Tryst (14 page)

Talie

I spent the rest of the day inside. Not long after I peeled myself off the couch to take a shower, thick, dark clouds rolled over the ocean and lightning and thunder cracked through the sky. I watched from the window as the water turned choppy and violent, and then rain started to plunge from the sky.

The storm fit my mood exactly
, and I welcomed it, glad the sun wasn’t mocking me with its brilliant, bright rays.

I knew better than this.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Blake fooled me, and I blamed him for it. But what just happened with Gavin, I blamed that on myself. He told me. He told me he wasn’t available. He told me up front all he wanted was sex. I agreed. Hell, I thought I wasn’t available either.

I guess my heart never got the memo.

“Stupid heart,” I muttered.

Maybe I was just reeling. Maybe I didn’t feel as strongly about Gavin as I suspected. Perhaps the hurt and humiliation over what Blake had done sent me on a rebound spree that ended in rejection.

Rejection wasn’t good for a woma
n who was just told she couldn’t fulfill her own husband’s needs.

Yes, that was it.

Instead of being in love with Gavin, I was just a stupid idiot.

Well
, didn’t I feel better?

(I didn’t really feel better).

I made microwave butter-drenched popcorn and sat myself in front of the TV. Lifetime was playing a marathon of movies about scumbag men and the women who got caught in their web of deceit and treachery. It seemed symbiotic of my life so I settled in to watch. Salty even settled beside me, which at first made me extremely nervous. I mean, the cat had done nothing but practically threaten my life with his eyes of death since I got here.

But then he curled up in a little fluffy ball and closed his eyes. The softness of his fur was sort of comforting against my leg. Maybe I liked cats after all.

The storm raged on as Salty and I (okay, mostly me) ate popcorn and watched movies. A couple times, my phone rang, but I ignored it. I didn’t feel like talking to anyone.

I was well into my third movie about a woman who escaped from an abusive husband and cut
off all her hair and was hiding in another state. The no-good husband found her and was stalking her door at her new place. He was hiding in the closet in her bedroom… Of course she came home in the dark (do people never turn on their lights?), walked into her bedroom, and took off her shirt (of course she would get attacked in her bra), and her husband chose that minute to burst out of the closet.

I screamed.

The banging on her door was just too realistic.

Except
the banging continued after she ran out of the room.

Salty perked up and was staring at the stairs that led down to the door. The banging wasn’t on the TV
; it was here. On my front door.

The only person it could be was Gavin, but I told him not to come. Besides
, even if it was him, he would come up onto the deck. Claire? The knocking/banging continued as I slowly got up from the couch. On the way toward the stairs, I grabbed my cell. Maybe it was Claire. Or maybe Aunt Ruth was home.

I wandered down the stairs as I pressed the button to light up the screen on my phone. The knocking was still insistent. For some reason
, the fact the person was so aggressive with their knocking made me extremely nervous.

My hands were clammy when I lifted the phone to call up my texts. I had several from Claire.

Talie, I need to talk to you!

Talie
, answer your phone!

When you get home
, I’m going to smack you!

Okay
, I won’t.

Please, Talie! Pick up.

Fine. Blake figured out where you are. He’s on his way.

I jerked to a stop and stared at the white door with only a small window at the top. Blake was coming?

More insistent knocking.

“I know you’re here, Talie! Open the damn door!”

Well, shit. As if this day wasn’t peachy enough.

My cheating soon
-to-be ex was here.

Talie

I thought about not opening the door. I didn’t have to. But that seemed a little childish. He’d driven all this way
. Maybe there was something he really needed to talk about. Maybe there was an emergency of some kind.

With a sigh
, I unlocked the door and pulled it open.

Blake was standing there with rain on his shoulders and dampening his hair. The small overhang at the front door didn’t offer much in the way of protection.

Gee, what a shame.

“About time you open the door!” he said, rushing inside the house. “I’m soaked.”

I didn’t offer to get him a towel. “Why are you here, Blake?”

He pulled off his coat and then looked at me. “What the hell did you do to your hair?”

“I cut it,” I replied defiantly, reaching up to finger the short, wavy strands.

“You can get it fixed
,” he said, as if my opinion didn’t matter at all.

Had he been like this our entire marriage
? Surely not. I would have noticed. Right?

“I like it
,” I declared, holding my ground.

He glanced at me before going up the stairs. He didn’t even reply. Did my words not even require a response?

I went up the stairs after him, noting how he was studying the house with his construction-based eye. I’m sure this place was too small for him, too outdated and too quaint. It was all the things I thought made it special.

Turns out all those fancy things he said we were going to have weren’t that important to me after all. I’d rather have a man who loved me.

A man like Gavin.

I shoved
away the thought.

“Nice view,” he said.

“You didn’t come here to talk about the view.”

He spun and took in my appearance from head to foot. I was still in my pajamas. I put them back on after my shower. I still wasn’t wearing a bra and I hadn’t bothered with a drop of makeup since I got here.

“You’ve had your time to pout. Get your stuff so we can go home.”

How dare he come here and talk to me like that! “Pout?” I snapped. “You think I came here to pout? I came here because I couldn’t stand to look at your face.”

“I know you got fired from your job, Talie.”

“Yeah, well, maybe if I was a little more like your secretary
, I would still have a job.”

His eyes narrowed. “He fired you because you wouldn’t sleep with him?”

“It wasn’t the official reason, but yeah.”

“That son of a bitch,” he muttered. “Doesn’t he know who my family is?”

I rolled my eyes. “Not everyone cares about who you are, Blake.”

“He wanted to ruin my name. He wanted to start rumors.”

“This wasn’t about you. It had nothing to do with you.”

“He was trying to sleep with my wife!”

I snorted. “Please. Like you care. You weren’t sleeping with me anyway.”

His face turned beet red. I rather enjoyed it. “Maybe we should go home
.” I began. “Maybe I will go and get my job back, keep up with the
family
name. You can have your piece on the side, and I can have mine.”

He looked like a vein in his head might explode. “You little bitch. How dare you talk to me like that
?”

My stomach knotted. He never called me curse words. “You made the rules, Blake. I’m just following them.”

“You will
not
cheat on me.”

“It sucks thinking you don’t have what it takes to satisfy your spouse, doesn’t it?”

He stormed across the room and grabbed me by the shoulders, giving me a little shake. His eyes were furious. I grew nervous. It was fun taunting him, but perhaps I pushed him just a little too far.

“Don’t you ever say anything like that to me again.” His fingers dug into the flesh on my arms, squeezing me until I wanted to cry out.

“You’re hurting me,” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “Let go,” I growled.

He released me and stepped back.

“I’m tired of this, Talie,” he said, turning his back on me. “People are starting to talk. People want to know why you no longer work at the doctor’s office. People want to know where you are.”

I shrugged a shoulder. “Tell them I’m out of town.”

“You’re hurting the business.” He spun to look at me.

“How could me being out of town hurt your business
?”

He glared at me with a tight jaw.

“Oh,” I said, the truth dawning. “This is about your father. Does he know?”

“About my little indiscretion? Yes.”

“And?” I asked, wanting to know what my father-in-law thought of his son treating a woman this way.

“And he told me to tell you to get over it and get your ass back home.”

I gasped. “He did not.”

“He did, Talie. He says that whatever happens in our bedroom needs to stay there. Our marriage is not a community matter. People shouldn’t be talking about it.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t have made it a community matter when you invited a slut into my bed!” I yelled.

“I told you I was sorry
,” he ground out.

“Yes, and then you told me you would do it again, just more discreetly.”

“My father won’t turn the business over to me until you’re home and we’re happy pillars of the community. He wants a certain family image for the company.”

“The baby,” I whispered, laying a hand on my stomach, thinking of the baby that wasn’t even there. I looked up at him. “You were only going to give me a baby because he told you to.”

“What difference does it make if you get what you want?”

He made me sick. So incredibly sick. I couldn’t believe I wasted years on him.

“Get out,” I said, my voice hoarse. I didn’t think he could hurt me anymore than he already did.

I was wrong.

“Get your things.”

I looked at him like he was an alien with four heads. “I’m not going anywhere with you. We’re over. I want a divorce.”

“I won’t give you one.”

“You will.” Anger rumbled up in me. An anger unlike anything I
’d ever felt before.

He walked up to me,
toe-to-toe, and looked down (he was taller than me too; everyone was.). There was a challenge in his eye that I had no problem meeting. “It’s over,” I said, low.

“I will not let you cost me everything I’ve worked half my life to build,” he growled. He reached out and snatched my arm. “Now go pack
. We’re leaving.”

I began to struggle in his hold
. Just the mere touch of his hand made me want to vomit. My God, how could I have ever fallen in love with him? His grip tightened and a look of determination crossed his features.

“Let go
.”

“Not until you learn who the boss in this relationship is.”

I barked a laugh. I couldn’t help it. “It sure as hell ain’t you.”

I cried out when his nails bit into the flesh of my arm. “Don’t make me force you.”

I’d never heard that tone before. It scared me.

I gave one last violent yank
of my arm and at the same time he shoved me away, toward the bedroom. The force of us both sent me flying sideways. I hit the back of a chair and bounced off, falling onto the floor with a hard thump.

I rolled onto my back and looked up just in time to see a large hand reach out and spin Blake from behind. Seconds later
, Blake was sprawled across the floor beside me.

I looked up, wild
-eyed, to see Gavin standing there with glittering angry eyes. Beside me, Blake moaned and sat up, his lip busted and bleeding, already swelling to twice its size.

“What the hell!” he said. It sounded more like
butt zee ell.

“
You better stay down,” Gavin threatened. “Because if you get up, I’ll do it again.”

When Gavin reached for me
, Blake flinched. He pulled me up onto my feet, his eyes softening with concern. “Are you okay?”

I nodded. “I’m fine. I lost my balance.”

“He shoved you.”

“Who the hell are you
?” Blake shouted from the floor.

“He’s the neighbor,” I told him.

“The neighbor?” Gavin said, like it wasn’t the right answer.

I realized then he was wearing a shirt. A nice one. It was a crisp white polo that hugged his shoulders perfectly. With the polo he
wore a pair of navy khakis and a pair of suede shoes that didn’t have laces. I glanced up to see his hair was actually combed and not hanging over his forehead. “You’re wearing clothes,” I said, shocked.

He chuckled.

On the floor, Blake began to stutter, “You’ve seen him without clothes!”

We ignored him.

“I had to be somewhere.”

I started to ask where and then I remembered I wasn’t allowed to ask questions. “Oh.”

“Talie,” he said, “I need to explain.”

“Really?” Was he actually going to tell me something about himself? Just the prospect made me all fluttery inside.

“Yeah. I—”

Blake got to his feet, cutting off the conversation I really wanted to have.

“We were in the middle of something,” he said to Gavin. “You should leave.”

Gavin looked like he was going to punch him again, and while that might be fun, I wasn’t in the mood to peel these two off each other. I placed a gentle, restraining hand on Gavin’s arm
, and Blake looked like he swallowed a watermelon.

“Blake was just leaving,” I said.

“I was not.”

“Blake,” I said, irritated and weary
, “I’m not coming back with you. I mean it.”

Blake began to say something
, but Gavin cut him off.

“You’re going somewhere with him?”
He looked between us. “Talie, who is this?”

Blake drew himself up haughtily. “I’m her husband.”