"I can’t believe it! You are made for each other!" laughed the woman, making us blush. "It is rare to find a close-knit couple like you. You have a way of behaving and interacting that is typical of longtime married couples. I noticed how easily you understand yourself with one glance, how one starts a speech and the other ends it without there being an interruption or disappointment. You are made for each other. Believe me. I am old and dazed, but I can recognize a perfect and well balanced couple like you. I don't know what you are waiting for to marry and have a tribe of children," laughed the woman good-naturedly with her husband.
"The work takes up so much time ..." I mumbled uncomfortably, trying to hide what I was feeling.
I looked at Audrey.
She still had her eyes downcast and her mouth drawn into a fake smile.
I could not see her well, but what Karen had told us had definitely had a big effect on her.
"Audrey, help me get the cake and make the coffee," I said, placing an arm around her shoulders.
It might seem like a gesture of affection, but in reality, the grip was very firm, in an attempt to help Audrey stand up.
When we got to the kitchen, I grabbed her by the arms.
"What's wrong?" I asked seriously.
"Nothing," she lied.
"Audrey, I need you," I said, using my trump card, which had always given me her help. "I really need you to see this dinner to the end," I repeated, seeing her still shaken.
"Okay," she whispered to me after a long moment.
At last, she seemed to be escaping the torment that was alienating her.
At the table, Audrey returned to being sunny and sociable.
At the end of the dinner, after more long chats, the Farlight spouses took their leave.
"Thanks for a wonderful evening," Karen said gratefully and happily.
"No, thank you. We'll be leaving early tomorrow, and we wanted to say goodbye."
"Why don't you stay two more days? Tomorrow is Saturday, take this weekend. The house is vacant, so you don't have to run back to the city so fast."
"We don't want to disturb you."
"Take some time for yourself, please. Work is not the only thing in life."
"Thanks," we thanked her in unison.
"And you, Zane, forgot to leave me the contract. If you do not mind, I will take the weekend to read it calmly and I will get back to you on Monday, okay?" Edmond said, leaving me stunned.
"Take all the time you need," I replied. By now I had understood that hurrying him was counterproductive.
In the end, I gave him the contract, and, after the last goodbyes, they left.
21
Audrey
I did it!
Yes, but at what price?
When Karen asked me those questions about me and Zane, she asked us if we were married and she said she was seeing us with children, I was about to cry.
She could not have known, but in my mind her words rang out as an accusation for letting our marriage fall apart, instead of struggling to keep it alive and try to fix it.
I had been cowardly, too insecure, and fragile, frightened, and unable to stop Zane and his climb to success.
Now I am paying the consequences.
Consequences I had always considered ambiguous in those four years, but that now, after that stay, had swept me like a tsunami, leaving me destroyed and so desperate that I gave into Zane and kissed him.
Oh my God! How I kissed him!
I had clung to that kiss in the hope of feeling the peace inside of me that I felt when we were together, and everything was fine.
What had I gained from it?
Nothing. I had only lost another piece of me, determined to take back what he still considered his own, instead of remaining anchored to the solitude that I had placed between me and the whole world.
It was hard to admit, but that is what it was: I wanted Zane. I wanted him. I wanted him with my whole being.
Did I love him?
Yes, I still loved him. A lot. Too much.
Being near him was consuming me, burning slowly.
And those kisses ...
For those kisses I would gladly have gone to hell.
"Why are you crying?" Zane's voice startled me.
I ran my hand over my face and realized that it was covered with tears, while I was lost in my thoughts, staring at the lake in front of me.
"I miss you," I confessed, unable to lie, as he looked at me worriedly and intensely.
"You too," Zane replied sweetly, surrounding me with one of his warm and tender hugs, which I returned with desperate fervor.
I needed him. To death.
I inhaled his scent deeply.
It was always the same.
The only one who had the power to charm me.
"I think ... I need you," I sighed, crying with my face buried in his chest.
"Is that what you think? I am sure. You need me. I can feel it," he replied, kissing my hair.
I held him even tighter, as if I feared he might leave me at any moment.
"What do you want, Audrey?"
"I don’t know."
Zane gently pulled my face upwards towards him.
Losing myself in his eyes only made me feel more and more vulnerable.
I tried to look down, but he would not let me.
Gently she wiped my face, then leaned over me, and kissed my cheeks, nose, mouth, neck ...
"What do you want, Audrey?" He repeated in that hoarse and seductive voice, a voice that could bend even the most iron wills.
"I want you," I whispered surrendering myself to my heart.
The kiss that followed my confession was so overwhelming that I had to hold on to his arms not to fall to the ground.
We kissed for a long time, hungry for each other, completely lost in a world that had always been ours alone.
I did not remember how and when we went upstairs to his room or who was the first to undress.
I only knew that not a single day seemed to have passed since I had last seen Zane's naked body.
He had always remained the same, with his light hair on his chest, the scar on his side that had happened at the age of seven, falling into a ditch, his wide shoulders ...
Nothing had changed.
Not even his reaction to my touch.
I knew how much he loved to feel my fingers sliding from the neck down to below the navel, how much he liked to be kissed at the base of the neck and close to his ears, to have my hands sink in his raven, wild hair ...
I recognized his moans and responses, just like when we were married, despite not having had sex for four years.
He also did not seem to have forgotten my weaknesses, my erogenous zones: the neck, the breasts, the hips, the crease behind the knees ...
I let his lips and his hands travel every inch of my body, letting myself be completely enveloped by the pleasure it gave me.
It was as if the body had waited for nothing more than that moment to free itself and return to life.
Soon our moans merged with each other, looking for total fulfillment.
When I felt his mouth open around my swollen nipples, while his hands slid lower and lower, between my thighs, I opened to him and, without needing to say anything, I felt him caress me intimately and finally penetrate me gently.
"I desire you so much," he whispered in my ear, laying on me and pushing his member towards ecstasy.
As soon as I felt its tip, I jumped, but Zane raised my hips slightly and, before I could react, I was completely overwhelmed by the fullness that he alone could give me.
It penetrated me deeply, on several occasions, until the pleasure became so unbearable that it could not be contained, and it pushed me towards the precipice of orgasm.
It was devastating and intoxicating. Impossible to describe.
Zane also came right after me.
"I didn't think it could be so ... intense," he murmured, collapsing close to me, but without freeing me
from his embrace.
I could hear the uneven rhythm of his heart as his labored breathing shook the curls on my forehead.
We stayed like that for a long time until we fell asleep. The one in the arms of the other.
It was a heavenly feeling.
22
Zane
I woke up with a start, soaked in sweat and trembling.
I had not had that nightmare for years and every time it left me in pieces, unable to breathe and think clearly.
Still troubled by the dream, I got out of bed.
I had lost track of time and space so much that I did not immediately realize that I was in the old house where I lived with Audrey when we were married.
I looked around: everything was just as I remembered it, even Audrey, naked and asleep after a night of endless sex.
I went to the bathroom to wash my face, but I felt like I was choking.
Flashes of the dream in which Audrey left me came back to life.
Me going home. She holding a suitcase while telling me she wanted a divorce. The shock. The fight. Her running away. I was begging her to come back. Despair. Then Rick and all the truth that surfaced. Audrey who cheated on me with him. The whole world that collapsed on me. Pain. Suffering. Emptiness.
I dressed quickly and went to the small terrace.
It was just dawn and the air was cold. A cure-all for my contracted, closed lungs.
I took a deep breath over and over, trying to erase those images from my mind.
I was still shaking, but I did not care.
I just wanted that nightmare to disappear from my thoughts.
I had not been this bad for three years.
At the time, after the divorce, those awakenings were routine, but now ...
It was a mistake to bring her back to my life.
I thought about those last three days.
The country house.
Dinner with the Farlights.
The closeness to Audrey who had rekindled the dormant emotions within me.
Sex.
We had made love many times, as if we were never satisfied with each other.
We had not gone away for a minute, spending all Saturday eating Karen's apple pie with plenty of coffee, the way I liked.
I seemed to have gone back years, when Audrey and I spent our free time in bed making love and eating the Gwen’s famous muffins, the owner of our trusted coffee shop.
Only Sunday, the day before, we had been forced to get out of bed and get ready to return to Chicago, after a long lunch in a nearby restaurant.
It had been a fun lunch in a familiar and warm atmosphere.
I had been fine. Truly fine. So much so, that when I had brought Audrey back to our old apartment, I did what I had promised myself never to do: go inside as long as she was in it.
Not only had I entered, but we had spent the rest of the day together, between Chinese take-away food and good sex.
How could I get involved so much?
How could I have forgotten the past?
I was happy, as I had not been in a long time.
But now the harsh reality had to be faced.
That nightmare had come back at the right time, just when I thought I could go back to living, to love ...
It was my reminder of all the harm Audrey had done to me and how long it had taken me to put together the pieces of my life torn apart by her betrayal.
I felt fear invade me, run through my veins, ready to get to the heart and destroy it.
Trembling and sweating, I went home.
That house…
After Audrey, I had been living in there for a year before I could afford my sterile and emotionless loft.
A year in which everything reminded me of our wedding, our happy moments as well as the sad ones.
I had even started drinking.
I drank to sleep, I drank to wake up, I drank to forget ...
It had taken me months to stop torturing myself like that.
Only work had given me the strength to take back the reins of my life and give me a purpose to return to living.
I thought of the Thunder Company.
My agency was everything for me.
I just had to make things right.
23
Audrey
How long has it been since I felt so happy and relaxed?
A long time, at least five years.
I woke up slowly, but when I reached out to Zane, I did not find him.
For a moment, I felt a shiver of uneasiness.
Why didn't you wake me up?
I looked at the time. It was actually late, and the weekend was over.
Without wasting time, I took a shower and got ready to go to work.
Hard to believe, I was only a couple of minutes late.
At my desk, the phone was already ringing.
In a moment, I took charge of the situation.
That is how I spent the first hour of work, although the only thing I wanted was to go to Zane, locked in his office.
Finally free, after a while, I wrote down all the boss's new commitments and went to him.
When I entered, I found Zane standing in front of his desk.
"Hey, hello," I greeted him hesitantly. He appeared worried.
"Audrey, I need to talk to you."
"Have you heard from the Farlights? Have they not accepted your proposal?" I tried to ask, searching for an answer in his cold and detached attitude.
"Audrey, you're fired," he said bluntly, leaving me stunned.
"What?! Why? Did I do something wrong?” I asked incapable of reasoning, as I felt the earth collapse under my feet.
"You will receive a generous settlement, which will help you for the next few months as you are looking for another apartment," he replied instead.
I was upset.
Where was the man who had loved and caressed me until a few hours ago?
Suddenly I felt humiliated, used, and mortified.
"Are you behaving like this because of what happened between us? Because we went to bed together? If that's why ..."
"I am letting you go immediately. Remember to take your things with you," he continued, as I tried to look for an answer in his icy gaze.
Zane's jaw contracted and, under that stiff posture, I could almost feel the heat of the fire blazing inside him. A fire of repressed anger.
"You are revengeful," I understood full of bitterness, but he did not even answer me. "And I, like a fool, let you make fun of me, making me believe that you still felt something for me, while instead you just wanted to send me packing. My God, Zane, I did not make you so sinister and unscrupulous. You have no idea how much I suffered because of our divorce ... "
"Did you suffer ?!" Zane suddenly exploded, raising his voice, and moving closer to me. All the rigidity and coldness seemed to have disappeared, to leave room only for that fire that burned him inside. "Do I have to remind you that you left me?"
"Our marriage was over months earlier when you started running out of time for the two of us," I yelled back, unable to control myself.
"Is that why you betrayed me? To get revenge for my absence? Audrey, you were my wife! I loved you! I would have done anything for you! Why do you think I spent all that time at work? I did it for you! Only for you! To make you proud of me! I lived with the constant fear of disappointing you, of not trying hard enough ... "
"You never let me down, Zane, you know! I know I have said it to you countless times. In reality, it was your hunger for success that you didn't want to disappoint."
"Of course, I wanted to be successful, but I wanted it for us, to give us a better future! We spent years barely getting to the end of the month, never doing anything for us ... I wanted to give you the life you wanted!"
"But I already had it! I had you!" I replied furiously.
"Apparently, however, I wasn't enough. You ended up in Rick's arms!"
"It's not true! My God, Zane, I don't know how to tell you anymore: I n
ever betrayed you. Rick was a friend."
"You're a liar! I know you two were involved. It was he himself who told me when he brought me the resignation letter, and then you were acting strange in those months. It was obvious you were hiding something."
"He lied to you."
"Do you want me to believe that you never slept together? Not even after the divorce? Audrey, do you think I'm that stupid? "
"Rick was just a close friend, a person who was close to me during the most difficult moments and with whom I confided."
"I was your husband! You had to come to me to confide in! Not him! “He shouted out of his anger.
"How could I come to you after you kicked me out of the agency?"
"I never kicked you out and you know it."
"Year after year you took everything away from me. From full time, I switched to part time and, in the end, to nothing ... It was you who didn't want me here anymore! Maybe it wasn't me who was sleeping with someone else!"
"You're crazy! I would have rather died than betray you! After the first two years, the Thunder and Larson Company had started to mesh well, and we hired the first employees if you remember correctly."
"I remember that very well."
"Then you'll also remember how much you complained from Kreinberg about the grueling hours and why you never had time to do anything else, like walking in the park, reading a book, going to the hairdresser ... I just wanted you to have time for those things. That's why I convinced you to work only part time. I did it because I loved you, even if it would have meant that I had to take on your responsibilities too."
"You should not have! The agency belonged to both! I loved working with you, for us!"
"I did it for you! Because I wanted your happiness! I sacrificed my whole self for love. I also got to the point of taking matters in my own hand and leaving you alone."
"Part time wasn't enough, was it? No, you asked me not to go to work anymore if you remember correctly. During our last year of marriage, you no longer wanted me by your side! That was a low blow!" I reminded him.
"Maybe you forget the reason for this decision."
No, don't say that!
"You wanted a son! I wanted it too, but at the time you were convinced that it was the perfect time to have a baby. I admit that I was gone a lot during that last year, but I had a contract with Fairchild Industries, which would finally lead us to that much desired status of quality and prestige. I was trying to give us and our future child a better future. It was a stroke of luck that it never came."
The Sweet Poison of Revenge Page 8