Read The Good Enough Husband Online
Authors: Sylvie Fox
The Good Enough Husband
The Good Enough Husband
Sylvie Fox
Penner Media
Los Angeles, California
The Good Enough Husband
Sylvie Fox
Los Angeles, California
This edition published by
Penner Media
Post Office Box 57914
Los Angeles, California 91413
www.pennermedia.com
Copyright © 2014 by Sylvie Fox
ISBN 13: 978-1-940811-05-5
eISBN 13: 978-1-940811-04-8
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author’s imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Book Layout ©2013 BookDesignTemplates.com
Cover Designer: Regina Wamba, Mae I Design
Cover images © Thinkstock
The Good Enough Husband/Sylvie Fox. — 1st ed.
for Judah
This is the first book I’ve written since you got here. You are an inspiration.
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank my first readers, authors Casey Dawes, Andrea Wenger, and Monica Epstein. Your feedback was priceless. I’d also like to thank my dear friend Dr. Daniel Goodwin for his expertise on heart conditions I could inflict on Dr. Walter Cooper. Lastly, I would like to thank my fellow Keeper Shelf authors, the fabulous unicorns. Without you, it would have been an even tougher year. You are my New York.
What would you do if you met your soul mate, but you were a
lready married?
In
The Good Enough Husband
, Sylvie Fox delivers a riveting story about a woman who refuses to let her past define her future.
For years, Hannah Morrison Keesling’s marriage to Michael was good enough. Then she wakes up one morning and it isn’t. Taking her puppy Cody along, Hannah drives north to put distance between herself and her past. Planning to go as far as her SUV will take her, she has to stop on the Lost Coast when her dog gets sick. There she meets small town veterinarian Ben Cooper.
Ben is the man Hannah wishes she had met first. He’s perfect for her, but gun shy because he’s been lied to before and vows not to be betrayed again. Hannah leaves Michael and moves to Ben’s rural town to pursue a future with the man she knows is her soul mate. But Michael won’t let go so easily. Forced to make a decision between the man she chose and the man she loves, Hannah soon realizes that her choices will define everyone else’s consequences.
Table of Contents
“How’s your butt?” Hannah Keesling’s husband Michael palmed her ass, sliding his hand between her oversized sleep shirt and her bikini underwear. This was her least favorite way to wake up.
Hannah squeezed her eyes shut, the words of the one friend she’d confided her problems to, coming back to her. “Friendship is the foundation of a good marriage,” she’d said piously. “When the going gets tough, remember why you chose him in the first place.” She wondered what her friend would make of this.
“My butt’s fine,” she murmured, cracking one eye open. It was still dark. She hated how her body betrayed her, reacted to his clumsy seduction after all that had happened between them.
“You didn’t ask how my cock feels.” Michael prompted. Why did he have to be so coarse? Their marriage wasn’t perfect, but she deserved a little respect, consideration. They’d started out as friends, added sex, then matrimony. Now it had morphed into a different thing altogether. And she was stuck in it, like a fossil in the tar pits.
Hannah fought her way from sleep, through drowsiness, to wakefulness like a diver pushing through heavy water desperate for air. She didn’t have to ask how Michael’s penis felt. His e
ngorged flesh eagerly probed her back, her butt, and her legs.
“How does it feel?” she whispered, eyeing the bedside clock. It wasn’t even five in the morning. The bright Southern California sun hadn’t yet stolen the darkness from the room.
“Very lonely,” he said. Hannah could hear a pout in his voice. The squeak of the metal springs and the rhythmic movement of the mattress told her that Michael’s hand was keeping his organ company. “C’mon, turn over and take off your shirt.”
Her weak flesh responded, while her stronger mind rebelled. Hannah knew she should have been more excited, more respo
nsive, desired him like real wives wanted their husbands. Guilt flooded her veins. Her husband wanted her, and she didn’t want him back. Hannah scooted away from her husband to the very edge of their bed. If this was all there was to marriage, she didn’t want any part of it anymore. Michael didn’t even try. Would it kill him to kiss her, light a few candles, tell her she was beautiful? The thought of thirty more years of frat boy groping killed any stirring he’d aroused.
Saying yes, pulling up her shirt, spreading her legs—that would be the easy thing. But Hannah was done. She was tired of being her husband’s glorified whore. The finality of her decision made her next words come easy.
“So this is foreplay?” she asked, unable to keep the disgust from her voice.
Her remark hit the intended target. Cool air raised the goose
flesh on her naked legs and exposed back as Michael threw off the goose down duvet and stalked toward the bathroom.
“This is marriage?” he threw back at her. Michael’s anger su
rprised her. He never fought back, just stalked off to finish the job himself. “You think I like having to beg my wife to touch me? To make me feel good?”
He was right, damn him. He couldn’t know that she’d learned to steel herself against his touch. Guilt and obligation took the place of desire now. “You’re right, Michael. This
isn’t
a marriage. I don’t think we can go on like this.” There was no point in pointing fingers or placing blame. Reasoning with him hadn’t worked no matter how many times she’d tried. Hannah knew what she had to do. She had made the decision to marry someone she wasn’t in love with, and they’d both paid the price.
“God damn it, Hannah. Why do you make this so hard? I wanted a little quickie. You wouldn’t have to do anything but lie there. This could have been a win-win morning. But you have to go make everything an all or nothing decision.” He slammed the door. The angry squeak of the shower knobs and the unnecessary banging of razor against sink comforted her. He wouldn’t be back in the bed today. She’d escaped for the moment.
***
Pulling suitcases from the walk-in closet, and angrily tossing in random clothes and underwear, Hannah couldn’t help comparing herself to some past-her-peak actress on a bad Lifetime movie ra
cing against time and bad music before the battering husband returned home. She stilled her movements, and sat on the bed pulling the cool, salt-tinged air into her lungs. Her life wasn’t a burning bed situation. Between the move to the suburbs with all the consumer trappings, her change in career, and the relentless pressure she and Michael put on themselves to conceive a baby, Hannah’s life felt wrong. The unexplained infertility that had weighed upon them was a godsend now. She couldn’t bring a baby into this hot mess of a marriage. She’d been that child. Been there, done that, had the psychiatric scars to prove it. An innocent baby deserved more.
With less urgency, she finished packing her bags. Hannah glanced outside. Still early, the sun hadn’t yet burned the marine layer from the sky. She’d already done the research. Made all the calls. Ignored her friend’s advice to try to work it out. If she left now, she could make it to Oregon in about twelve hours. Her friend’s words echoed. “Once you decide, there won’t be any tur
ning back.” Now that she knew what she had to do—leave Michael—she couldn’t undo it. She couldn’t go back to playing the dutiful and pliant wife, even if she wanted to.
Hannah’s nine-month old Lab mix puppy Cody sniffed around her bags, his tail twitching nervously. Any disruption in the order of his life, threw Cody off. She’d never met a creature so hewn to routine.
She sifted through the fine hairs on the dog’s smooth black head. “Don’t worry, I’m not leaving you behind.”
Cody’s tongue left a wet trail on her palm. She took that as a sign of approval.
Bags loaded in the car, Hannah came back to the bedroom. Cody, unsure of what was going to happen next, jumped around her legs. Nudging him to his bed, she fished through her nightstand looking for the note she’d written out weeks before. Her fingers found the smooth surface of the cream envelope she’d addressed with one word: Michael.
Lifting the flap, Hannah shook the thick card, embossed with her name along the top, onto the bed, slowly turning it over.
Michael,
I’m going away for a few days. I need time and space to think about our future. Cody’s with me.
Love,
Hannah
She hoped Michael didn’t notice the odd way the ‘v’ in ‘love’ folded in on itself. Hannah had debated for days on whether to keep that word in the carefully thought out missive. The strong black script disappeared one line at a time when Hannah put the card back in the envelope, and propped the note against the pillows. She patted her thigh and Cody got up from the spot he’d taken up by the French doors. His tail wagged, ready for an adventure. Without a backward glance, Hannah closed the bedroom door.
“It’s not you. It’s me.” Michael’s voice burst the bubble of solitude that had cushioned Hannah for the last seven hours.
Hannah let out a long sigh. “What did Dr. Stern say?”
Rustling papers crackled through the car’s speakers. In her mind’s eye, she could see Michael sitting hunched over his desk reading from his carefully organized notes. “He called it immunological infertility,” he said, stumbling over the alliteration.
“What does that mean?” Why couldn’t Michael ever spell an
ything out without a nine-hundred-word recitation? If she came back, would they ever be able to have a baby?
“He said that my immune system is attacking my sperm. Trea
ting them like a foreign invader, like it would treat a bacteria or virus.”
“I guess I can stop taking Clomid,” she said, relieved to drop that last pretense. Undecided about their future, she’d taken the drugs to mask her indecision. Michael was silent. The dog’s pan
ting and the whomp of the tires on the nearly deserted freeway filled the car with white noise. Hannah searched for the right thing to say. “Can this be fixed?”
More silence. Hannah glanced at the Bluetooth display on the dashboard to make sure the call had not been dropped. Nope, three solid blue bars.
Michael’s answer came on a whoosh of breath. “There aren’t really any standard treatments. The cause is unknown. So, the cures are experimental. The doctor mentioned one treatment that involved a high dose of steroids. But the side effects would be bad and the chances of pregnancy not much better.”
“I’m really sorry, Michael.” He had wanted a child as badly as she did. Hannah knew now that she would never have a baby with him. But, she hoped he could find someone else to have a family with one day.
“It’s okay. Don’t divorce me over this,” he added only half-jokingly.
Hannah glanced at her left ring finger bare of its two-carat e
ngagement ring and its companion wedding band. She had slipped the small gold circles from her fingers a few minutes into the trip before fate put this final nail in the coffin.
Hannah looked around, not having a clue in hell where she was. “Look, I’m still on the road, so I’ll give you a call later t
onight, and we can figure out what to do next. Okay?”
“Love you, Hannah,” Michael said solemnly before disconnec
ting the call.
For a few impossibly long seconds, the road blurred in front of Hannah. Her marriage was really over. The end of something she’d put so much time, and hope into made her heartsick. But his news solidified the decision to leave Michael. She hadn’t married him for his sperm, exactly. She had reached thirty-five and looked around, and decided to settle down. Hannah had truly loved him—in her own way.
Marrying one of her closest friends had seemed like such a reasonable idea. Hannah and Michael had met in New York in the heyday of their twenties, and after all the assholes had left her high and dry in her thirties, Michael was still around. And, most of her friends were married. Hannah had lived long enough to realize that she was never going to have the glamorous, worldly life that she expected, so she had made an adult decision.
She’d married Michael hoping to create the stability she’d ne
ver had as a child. If the world wasn’t going to give her fireworks and sparks, at least she could have good enough. Looking around at her college girlfriends and their sports watching, weight gaining, workaholic husbands, good enough was more than most women got. Guilt flattened the bubble of giddy elation that started rising in her chest. Hannah mentally shoved Michael right out of her mind, vowing to think about the future she wanted, not the past she’d left behind in Newport Beach.
She fiddled with the car controls and put on her favorite Shay Morrison CD,
Scarlet Lady
, and sang until her throat was hoarse. Hannah had stopped singing when she’d married Michael. He’d called her passion impractical. But she’d missed expressing her feelings this way. She looked around. All that singing and she’d gotten lost. How long was an album, an hour, an hour and a half?
Where in the heck was she? She’d wanted to be near the ocean. Realizing she hadn’t seen the green spade shaped sign designating the California One for some time, Hannah took her eyes off the relatively empty road to look more closely at the car’s onboard navigation, to no avail. The point and click computer mouse like device that had seemed so futuristic at the dealership was of no help in figuring out where in the hell she was. But all these re
dwoods and not a lick of sand meant one thing. She’d lost the ocean again.
Hannah looked at the map one more time, but the colors, lines and squiggles meant nothing to her. Maybe she should pull over and figure it out. She wasn’t a man. She would pull over and ask for directions at the first gas station or convenience store she saw. Skip the help, the sound of Cody’s retching from the back of the car made pulling over right now a necessity. She should have known it was coming. The last few hours after passing the bustle of San Francisco and Marin County found the Sheprador looking a little green around the gills. The floppy-eared black and white dog,
who’d always loved a car ride, wasn’t looking so happy-go-lucky anymore. Wrenching the steering wheel to the right, Hannah sped down a random exit ramp off the 101 freeway, spraying gravel as she braked the SUV at the next turn out. She hoped she didn’t ding the paint. With her luck, she would ruin the car that she and Michael had only leased.
Hitching the purple nylon leash to the dog’s collar, Hannah helped Cody leap out of the car – in time. The dog upchucked the all-organic biscuits she’d bought at a pet boutique earlier in the day. Queasy herself, Hannah empathized with Cody. The combin
ation of coffee shop muffin, the never-ending drive, and conversation with Michael, did not settle her stomach.
A few miles later, Cody forced Hannah to make another eme
rgency stop on the shoulder of the freeway. He must have been at the end of his rope because thick yellow bile was all that came up before the dog shuddered with dry heaves. When Cody’s face lost the vomit grimace, she plotted her next move. The dog was not having a good time. But there was no turning back now. If she found somewhere to stop for the night or two, maybe she could even out the dog’s system. She hadn’t made a reservation because the Oregon cabin owners said they were nowhere near being overbooked. Looking at her watch, Hannah realized she had been standing next to her car for ten minutes and she hadn’t seen more than a handful of cars drive by. Northern California was not as traffic choked as San Francisco had been. She hoped there was some semblance of civilization, namely a vet, out here.