by Olivia Dade
She had no idea. None.
Before she could fumble through an inadequate answer, he continued speaking. Continued tearing her foundations out from under her, one by one, as she scrambled for balance.
The rare hint of anger in his voice had disappeared, leaving only tenderness and sadness, which were somehow much, much harder to take. “I don’t want to hide how I feel about you, and I’m too old and tired to sneak around for long, even to keep someone I want as much as you.” So gently, he smoothed her hair behind her ear. Stroked her cheek. “I get your scars, Rose. I respect them, and how you’ve chosen to deal with them. But I have scars of my own.”
Of course he did. Why hadn’t she considered them before, except as a source of rage on his behalf? Why hadn’t she understood how they’d shape her relationship with him?
He pressed a kiss to the bridge of her nose. Her temples. The center of her forehead. “Above all else, I need to be with someone who’s proud of me. Proud enough to claim me in public, rather than hiding me like a dirty secret.”
She’d never, ever considered him a dirty secret.
Her time with him, their relationship, was a jewel she’d wanted to protect from damage, to tuck into a box and keep safe. The same way she’d kept herself safe all these years.
He held her gaze, his steady and solemn. “I know it’s too soon. I know it’s not entirely rational of me to demand so much of you right now. But I am who I am. I need that public acknowledgment. I need to know the woman I love is proud to be with me.”
Love. She’d suspected, of course. But she hadn’t let herself acknowledge it.
“Of course you do.” She should have known that. Should have realized this impasse would arrive long before she was ready to confront it. “And you deserve everything you need. You deserve the world.”
She just didn’t know if she could give him what he deserved and remain intact.
The silence between them stretched, and she eventually realized he was done. He had nothing more to say. He was waiting for a more definitive answer from her.
About prom. About them.
Her thin, halting words barely pierced the still air of the sunny kitchen. “Can you give me more time?”
He nodded, but those lines on his forehead carved deeper.
Pretty soon, he’d respond differently, and they both understood it.
He’d pushed her again. Maybe too hard.
This time, Martin wasn’t so certain it was a mistake.
Especially as one week passed. Then two.
When he didn’t have Bea, he and Rose spent every night together. They discreetly arrived at school in separate cars and left the same way, but every other non-working moment belonged to them as a couple.
She taught him to cook cassoulet. He reintroduced her to the wonders of Pop-Tarts.
They talked for hours about various nerdy history topics, about their families, about their pasts, about everything. His chest still expanded with a surge of triumph every time he made her snort with laughter, and she didn’t seem to be guarding any more secrets from him.
They graded next to one another. Read the news next to one another. Loaded plates into the dishwasher next to one another. Slept next to one another.
And in between all those conversations and the tasks of daily life, they had startling amounts of passionate sex.
No. That didn’t quite capture it. Their lovemaking wasn’t just passionate. It was literally mind-altering.
In bed—or on a countertop, a table, the couch, the floor, etc.—what he’d understood about himself as a man and a lover fell away, replaced by the reality of Rose gasping above or below or beside him, her sex quivering as she bucked in orgasm.
He could give pleasure. Lots of it, as long as he had the right woman.
The tepid sexual response he’d accepted as normal for so long seemed to exist in another, sadder lifetime as well. Because how could he remember any other lover when Rose scratched him up, wrung him out, and made him come so hard, he couldn’t stand afterwards?
It was more than he’d hoped for, in bed and out. More than he’d ever imagined he’d have.
It wasn’t enough.
They hadn’t gone out on a public date. No one other than Bea knew they were together, not even Annette or Alfred. She hadn’t mentioned prom—now less than a week away—again.
And he was done accepting less than what he needed, even from those he loved. Even when he knew his needs weren’t necessarily reasonable.
Jesus, he loved Rose with all the devotion his battered heart could muster, and that was a lot. A lifetime’s worth. Maybe more.
But he was through waiting.
He found her in her classroom late in the afternoon, her shoes and jacket discarded as she sorted through her students’ end-of-year projects. When the door quietly clicked closed behind him, she looked up with a welcoming beam.
“Hey, babe. Let me just put this grade into the computer, and then I’m ready to go.” A few quick keystrokes, and she began shutting down her laptop. “What do you want to do for dinner? And no, I’m not having bologna again. M-A-Y-E-R isn’t my second name.”
Her bitter-coffee hair gleamed in the lamplight of her desk, and she was eyeing his silk tie with an expression that indicated she was remembering a particularly adventuresome night last week. When she gathered up her briefcase, it bulged with the end-of-year letters she wrote for her students, each one personalized, each one sweet enough to turn lemons into lemon-flavored Starburst.
She was incredible. Everything he wanted.
Was he really going to do this?
Yes.
What he needed mattered. He mattered.
“I’d like to talk for a minute,” he told her.
Immediately, a crease appeared between her brows. But she settled back into her desk chair, her eyes studying him with care. “Martin? Are you okay? You look…I don’t know. Conflicted.”
He could only offer her the truth. “I don’t know if I’m okay yet.”
“Well, that’s ominous.” She leaned her elbows on her desk, clasped her hands, and gave him her full attention. “What’s going on?”
His swallow didn’t ease any of the dryness in his throat. “I don’t want to badger you, so I won’t ask this again.”
He saw the moment she realized the purpose of this conversation. The stakes.
Her face paled from ivory to paper, and her fingers started to fidget in that very un-Rose-like way. She fiddled with her stapler. Straightened a stack of folders on her desk. Lined her green pens—her favorites for grading—in a tidy row.
If he didn’t ask now, he’d never respect himself again.
“Prom is this weekend. Saturday night. Will you be my date?”
Her amber eyes immediately filled with tears, and he knew. He knew.
But he let her say it in her own time, because this was it. The last intimate conversation they’d ever have. So he allowed himself to memorize that beloved face, now crumpled in grief. Allowed himself take in Rose Owens, magnificent and stalwart and too damaged to give him what he needed, one final time.
But that was unfair. Her needs didn’t match his. That was all.
He could just as well say he was too damaged to give her what she needed.
“I…” Her breath shuddered hard enough to shake her shoulders. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Okay.” The light of her lamp spangled in his vision, and he concentrated on blinking back the aching press of his own grief. “I understand.”
He did. But that didn’t mean her decision wouldn’t pierce him for the rest of his life.
The smile she attempted through her tears didn’t convince either of them. “I take it that means we’re not having dinner together.”
Unable to speak, he shook his head.
Someday, the sound of her quiet little sob would stop echoing in his skull. Not anytime soon, though.
“I’ll be…” Another hitching breath, and she blindl
y snatched at a tissue. “I’ll be thinking of you and Bea. Tell her to have fun at college but remember her future. And when you g-get”—he’d never heard such an ugly, wrenching sound come from another human’s throat—“l-lonely, c-call one of your old friends.”
He bit his lip and looked up at the tiles on the ceiling until he’d gotten himself somewhat in order. “I will.”
Silence wedged between them, driving them further and further distant from one another.
Her voice was tiny. Cracked. “May I kiss you one last time?”
He circled her desk. Bracketed her with a hand on each chair arm, because she loved being surrounded by him. It made her feel safe, although she’d never admitted it, not out loud.
Her lips were soft beneath his, trembling and salty.
He supposed his were salty too.
One sweet, tender brush. One more.
When he raised his head, he let himself kiss away a few of those gut-churning tears before walking off. She didn’t protest or reach out for him. Instead, she simply watched him go, her hands balled into shaking fists.
At the door, he stopped and turned around. Hesitated.
Then he said it anyway.
“Rose…” He tried to smile. Failed. “Please let someone love you. Even if it’s not me.”
Then he left for good.
Eighteen
“Ms. Owens. Precisely the woman I’ve been trying to locate.” Keisha poked her head out of her open classroom door as Rose passed by. “Come see me in my room after school.”
Rose attempted a cool, disinterested lift of one brow. “Do I have detention?”
Her department chair didn’t appear impressed, probably because cool, disinterested brow lifts were easier to pull off when one’s eyes weren’t red and swollen as fuck. But dammit, it was Rose’s planning period, and the school day was almost over. She could cry in the faculty restroom if she wanted to.
However, she was composing a sternly worded online review for Annette’s favorite eye cream, because its de-puffing guarantee had proven laughable.
Or it would have proven laughable, if Rose could actually laugh anymore.
Keisha shook her head. “Just come here after the final bell.”
After a nod of acknowledgment, Rose fled to the safety of the social studies department office, currently empty of all other teachers. Thank Christ.
Before yesterday, she would have been working quietly in the back of her own classroom—with Martin’s permission, of course—to get all her end-of-year papers in order. But not now. Even the passing, mumbled greetings they’d exchanged as he entered and left her room gutted her. An entire period spent in his presence, watching him teach and move and breathe and exist, would likely leave her catatonic.
Two more weeks of school remained on the calendar. She had no time for complete emotional breakdowns. Incomplete ones, she’d discovered last night, were hard enough.
So instead of getting necessary tasks done in her classroom, she was staring into space and trying her best not to cry again. Not productive, but it did pass the time.
When the final bell rang, she rushed to Keisha’s room, unwilling to encounter Martin in the hall as he left Rose’s own classroom. Dodging students as they streamed toward the exits, she plopped down in a random vacated chair and waited for her department chair’s attention.
Once all the kids had gone, Keisha closed the door behind her.
Uh-oh. Never a sign of good tidings.
After a quick stop at her desk, she sat in the seat next to Rose’s, handed over a tissue box, and got to the point with her typical directness.
“I told you I wouldn’t interfere in your personal life again, and I won’t. It’s not my business.” She peered at Rose over the top of her glasses, her eyes slightly crossed. “But there are people at Marysburg High who care about you, and you need to know that. I’m here if you want to talk, Rose. Always.”
Dammit. No wonder Rose’s eyelids were completely unable to de-puff.
She reached for the tissue box. “Th-thank you.”
“I’m not the only one concerned. Tess took me aside this morning to find out if you were okay.” Keisha heaved an exasperated sigh. “And this afternoon, Candy Albright threatened to put a hit on whoever had made you look that way, then another on you for making her worry.”
“That’s sweet. Kind of.” Rose frowned. “Also concerning.”
Keisha waved a dismissive arm. “Don’t worry. Candy’s too busy with her annual Wuthering Heights is Not a Romance Initiative to murder anyone right now.”
That was…sort of comforting.
“Not even you or Martin,” Keisha added. “Despite your murder-convenient location just down the hall.”
Oh, God. Who else knew about Rose’s relationship with Martin?
Deny, deny, deny.
“Why…” Rose blotted her cheeks. “Why do you mention Martin?”
Keisha’s dramatic eye-roll was magnificent up close. “Come on, Ms. Owens. I’ve been teaching for over thirty years. I know when two teachers are indulging in some extracurricular activities.”
If that had been the extent of it, Rose wouldn’t have been stemming yet more tears with a balled-up tissue. “Martin isn’t just an extracurricular activity.”
“No.” Keisha laid a gentle, consoling hand on her arm. “No, I imagine he’s not. And I don’t think anyone else knows it’s him, if that’s worrying you.”
Rose didn’t move from beneath that hand, allowing the comforting gesture to blunt the biting edge of her grief, if only for a moment. Especially since fifteen years of working together had taught her that Keisha didn’t gossip or ridicule her colleagues, so whatever the other woman had witnessed before, whatever she saw or heard today, would go no further than this room.
Please let someone love you.
“I appreciate the offer to listen.” After blowing her nose, she offered her supervisor a weak smile. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea, though.”
“Then find someone you trust and talk to them. Because, honey”—she shook her head, lips pressed together in sympathy—“you look like your world just collapsed beneath you.”
It had. That world had only been created over a single school year, but it was the warmest, safest home Rose had ever known.
She tested out the words. Found them true. “I trust you.”
Keisha’s eyebrows flew to her hairline.
“I just think there are some things you’d rather not know about members of your department.” Rose took one last tissue and pushed the box back toward Keisha. “But maybe…”
In the face of Rose’s grief, her department head had offered sympathy, not pity.
Keisha hadn’t asked a single intrusive question. She’d only pledged her support.
Nothing about her expression indicated anything but sincere worry. Rose couldn’t find a hint of glee or prurient curiosity.
And Rose should have been able to predict all that after fifteen years spent working alongside a good woman. Why she hadn’t was something to ponder that night.
“Maybe,” she began again, haltingly, “we can go get dinner one night soon.”
At that, Keisha’s brows caught a ride on the International Space Station. But she overcame her shock long enough to give Rose’s arm another consoling pat. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Later that night, Rose peeked through her classroom blinds to watch Martin walk slowly across the parking lot, his steps heavy. Once he’d driven away, she locked up behind her and left too.
She should go home and fix something simple but delicious. Shakshuka, maybe.
But she didn’t want to go home. Didn’t want to eat at the table where Martin had pulled her into his lap and they’d completed the crossword together. Didn’t want to read in the chaise where he’d coaxed her legs open and nuzzled her so sweetly, she’d cried when she came, then sobbed when he fucked her deep into the cushions and made her come again.
Above all, s
he didn’t want to smell him on her sheets, even as she refused to wash those sheets. It wasn’t the scent of sex that hurt so much. It was him. Martin. Clean and piney and dear.
Instead, she drove to Annette and Alfred’s mansion along the Hanover River. When she got close, she saw lights blazing through their endless windows and exhaled in relief. Then tensed again upon remembering how they instructed the butler to make the house look welcoming whether they were home or not.
But when she rapped on the enormous front door with their ornate wrought-iron knocker, the butler immediately opened that door, ushered her into the front parlor, and told her to await the imminent arrival of Mr. and Mrs. Buckham.
While she lingered, unsure why she’d come but loath to go home, a cluster of photos on the eighteenth-century Chippendale table caught her attention.
When she’d married Barton, Annette and Alfred’s only child, they’d littered the house with impeccably framed pictures of the newlyweds. At first, she’d found it odd and a bit ostentatious. Then endearing, as the sincerity of their excitement about having a daughter-in-law became unmistakable. Then sad, when the joy in those photos no longer existed in the actual marriage, and she knew her in-laws would have to replace the contents of those frames sooner rather than later.
She hadn’t visited them at their home in years. Maybe a decade.
Whose photos they now considered precious enough to display, she no longer knew.
She should know.
She should know.
The table held five pictures now, rather than the dozen or more from before. Off to the side, they’d included a generic photo of Barton in his favorite pose, looking up in faux-surprise as he faux-adjusted his shirt cuffs and flexed discreetly. He’d aged well, which came as no shock, given how much effort and money he devoted to the task.
Did he ever call his parents? During their marriage, she’d been the one to remember birthdays and anniversaries, the one to select Christmas gifts and ensure Annette and Alfred had company at Thanksgiving.
She should have known from the beginning who and what he was, simply from the way he treated his parents. Sure, he’d told her they were clinging and querulous, but hearing that should have been like hearing a man call his ex a crazy bitch: a reflection on him, rather than anything revelatory about the object of his contempt.