by Donya Lynne
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said, standing up. “I guess I didn’t see the sign that said, ‘Hands off, Karma. You can only look where I tell you to look and touch what I allow you to touch.’ My mistake.”
He frowned. “That’s not what I said.”
She swiped her hand toward his duffel bag. “If you didn’t want me to see that stuff, then you shouldn’t have left your bag open right next to mine. Or you should have put it away so I wouldn’t see it.” Tears stung the backs of her eyes. She felt betrayed and wounded, but worst of all, she felt like an inconvenience. Not even thirty minutes ago, she had felt like she belonged here, comfortable and welcome. Now she felt like an intruder.
Mark was still frowning but didn’t say anything.
“Great.” She threw up her hands and turned away so he wouldn’t see her cry. “This has turned into a great trip. Thanks for the awesome time, Mark.” She grabbed her bag, zipped it up, and turned for the door.
“Where are you going?” He took an urgent step forward then stopped, scowling at her bag.
“I’m going home. At least there I don’t have to worry about poking my nose into the wrong nook or cranny.” She shoved past him.
“Karma, wait. It’s getting late. You shouldn’t—”
She spun and held up her hand. “Thank you for your concern, Mark, but I found my way here just fine. I can find my way out, too.”
“Karma—”
But she didn’t stick around to hear what he had to say, and, after figuring out the deadbolts on the door, swung it open, stormed out, and slammed it shut behind her. This had been a side of Mark she had never seen, and she hadn’t liked it. His accusations had stung and made her feel like she was somehow inferior.
That Carol woman must have been some kind of special for him to guard her engagement and wedding rings more acutely than a lioness guards her cubs.
Karma stepped into the elevator and choked back a sob. At least now she knew where she stood. For all his words to the contrary, she was nothing more than a post to scratch his itch on. It looked like her dad had been right about Mark after all.
* * *
Mark stared numbly at the door. Had Karma really just left?
When he had come out of the bathroom and seen Karma wearing Carol’s engagement ring, a dreadful chill iced his blood. She shouldn’t have touched them. She was too pristine to be tainted by such poisonous objects. To see them touching her skin had been like seeing a cobra bite her.
But he had handled the situation terribly. Fear had rushed out as blame. Being caught off guard had made him react defensively, and he had accused her of putting herself in harm’s way even though it was his fault for not taking enough care to protect her. Would he ever learn? Was he forever destined to fail with those he treasured most? First Carol, now Karma. He had let them both down.
Obviously, he still wasn’t ready to try for forever again. Not that he needed proof. When it came to matters of the heart, he would never be ready to give himself completely to another. He would always mess up. Somehow, in one way or another, he would always fall just shy of being everything a woman deserved. His behavior tonight had confirmed that. He would always pull then push.
But he couldn’t let Karma leave under these circumstances. It was late, she wasn’t familiar with Chicago, and she was upset. Because he had upset her. He shouldered the blame entirely. But he could apologize. He could bring her back and convince her to stay. He didn’t want to lose her over something like this. He wasn’t ready to lose her. Not even close.
Moving fast, he dressed and grabbed his phone as he darted out the door.
* * *
Karma couldn’t find her damn car. She had been so excited just to arrive in one piece this afternoon that she hadn’t paid attention to what level of the parking garage she had parked on. After circling for nearly five minutes, she got back on the elevator and went down one more floor then stormed out just as her phone dinged.
A flicker of hope danced in her heart even though it shouldn’t have. She didn’t want to hear from Mark right now. Nope. She didn’t. Not at all.
I’m not even gonna look.
Ugh. She stopped and fished out her phone, unable to resist her heart’s demand.
Don’t go. Please.
Her heart smiled. Too bad she was listening more to her brain right now.
Why should I stay? She hit send and set back out on Car Quest.
Her phone dinged a moment later.
Because I’m an ass and I’m sorry.
Well, okay then. That’s a start. Karma’s quick steps lost some of their gusto.
At least you’re honest, she sent back.
Please stay. I promise not to be an ass. I’ll even sleep on the couch. Just please don’t go.
Karma slowed almost to a stop as she typed. You don’t have to sleep on the couch.
Then you’ll stay?
She rolled her eyes, tried not to look at her phone, determinedly picked up her pace briefly then stopped, sighed with defeat, and typed her reply. Fine. I’ll stay.
Where are you?
She looked around and realized she was standing next to her car. Great. Good timing now that she had decided to stay. She found a sign.
Parking garage. Level 3.
Resigned, she turned around and began the walk back to the elevator. Mark had gotten to her, already so deep inside her heart that she was amazed she’d been able to leave at all. But she had. Over a stupid ring.
As she approached the silver elevator doors, the red down arrow lit and dinged. Then the doors opened.
Mark rushed out then stopped when he saw her. His wet hair stuck out in all directions, he wasn’t wearing shoes, and the few buttons he had fastened on his shirt were buttoned crookedly, making one shirt tail longer than the other.
If they hadn’t just had a fight, she would have laughed. This was so not the typical Mark look.
“I’m sorry,” he said. His chagrined expression tugged at her heart.
She joined him in the elevator, and he took her bag.
They rode in wary silence back to the ninth floor. It was as if Mark didn’t know how to act around her right now, and it seemed as though he were wrestling with a thousand thoughts, all of which he kept to himself.
Once they were back inside his apartment, he led her to the bedroom, set her bag back on the floor where it had been earlier, and took her hands.
“I owe you an explanation,” he said.
“And I’d like to hear it, but first…” She tore her hands from his and brushed her fingers through his still-wet hair, making some sense from the chaos. Then she began unbuttoning his shirt. “We need to make you look a little less insane.”
Brow furrowed, he glanced into the mirror then down at his shirt’s placket as she rebuttoned it, this time so that the buttons and holes aligned properly.
“I guess I was in a bit of a rush to catch up to you.” He grabbed his brush and finished making sense out of his hair.
“I guess.” Some of the steam had evaporated from her anger, and she sat down on the edge of the bed.
Mark set his brush on the dresser. “Okay, explanation.” He sat down beside her and peered at her sideways. He offered a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I was engaged once.”
Now they were getting somewhere.
“Her name was Carol. I mentioned her before.”
For the next forty-five minutes, Mark poured out the details of what had happened. How he met Carol, how they got engaged when he was twenty-three, how, on their wedding day, Carol never showed, and how he had gone to her home afterward to find her in bed with her dance partner.
“I fell into a horrible depression,” he said. “I began drinking a lot. A functional drunk, I think is what they called me. I could work, and I got the job done well enough, but as soon as the workday ended, I drowned myself in a bottle.”
Karma took his hand and scooted a little closer.
“Rob sat with me every night, t
alking me down from the ledge of full-blown alcoholism, until finally, some of what he said got through. After a while, the bite of what Carol did stopped hurting quite as much, and then, gradually, it faded to the point I only felt it when I thought about her.” He looked at her. “I messed up with her. Somehow, I screwed things up and she left me.”
“How so? What did you do to chase her away?” From what Mark had told her, she didn’t see any of this as his fault, but for whatever reason, he blamed himself.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I never found out. She never told me. But it had to be something.” He met her gaze. “So, I started working on making myself a better man. The kind of man…”
“That Carol would want.” Karma let go of his hand and looked down. This Carol certainly was a special lady. Karma would kill to have Mark love her as much as he loved Carol.
Mark quietly cleared his throat and slowly reached for her hand again. He folded it inside the warmth of his. “At the time, I’ll admit I wanted her back. That’s what motivated me. But then she married her dance partner, and it became clear she would never want me back, no matter how much I changed.” He shrugged. “But I still wanted to make myself a better man.”
“Why? If you don’t want long-term, committed relationships, then why is being a better man so important?”
He paused and shook his head. “I don’t have a good answer for that. All I can say is that part of me still hopes that someday I’ll be good enough to try again, but another part of me is too terrified to try.” He glanced away. “I just can’t seem to get past what she did. I keep thinking that if I could just find out why, then I might be able to go on, that I can fix it, but she never told me why, and I can’t let it go.”
“Why don’t you just ask her?”
He looked to the floor. “I can’t. I can barely be in the same room with her without feeling the trauma all over again.” He shook his head, closed his eyes, took a breath, then met her gaze with an air of shame. “She was at the benefit. The night you and I met. She was there, and do you want to know what I did?”
The pain in his eyes nearly throttled her. “What?”
“I threw up.” He smiled sadly. “I left the benefit, went to my room, and threw up.” He sighed. “Not because I still want her, but because I can’t get over what she did. Because she’s pregnant now, and that was supposed to have been my life. I always wanted children.” He hung his head.
What a sad story. Here was a man who Karma thought was perfection in every way. The perfect boyfriend who would make the perfect husband, and yet he had been so severely traumatized by his ex-fiancée that he had all but taken himself off the market.
Carol was in his past, and he didn’t seem to have any illusions that he belonged with her, but clearly she still sat first and foremost in his thoughts, even if only subconsciously. Carol affected every decision he made. Like a chronic case of indigestion, Mark couldn’t exist without thinking that at any moment, Carol would rip at his insides and lay him to waste again. He had been through hell because of her, and her memory tore at him like a relentless succubus.
And here Karma thought her past was painful. Even though she and Mark shared a similar childhood, Mark had her beat hands down in the relationships department. Carol had splayed his heart and filleted it like nothing more than yesterday’s catch, leaving behind a man’s body in which resided a scared and wounded little boy. A little boy Mark worked hard to protect by putting up walls and donning a shell of armor. He held his share of insecurities, but he hid them well behind his successful, confident, and controlled façade.
What a shame he couldn’t get past what Carol had done, because he was a remarkable man. One any woman would be lucky to call her husband. He unjustifiably shouldered the blame for her leaving, and he had ventured out on this quest of becoming a woman’s ideal man to prove he wasn’t the loser he accused himself of being. It was a vicious Catch-22. No matter how close to perfection he became, in his eyes, he would always be a failure.
“I think you would surprise yourself if you gave yourself a chance, Mark,” she said. “For the record, I think you’re pretty terrific.”
He inhaled and squeezed her hand, almost as if to reassure himself more than her. “The fact is—especially after what you just witnessed…my behavior…my complete meltdown—I think you would agree that this is all I’m capable of right now. I can’t give more, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to.”
She stared, speechless. He was confirming what he had told her from the start, but this time it sounded like he wished he could give more, as if he wanted to give more to her.
“I’ll understand if that’s not enough for you and you want to end this now. I don’t want to hurt you, Karma. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. You’re such a sweet, lovely woman. One who deserves better than this.” He let go of her hand, stood, and gestured toward the door. “Like I said, I’ll sleep on the couch tonight…give you some space to think.” He grabbed a blanket from the closet then stopped in the doorway and looked over his shoulder. “But I want you to know how sorry I am for the way I treated you earlier. It had more to do with me than you. What happened wasn’t your fault. It was mine. I never should have gotten angry.”
She knew that now. “I know.”
“I just didn’t like seeing that awful ring on you. It’s cursed, and you’re too good for that.” He smiled sadly, looked away, and quietly closed the door behind him, leaving Karma alone with her thoughts and a blanket of compassion for the remarkable man who had just poured out his soul.
Mark was a truly troubled man, but then, in her way she was a truly troubled woman. But Mark had begun to change all that. He had helped her discover how beautiful she was, both inside and out. Did that mean she was cured? No. But it did mean she was a better woman because of him. There would always be ghosts of her past to haunt her. She would never completely cast out Johnny’s and Jo’s and all the others’ taunts, but now she could minimize their effect. Mark had shown her that. He had given her the tools to deal with her past. Wasn’t there something she could do to give a little back?
She lay down. Surely there was, even if it was only a small token.
* * *
Mark lay on the couch, unable to sleep, even though both his mind and his body were weary. The quiet ticking of the clock wasn’t even enough to lull him.
How had the night gone so wrong so fast? He had made a wreck of an evening that had been meant for savoring. Karma was sleeping in his bed, and he should be in there with her. Instead, he was on the couch like a kicked-out dog.
For what felt like the hundredth time, he closed his eyes and tried to force himself to sleep. A minute later, he heard the snick of the bedroom door as it opened, and then Karma’s silhouette glided around the corner.
He propped himself on his elbow as she approached. “Is everything okay?”
“No,” she said, dropping to her knees on the floor beside him.
Shit. How badly had he screwed things up?
“Because you’re not in bed with me,” she said a moment later.
Wait, what? He blinked several times, not sure he understood.
His confusion must have shown even in the darkness, because she smiled softly. “I know this is all you’re capable of, Mark, but I want it. Whatever you can give, for however long you can give it, I’ll take it.”
He sat up, and she shifted so she knelt between his knees.
“What are you saying?” He brushed her hair off her face.
She rose so that her lips were barely an inch from his. “I’m saying that I want you to come back to bed with me.” The way she said it left no question what she was asking for.
His body sprang to life, and gratitude flooded his veins. Even now, faced with the truth of his past, she still wanted to be with him.
She took his hand and stood.
He let her lead him back into the bedroom, where she pushed him onto the bed, undressed, and crawled on top of him. “I ca
me to Chicago to be with you, Mark. Nothing has changed that.” Her mouth crashed against his, and all he could do was hold on, still shifting gears to catch up.
Once he finally did, he gripped her arms and rolled over, pinning her to the mattress as her feet hooked inside the waist of his flannel pants and pushed them down his thighs. Her gaze pleaded with him to make love to her, awakening that primitive part of him that needed a physical outlet for all the fear, worry, and anxiety of the last two hours.
“Do you know what the best part about fighting is?” he said.
Her bright eyes sparkled from the city lights. “No. What?” She bit her bottom lip as the corners of her mouth turned upward.
“Make up sex.” He shimmied the rest of the way out of his pajamas and snagged a condom from the bedside table.
Her lips spread into a coy smile. “Is that so?”
More than ever, he needed the physical connection. After what had happened earlier, being with her, making love to her, feeling her warm body against his…that would make everything right. That would help heal his heart and reconnect them to one another.
He pulled back and positioned himself on his knees between her thighs. “Yes.” He lifted her legs and placed her ankles against the front of his shoulders.
“What are you doing?” She smiled up at him as he hoisted her legs higher and held them against his torso.
“Giving you the best make up sex you’ll ever have.”
“Is this even…oh!” Her eyes shot open and her hands slapped down on his thighs as he thrust inside her. “I see what you—OH!—mean.”
Lifting higher, he crossed her ankles over the front of his neck, making the connection between them tighter, more snug.
“Mark!” Her nails dug into his thighs as he pumped harder.
In this position, her G-spot was in his direct line of fire. Every thrust hit it head-on. Every rock of his hips connected the most virile part of his sexual anatomy to the most receptive part of hers. He knew without her saying so that he was about to deliver a shot of pleasure that would split her nerve endings wide open.