking up. He raised a hand and traced her collarbone with a gentle fingertip, gaze intent. He stroked from one side to the other, then back to the center. His finger traveled up her neck, making something deep inside her twist, then he flicked her lightly on the chin.

  “Hey,” Chloe said, and reached out to flick him back.

  Laughing, he caught her hand before she made contact. He dragged her T-shirt up and let her go long enough to whip it over her head. Before it had even hit the floor, he had her jeans down to her ankles.

  He dropped to his knees, holding her to the wall as he kissed her stomach, then licked a wet stripe above the waistband of her panties, from hip to hip.

  Chloe yelped and squirmed, but he had her pinned. His mouth opened over a hipbone and he bit her gently.

  “You like biting,” she said.

  “Biting, sucking. Kissing. Licking. Big fan of anything oral.”

  Her knees went weak. She looked down into his chestnut eyes and inhaled a sharp breath at the promise in them. “Um…”

  Holding her gaze, he lowered his mouth to her stomach again. He hooked the waistband of her panties and dragged them down an inch, kissing the tender skin revealed.

  An inch more.

  Chloe’s hands sank into his thick hair, and Owen grinned before he veered to the side and kissed her thigh.

  He moved his way down, dropping kisses first on one thigh then the other, until he couldn’t reach any lower. Then he grabbed one of her ankles and lifted it off the floor.

  Chloe wobbled. He had her sneaker off and tossed over his shoulder before she lost her balance. In short order he removed the other sneaker, then her jeans, and Chloe was standing before him in her underwear.

  “God, Chloe.” Any teasing vanished as he took her in from head to toe. “Beautiful.”

  “Thanks.” She fiddled with the rose-pink bow between the bra cups. “I got it on sale at Nordstrom.” She’d been going for flippant, but it came out sounding breathless and irritatingly uncertain.