Cityscape Affair Series: The Complete Box Set

by Hawkins, Jessica

“And David doesn’t?” Gretchen asked. “Did he ask about the scar?”

  I looked back at her. “So many times that I couldn’t avoid the question. David doesn’t let me get away with deflecting. I love and hate that I can’t keep anything from him—that he pushes for what he wants.” I tugged on my earlobe. “But as you can see, that kind of persistence has a dark side.”

  Gretchen blinked, her blue eyes wide. “So, hang on. David knows about the hospital? And your mom? The divorce?”

  “Yes. I mean, there are layers we never got to, of course, but he would’ve gotten there. You know? He just peels away those layers, asking for more and more.”

  Gretchen put her head in her hands a moment.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked.

  She sighed. “Nothing. I’m just in shock. I didn’t know you needed that, Liv. I didn’t know someone out there could get you to open up. Could be to you what Bill . . . what Lucy and I couldn’t.”

  “Gretch.” I took her wrists, pulling her toward me for a hug. I squeezed her. “I make it hard. I know I do. I’m sorry. If nothing else, David taught me to open a little more. I will try harder. With you, and with Bill.”

  “But,” she whispered, “what if Bill isn’t the one you’re supposed to be with?”

  “He is,” I said automatically. I’d had my shot with David. Even just now, in his office, there’d been a moment I could’ve gone to him. Let him explain. But my fear of the unknown was still too strong. And my fear of the known—of what my parents had endured for love—was even stronger. “He has to be.”

  She sighed, drawing back, and took my hand. “So what happens now? Do you need a place to stay?”

  “Bill and I have a lot to talk about when I get home,” I said. “But obviously, I couldn’t tell him all this about David. So, thank you for listening. Just getting it off my chest will help me and Bill so much.”

  “I can’t believe you’ve been going through all this by yourself,” she said. “It means a lot that you told me.”

  “I know,” I said with a smile I hoped looked more convincing than it felt.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Wait. Now that it’s over with David a second time . . . does this mean you’re going to turn into a mega-bitch again?”

  I laughed. “Like you said, I was holding too much inside. And I had unfinished business with David before. Not anymore.”

  She crinkled her nose, lowering her voice as if someone might be listening. “I feel like I should ask. Are you sure you don’t even want to consider the possibility of trying things with David? For real?”

  “It’s not that simple,” I said. “It’s not like I can try David on and return him if it doesn’t work. And Bill and I . . . we’re trying. Or at least, we were.”

  “Trying to what?” Gretchen asked, zero recognition on her face.

  “You know. Trying. I’m supposed to stop birth control.”

  Gretchen’s hand flew to her throat. “Wait—what? Surely you don’t mean that.”

  “Bill doesn’t want to wait any longer, and honestly, why am I waiting? I’m staying with Bill. So it’s going to happen. I mean, unless the affair changed his mind, but I don’t think it will.”

  “I’ve never heard you say you want kids, Liv,” she said. “Not once.”

  “I don’t think I know what I want,” I said slowly. “Maybe I was using David to sabotage the life I built for myself. The one that’s best for me.”

  She bit at a hangnail, staring at me. “I’ll support whatever you decide,” she said finally. “You are my oldest friend, and I love you.”

  We hugged, and I told her I loved her, too. Having broken down barriers with first Mack and now Gretchen, I was beginning to feel more like my normal self again. David was done. Bill knew the truth. We could all finally move forward. The problem was, none of that quelled the growing pit in my stomach.

  22

  As I arrived home to a dark apartment, I switched on the kitchen light and nearly jumped out of my skin. Bill leaned against a counter littered with empty beer bottles. “Bill?”

  “Yeah.”

  I hung my purse on a dining table chair and removed my coat, staring at him as I tried to gauge his mood. I waited for him to speak.

  “Where’ve you been?” he asked without looking at me.

  “At Gretchen’s.”

  “How do I know that?”

  It was a fair question, but it made me feel like a criminal nonetheless. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess you have no choice but to believe me.”

  With red-rimmed eyes, he held out his hand. “Give me your phone.”

  “What? Bill—”

  “Give it to me.”

  I dug into my purse and handed it over. I had nothing to hide. I’d deleted my text to David and had erased any presence of him from my phone. But even if Bill found e-mails or forgotten evidence as he scrolled, I didn’t imagine things could become much worse than they were about to get.

  “If you were with Gretchen, why’d you call her half an hour ago?” he asked, holding up the screen to show me my call history.

  “She couldn’t find her phone, so I called it.” When he didn’t respond, I added, “It fell between the couch cushions. Ask her if you like.”

  He set the phone down. “Who was it?”

  I swallowed dryly and stared at my hands. I’d known this question was coming. What was the right response? What was fair? To hurt him with the truth or spare him with a lie?

  I didn’t know. But I’d had enough lying—it was too hard and exhausting.

  “Who?” he yelled.

  I looked up. “David Dylan.”

  He snapped his gaze to mine. “David . . . who? Who is that?” He paused, and I could practically see his brain piecing it together. “Andrew’s friend?” His voice faltered. “The architect?”

  “Yes.”

  Bill turned away from me and paced to the other side of the kitchen. Stopping at the fridge, he took out a Coors and twisted off the bottle cap. “That could have been our future home.”

  Oak Park. “I know,” I said.

  He tossed the bottle cap on the counter, then leaned back against the sink, as far as he could get from me. “What if we’d bought it, Olivia? He would have been in our home, where our children live, where we have dinner every night. Where we make love,” he said through gritted teeth. “For God’s sake, what the hell were you thinking?”

  For once, I’d been feeling, not thinking. But it would be a cop-out to say I’d been swept away in the heat of the moment. I had made the decision to let David into my life. To let him catch me. To let my feelings develop—and to fuck him. “You’re right. You are absolutely right.”

  “So everyone knows then?”

  I frowned. “No. Lucy and Andrew knew nothing about this.”

  “But Gretchen does.” He shook his head in reproach. “I always knew she was a bad influence on you. I should’ve put a stop to that.”

  “She’s my best friend,” I said.

  “The night he helped you with Alvarez,” Bill said over me. “Was that a cover-up?”

  “Nothing happened that night.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that?”

  “It was the next night.”

  His face went blank. We stared at each other, and I wondered if he could hear my pounding heart from where he stood. “Isn’t that when Davena died?” he asked.

  My voice broke. “Yes.”

  “Huh. I’m a fucking idiot, aren’t I?” He scoff-laughed. “All this time I thought you were mourning. Unbelievable.”

  “Of course I was mourning Davena,” I said, wiping my sweaty palms on my slacks. “You know how close we were.”

  “You let me believe,” he said, setting down the untouched beer bottle with a clink, “for almost five months, that this was because of her death. You’re in the wrong profession, baby. You should be an actress.”

  “This hasn’t been easy, trust me.”

  “Look, I knew when I mar
ried you that you were still dealing with shit from your childhood, even though,” he paused, holding up his palms, “it’s been years. I knew that you had . . . issues that run deep. But I’m only beginning to realize just exactly how cold you are.”

  A horrified feeling took over. There it was, the pedestal Bill had put me on—teetering underneath me, tipping . . . and falling, crashing to the ground and smashing into a million pieces.

  He shook his head at the floor. “What did I do to deserve this? Haven’t I been good to you?”

  My chest threatened to cave in. “You do not deserve any of this,” I said, enunciating each word. “I am so sorry, Bill. I made a terrible decision.”

  “Decisions.” He picked up his drink and took a swig. “I know all about crimes of passion in my line of work, and this wasn’t one. Intent matters, Liv. When was the second time?”

  I worked my jaw side to side. I didn’t want to get into details. Part of me secretly hoped Bill wouldn’t, either—we’d built our marriage on skating over the gritty parts of our relationship. Was it fair for him to break that silent contract now?

  Yes. Because I’d broken it first.

  “You said it happened twice,” he said. “When was the second time?”

  “When you went fishing with Hugh.”

  “That was two weeks ago.”

  I nodded.

  “I’m assuming that was also with the architect.”

  My mouth dropped open. “Of course. I’m not running around town with anyone I can find.”

  “Why him?” he asked. “It’s so goddamn predictable. Why did it have to be someone like him?”

  “It didn’t have to be anyone,” I said. “It just—happened.”

  “Who initiated it?”

  I made a soft noise as I stalled, racking my brain for a response that wouldn’t make things worse. “I guess he was the first to vocalize it.”

  “I don’t even know what that means.”

  I sucked it up and tried for blunt honesty. “He initiated it,” I said, “but it was my choice in the end.”

  “Did he know you were married?”

  “Yes.”

  Bill jutted his chin, inspecting the mouth of his beer bottle. “A real class act. I guess when you have money and looks, you think you can do whatever the hell you want.”

  Despite the blatant slap in the face David had delivered only hours earlier, my instinct was to defend him. I bit back that urge and nodded instead.

  “I’m going to make sure he knows that isn’t the case,” Bill said. “I could sue him for this, you know.”

  “Sue him? Bill, please,” I said. “I’m here, ready to take the blame. It’s not worth involving David—he knows what he did was wrong.”

  “You talk to him?”

  “I just meant that—”

  “When was the last time you talked to him?”

  I shifted against the counter. “He knows that you know the truth. Because I told him.”

  “So, today. You spoke to him today.”

  My stomach knotted. This wouldn’t work if I didn’t try to be as honest as possible. “Yes. After work, before Gretchen’s, I stopped by his office to tell him.”

  After a short pull from his beer, Bill asked, “Did you fuck him?”

  “No,” I cried, running my hands through my hair. “I just told him it was—I thought he should know.”

  Bill turned away to lean his elbows on the counter and massage his face.

  I crossed the kitchen, edged closer to him, and put my hand on his back. “It didn’t—” I paused. When was the time to be honest, and when was the time to lie? I struggled with my thoughts a moment as I stared at his back. “It didn’t mean anything, Bill.” A lie. “You and I can start fresh from here.”

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said into his hands. “How am I supposed to move on from this?”

  “I don’t know. I wish I did.” I gulped. “It’s something we have to do together.”

  “I think you should sleep on the couch tonight,” he said without looking at me.

  In a way, I was relieved. We each needed our own space tonight. “That’s fine,” I agreed softly.

  He pushed off the counter and left the kitchen.

  Later, I pulled linens down from the hall closet. When I passed by the bedroom, I heard him crying. I flattened one hand against the door and the other over my aching heart. He’d truly always been a good husband to me, even if we had our problems. He didn’t deserve this.

  Once I’d made up the sofa and turned out the lights, I flipped back and forth on the abrasive couch. I wondered how long it would take us to move on from the affair—until I realized that we might not ever. It would always remain there between us, no matter how much time passed, a permanent mark on our life together. I hadn’t truly grasped the irrevocability of my betrayal until now. This would never go away.

  I wanted to regret those moments with David, but I couldn’t bring myself to. During the months after our night in his apartment, I had chased every detail away when it threatened. Remembering was torture.

  Now, alone in the dark, I fought to remember. Suddenly, forgetting the details scared me. I clung to them so I could glue them back together like pieces of a shattered vase. The way adoration filled his eyes when he looked at me. Chills lit over my body as I remembered how adoration would melt into lust. I let that look warm me on the cold brown couch.

  * * *

  “Why?” Bill asked the next night.

  He’d insisted on picking me up from work, but had avoided me through dinner, and as I’d returned to the couch for another night. He hadn’t spoken to me until now, in the middle of the night. I didn’t know what time it was as he perched on the edge of the couch, rousing me with his one-word question. Why?

  I rubbed my eyes and examined his silhouette in the dark. I sniffed the air. “Have you been smoking?” I asked, the words grating from my throat. Bill had quit after our wedding and hadn’t had a cigarette in years as far as I knew.

  He shifted. “Just answer the question.”

  “Why . . . ?” I repeated. I didn’t think I could ever explain David and me. Even if I were courageous enough to try, it would never make sense to Bill. “I was attracted to him. When Davena died, I felt . . . threatened. Scared. Life is so short. I didn’t know it at the time, but I panicked. I was attracted to him,” I said again. “That night, he was there.”

  “And I wasn’t.”

  I wanted to reassure him that if he had been, things might have been different, but it would be a lie. The events leading up to that first night had made me reckless. But it would have happened anyway, I knew. The proof was evident every time I was near David.

  “Things were perfect before,” he said into the darkness. “This will change everything.”

  “Bill,” I said, hedging. “Things were not perfect.”

  “We’re happy, though. We don’t argue, we’re still intimate, I respect you. I don’t abuse you. We don’t eat dinner together as much as we used to, but that’s temporary until work settles down. We have good friends. When was the last time we fought?”

  “I know that to you, it doesn’t make sense. But there are . . .” I proceeded carefully. “Other things that played a part in all of this. You put so much pressure on me about the future.”

  “But you knew this was coming,” he said. “The house, a baby—you knew.”

  “And because I knew, I feel guilty that I’m not ready.”

  “I can’t believe we’re discussing this once again,” he said.

  I sat up against the arm of the couch and flipped on the bedside lamp. “Because you dismiss my feelings, like you are now. Don’t do that.”

  “What am I supposed to do? Tell you that it’s okay you don’t want kids? That it’s okay to continue living like college students in this shoebox? Sure, honey, let’s wait until we’re forty to decide.” He put his elbows on his knees. “No, Liv. It’s unacceptable. It’s impossible. You don’t know
what you want.”

  “I’m not saying I’ll never want those things, but I don’t feel that way now,” I explained. “And when you tell me what I want and ignore my concerns, I shut down.”

  He sounded far away when he responded, “I hope you aren’t trying to turn this on me.”

  “I’m not, but you asked why I did this. I’m telling you that sometimes, I don’t feel that I have your support.”

  “How can you say that to me?” His expression fell. “I’ve always supported you. You’re the one who’s emotionally unavailable.”

  I cocked my head. “And you love that. It means not having to deal with the real issues.”

  He withdrew, clearly taken aback. “I love that? Don’t be ridiculous.”

  “Yes, you do,” I said, emboldened by a truth that had gone unspoken too long. “You see what you want to see. It’s easier to ignore the problems.”

  “What problems?”

  “Problems between us. My issues growing up. My fear to open up, to move forward in this marriage.”

  “Hang on a sec,” he said. “You’ve made it clear over the years that you hate when I ask too many questions. You don’t talk about your parents’ divorce, period.”

  “Then make me tell you!” I pleaded. “God, Bill, all those times I brushed you off, you never cared enough to try harder. Things are always enough for you, and . . . they aren’t for me anymore.”

  “This doesn’t make any fucking sense. You don’t make any sense. Give me one example of how I’ve not cared about what you have to say.”

  “I’m not going to play games and go tit for tat—”

  “Tell me,” he yelled, his words tearing through the silent night. “You want me to ask questions, well, I’m asking. Tell me.”

  “My scar!” My hands shook as I made two fists. “How could you have never asked about it—not once?”

  He sat in silence, watching me with wary eyes. When he spoke again, his voice was low and uneven. “I knew it had to do with the night your dad left your mom. And you never want to discuss the divorce.”

  “You never wanted to know where it came from? Your own wife?” I asked. “It never occurred to you that it was a source of pain and sadness and regret? You never wanted to know what it represented? To make me tell you, no matter how much it hurt me?”