My head falls forward. My chin touches my heaving chest. It’s coming. I’m coming. I can’t stop it. Not with her . . .
The fingers inside me thicken, lengthen. The thrusting becomes frenzied, the slap of flesh against flesh drowning out the sounds of the ocean. I hear a rough, lusty growl but it’s not mine. A cock is in me, fucking me. It hurts and yet the pain is tinged with a sick, unwanted pleasure.
“Keep stroking it,” he pants. “You’re almost there.”
Agony explodes in my chest. Eva isn’t here. She’s gone. She’s left me.
Vomit rises into my throat. I throw him off violently, hearing him crash through the sliding door behind us, the glass shattering. Hugh laughs hysterically and I round on him, finding him sprawled amid the glistening slivers, his hair as red as his blood, his eyes lit with that vile lustful avarice.
“You think she’d want you?” he taunts, clambering to his feet. “You told her everything. Who’d want you after that?”
“Fuck you!” I lunge and tackle him back down. My fist pounds into his face again and again.
The shards of glass pierce me, cut into me, but the pain is nothing next to what I feel inside.
Eva is gone. I’d known she would leave, that I couldn’t keep her. I’d known it, but I had hoped. I couldn’t fight the hope.
Hugh won’t stop laughing. I feel his nose shatter. His cheekbone, his jaw. His laughter turns to gurgles, but it’s still laughter.
My arm pulls back to hit him again—
Anne is lying beneath me, her face battered nearly beyond recognition. Horrified at what I’ve done, I jerk away, scrambling to my feet. The glass digs deep into the soles of my feet.
Anne laughs as bubbling blood pours from her nose and mouth, spreading through the home that was once a sanctuary. Staining everything, the taint washing away the sun until only a blood moon remains . . .
I woke up with a scream in my throat. Sweat drenched my hair and skin. Darkness suffocated me.
Scrubbing at my eyes, I rolled onto my hands and knees, sobbing. I crawled toward the only light I could see, the weak silver glow that was my only guide.
The bedroom. God. I collapsed on the floor, racked by tears. I’d fallen asleep in the closet, unable to move after Eva left me, afraid to take one literal step in any direction toward a life without her in it.
The face of the clock glowed brightly in the darkened room.
It was one A.M.
A new day. And Eva was still gone.
—
“YOU’RE here early.”
Scott’s cheery voice lured my gaze from the photo of Eva on my desk.
“Good morning,” I greeted him, feeling as if I were still in a nightmare.
I’d come to work shortly after three A.M., unable to sleep anymore and unable to go to Eva. I wanted to, would have—nothing could keep me away from her—but when I tracked her phone I found her at Stanton’s penthouse, a place I couldn’t reach. The anguish of that, knowing she was deliberately keeping herself from me, ate at me from the inside out like acid.
I couldn’t stay home and go through the morning routine of preparing for work without Eva. It had been easier to revert to the schedule I’d often kept before her, coming into work while the moon was high, finding peace in the place where I exercised complete control.
But today there was no peace. Only the torment of knowing that she was in the same building I was by now, so damn close and yet farther away than she’d ever been.
“Mark Garrity was waiting by reception when I came in,” Scott continued. “He said you’d discussed having him come in today . . . ?”
My gut knotted. “I’ll see him.”
I pushed back from my desk and stood. I’d thought of nothing but Eva and the offer I had made to Mark, trying to reason out how I could have done anything differently. I knew Eva too well. Telling her about Ryan Landon wouldn’t have made her leave Waters Field & Leaman any more than telling her about Anne would cause her to be more cautious.
Eva would face them head-on instead, growling like a lioness to defend me and failing to see the danger to herself. It was her way and I loved her for it, but I would also protect her when the situation called for it.
“Mark.” I extended my hand as he entered, knowing immediately that he was going to say yes. Energy radiated off him and his dark eyes were lit with anticipation.
We agreed that he would begin in October, giving Waters Field & Leaman nearly a month’s notice. He wanted to bring Eva along with him and I encouraged him to make the offer, even as I doubted that she would accept it. He countered some of my terms and I negotiated by instinct, keeping him in check without my heart being in it.
In the end, he left happy and pleased with his changed situation. I was left with the deepening fear that Eva would not forgive me.
—
MONDAY blurred into Tuesday. There were only three times a day when I felt any life at all—at nine when I knew Eva arrived for work, at lunch, and again at five when she finished for the day. I waited with endless hope for her to reach out to me. To call or communicate in any way. Another horrible fight would be better than the aching silence.
She didn’t. I could only watch her on the security monitors, devouring the sight of her coming and going like a man dying of hunger, scared to approach her and risk widening the chasm between us.
I stayed in the office overnight, afraid to go home. Afraid of what I would do if I entered any of the residences I shared with her. Even my office was a torment, the couch where I had fucked her an inescapable reminder of what I’d had only days before. I showered in my office’s washroom and changed into one of the many suits I kept at work.
I’d never thought it strange to live for work before. Now, I was overwhelmed by emotion I couldn’t express, comprehending just how much of my life Eva had come to fill.
She stayed at Stanton’s again. It didn’t escape my notice that she preferred to spend time with her mother than to risk having to deal with me.
I texted her constantly. Pleas for her to call me. I just need to hear your voice. Notes about nothing. Cooler today, isn’t it? Comments about work. Never realized Scott always wears blue. And most of all, I love you. For some reason, it was easier to type those three words than to say them. I typed them a lot. Over and over again. I didn’t want her to forget that. Whatever my faults and fuck-ups, everything I did or thought or felt was love for her.
Sometimes I got mad, hating what she was doing to me. To us. Goddamn you! Call me. Stop doing this to me!
“You look like shit,” Arash said, eyeing me as I reviewed the contracts he’d placed on my desk. “You getting sick again?”
“I’m fine.”
“My man, you are anything but fine.”
I glared at him, shutting him up.
—
IT was nearly six and I was on my way to Dr. Petersen’s office when Eva finally reached out to me.
I love you, too.
The words wavered as my eyes stung. I typed back with shaking fingers, nearly dizzy with relief. I miss you so much. Can’t we talk, please? I need to see you.
She didn’t reply before I reached Dr. Petersen’s, which blackened my mood to the point of violence. She was punishing me in the worst possible way. I was as jittery as a junkie, desperate for a hit of her to function. To think.
“Gideon.” Dr. Petersen greeted me at the door to his office with a smile that quickly faded when he saw me. Concern drew his brows down. “You don’t look well.”
“I’m not,” I snapped.
He calmly gestured for me to take a seat. I remained standing, roiling inside, debating leaving and searching for my wife. I couldn’t stand around and wait anymore. It was too much to ask of me.
“Maybe we should walk again,” he said. “I could stand to stretch my legs.”
“Call Eva,” I ordered. “Tell her to come here. She’ll listen to you.”
He blinked at me. “You’re having trouble with Eva.”
Shrugging out of my suit jacket, I threw it on the couch. “She’s being irrational! She won’t see me . . . won’t talk to me. How the fuck are we supposed to work things out if we’re not even talking?”
“That’s a reasonable question.”
“Damn right! I’m a reasonable man. She, however, is out of her damn mind. She can’t keep doing this. You have to get her here. You have to make her talk to me.”
“All right. But first I need to understand what’s happened.” He sat in his chair. “I’m not going to be much use to you if I don’t know what’s going on.”
I pointed a finger at him. “Don’t play your head games with me, Doc. Not today.”
“I think I’m being as reasonable as you are,” he said smoothly. “I want you to work things out with Eva, too. I think you know that.”
Exhaling in a rush, I sank onto the edge of the sofa, then dropped my head into my hands. It was throbbing viciously, pounding front and back.
“You’re fighting with Eva,” he said.
“Yes.”
“When’s the last time you spoke with her?”
I swallowed hard. “Sunday.”
“What happened on Sunday?”
I told him. It came out in a rush that had him scribbling frantically on his tablet. The words spewed out in an angry purge, leaving me feeling wiped out and exhausted.
He continued to write for a few moments after I finished, and then his gaze lifted to my face. I saw compassion and it tightened my throat.
“You cost Eva her job,” he pointed out, “a job she’s told us both that she enjoys very much. You can see why she’d be upset with you, can’t you?”
“Yeah, I get it. But I had valid reasons. Reasons she understands. That’s what I don’t get. She understands and she’s still cutting me off.”
“I’m not sure I understand why you didn’t discuss this with Eva beforehand. Can you explain that to me?”
I rubbed at the back of my neck, where the tension felt like steel cables. “She would’ve stewed over it,” I muttered. “It would’ve taken her time to come around. In the meantime, I’m trying to manage a ton of other shit. We’re getting hit from all sides.”
“I saw the news about Corinne Giroux’s book about you.”
“Oh, yeah.” My mouth curved grimly. “She probably got the idea from Six-Ninth’s ‘Golden’ video. Landon got to Eva through a hole in my guard. I couldn’t risk giving him another opening while I was distracted with everything else Eva and I are dealing with right now.”
Dr. Petersen nodded. “You’re facing a lot of pressure. Don’t you trust Eva to help you reach the decisions you’re making? You have to know that her conflicts with her mother often stem from not being consulted before actions are taken.”
“I know that.” I tried to articulate my chaotic thoughts. “But I need to take care of her. After what she’s lived through . . .”
My eyes squeezed shut. Knowing what she’d suffered was almost too much for me to think about sometimes. “I have to be strong for her. Make the tough calls.”
“Gideon, you’re one of the strongest men I know,” he said quietly.
I opened my eyes and looked at him. “You haven’t seen me the way she has.”
Crying like a child. Brutalized by memories. Masturbating while unconscious. Violent in my sleep. Weak, so weak. Helpless.
“Do you think she doubts you because you’ve let her see you vulnerable? That doesn’t sound like Eva to me.”
My eyes stung. “You don’t know everything. You just . . . You don’t know.”
“But Eva does. And she married you anyway. She loves you—very much—anyway.” He offered a kind smile that somehow slashed like a blade, cutting me open. “You asked me once if relationships were about compromise. Do you remember that?”
I jerked a nod.
“That compromise means you don’t always have to be the strong one, Gideon. You can do the heavy lifting on occasion, and you can let Eva do it sometimes. Marriage isn’t about whether you’re strong enough as an individual. It’s about how strong you are together and the luxury of taking turns carrying the load.”
“I . . .” My head bowed again. Eva had said the same thing. “I’m trying. I swear to God, I’m trying.”
“I know you are.”
“She has to take me back. She has to come back. I need her. She’s killing me right now. She’s ripping me apart.” I stared at my hands, at the rings she’d given me that made me hers. “What do I do? Tell me what to do.”
“Eva is going to want to know that you’re willing to change. She’ll want to see you taking steps to demonstrate that. You won’t face these big decisions too often, so she may adopt a wait-and-see attitude. That will be hard for you, I think. Very hard.”